3 cl Catz® Dry Gin
3 cl De Kuyper Crème de Menthe Green
3 cl Dry Vermouth
Pour all ingredients in a large shaker, filled with ice cubes and shake meticulously. Strain into a pre-chilled cocktail glass. Serve ungarnished.
It is unknown who created the Caruso cocktail in the tenor’s honor: some cocktail historians say Caruso himself invented the cocktail. Others mention that the cocktail was first mixed for the opera star by a bartender at the Hotel Knickerbocker in New York, where Caruso lived with his family when he performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera for the first time in 1903. Another version of the creation of the Caruso cocktail also dates back to the early 20th century and mentions the London Savoy as its birthplace, legendary bartender Harry Craddock listing the Caruso in his The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, during which time the Caruso had become a classic evening drink. A third origin credits Ritz Paris’s bartender Bernard ‘Bertin’ Azimont, who remained in-house for almost five decades, from 1926 till 1975. Bertin was an accompaniment of the legendary Frank Meier (‘Frank of the Ritz’), who fronted the bar at the Ritz Paris from 1921 to 1947. Enrico Caruso was married to socialite Dorothy Park Benjamin, the daughter of a wealthy New York patent lawyer. Dorothy Caruso lived until 1955 and wrote a biography about Caruso, titled Enrico Caruso, His Life, and Death. In an excerpt from her book madam, Caruso describes Caruso’s drinking habits as follows: ‘He did not drink beer, highballs, milk or tea; he drank two or three quarts of bottled mineral water a day. Sometimes he took a little wine, and the only cocktail he liked was an Alexander.’