OnMilwaukee.com and Maker's Mark® have partnered for a special promotion all October called "Paint The Town Red." We selected 10 of Milwaukee's best mixologists, asked them to share their trademark bourbon recipes, and now, we're giving you a chance to vote for -- and win $50 from -- one of their respective bars. Our job during this month was fun, too: we sampled each of the cocktails and are happy to tell you all about them.
To enter to win, just click here and vote for your favorite recipe. And make sure to visit these 10 bars and try these most unique of Maker's Mark cocktails, too. You'll be glad you did!
The Palmers Park
2 parts Maker's Mark Bourbon
1 part "Bitter Bruno" (mix of multiple orange bitters)
Serve on the rocks with an orange twist, or neat with a Three Floyd’s Gumball Head chaser.
Veteran bartender Adrienne Pierluissi had a clear concept in mind when she put together the incredibly simple Palmers Park for the Palm Tavern, 2989 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.
It was something that complemented bourbon's tasted without masking it.
"That's what I was hoping to do, because I like bourbon," she says.
"I've been a bartender for 22 years," she says, and she understands how things work behind the bar. "If it's too complicated, nobody's going to want to make it, from a bartender's point of view."
But beyond that Adrienne knows her bourbon.
"I knew orange and bourbon go well together," she tells me.
What she came up with is a orange-scented drink that never masks the main ingredient.
"I think it's a great introduction to bourbon. Bourbon to me is really sweet and really easy to get into. I didn't want to make it too syrupy, that's why I think the bitter of the orange is a nice balance."
As for the "neat" version, with the Three Floyd's Gumball Head chaser, it's a nod to the Palm's reputation as a place for serious beer drinkers.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
