Happy upcoming Valentine’s Day out there, and welcome to a special, playful post for the occasion. I know Valentine’s Day is on Saturday, but I thought I’d post this in time for you to make the cocktail, if you choose. Like many holidays in the Christian canon, Valentine’s Day has its roots in paganism. The Church, in an effort to snatch victory from the jaws of sure defeat, would relabel pagan holidays and attach them to Saints. The end goal was to co-opt pagan holidays for Christianity without roiling local customs to the point of revolt or rejection. For some of these, the pagans were going to celebrate them come hell or highwater, so to save face, you might as well just re-frame them as “Christian” and some celebration of saints. 

As for Valentine’s Day, it’s based on the Roman fertility festival Lupercalia. Apparently, it involved running around the city naked and playing hot hands (literally, as in slapping folks) with people in an effort to make births go smoothly and heal the barren. Sadly, but logically, this required the sacrifice of a goat and a dog as well. All told, it was nearly as sensible as American society today. 

Of course, the Church did not really like the notion of a bunch of virile and fertile people playing hot hands, and especially naked hot hands. So, in steps St. Valentine, whose martyrdom provided the backdrop for the current Valentine’s Day. Apparently, he pressured Emperor Claudius a bit too much on the issue of conversion and ended up beaten with clubs and beheaded. Some also suggest that he ran afoul of the emperor by secretly performing Christian marriages. As for me, I suspect people just didn’t like that Naked Hot Hands was in peril. In any event, he is also considered the saint of beekeeping as well - and we all know the birds and the bees - see the garnish below.

So this week, we do a take on the Pornstar Martini. It’s not an old cocktail, created in the 1990s or early 2000s (prospective dates abound) by Douglas Ankrah in the London bar The Townhouse, seemingly because it just sounded to him like something a porn star would drink. This is a pretty typical spec for this drink, and we’ll make our own, high-quality vanilla vodka on the way.

Let’s tip one. 

First, the vanilla vodka. Split and scrape the vanilla beans. Add them to a container (the vodka bottle works just fine, though you might have to mix the beans and contents in a different container before adding them back to the bottle). Leave this in a cool, dark place for about 5 days, gently agitating it daily. 

Thoroughly chill your glass. This is a shaken cocktail. In half your tin, add all the ingredients, sans garnish. Load the other half of the tin with ice and bring together for a typical shake. Fine-strain the drink into your glass, garnish with the orange peel bird, and top with bee pollen. Enjoy!

Your choices on this one are few and mostly based on technique. You could clarify this cocktail, make fancier garnishes, incorporate the sparkling wine differently, etc. But changing the ingredients themselves will lead you out of Pornstar Martini territory. The original recipe calls for a 2-oz Champagne sidecar. Let’s not do that. If you love Champagne, you really don’t want to relegate it to a cocktail sidecar, though Valentine’s Day may be the only defense for doing so. If you want to be true to the original, I’d use Prosecco.

About the original - it also calls for half a passion fruit as a garnish. Sadly, passion fruit is not common in typical grocers in Appalachia, except as frozen stuff in a bag. As for those quirky garnishes, they are tongue-in-cheek on my part. This drink works fine without any garnish, including the sparkling wine. So, feel no pressure to measure up there either.

You do not need the vanilla syrup if you’re using it only in this cocktail. Simply add a dash or two of vanilla extract to the drink and use simple syrup. The dance of the vanilla and passionfruit is what makes the drink, though, so you do need a good punch of vanilla in the libation. The passion fruit puree that I could lay my hands on was very tart. So, you might need to play around with the proportions of the puree above and the liqueur/simple syrup; increasing either or both will balance the puree’s tartness.

As for the liqueur, I used Chinola, but bartenders typically use Passoã. I couldn’t get the latter. In regard to the dance of liqueur, syrup, and puree, as always, adjust to the balance you prefer, or most especially, to the balance that your special someone prefers. Here’s to hoping you get your game of naked hot hands on the special day - the world needs a little more love and tenderness.

This blog is, as ever, an opinionated take on drinks.