Cocktail 12: The Gold-Bug

I presume the fancy of the skull, of letting fall a bullet through the skull’s eye–was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium.

The story goes thus: the narrator visits a friend who has discovered an unusual type of beetle. Through a convoluted plot device, the beetle leads to a pirate treasure map printed in disappearing ink and coded into a cipher. Much of the story involves decoding the cipher, climbing a tree, dropping the beetle through a skull’s eye socket, and pacing off steps according to the map. Ultimately a pirate’s treasure chest is discovered. Apparently the reading public at the time was ga-ga over cryptography and so-called “secret writing.” In fact, it’s said that Poe helped popularize those themes. In any event, there is something very Holmesian about this story.

The full story is available here.

This is presented as a shooter, but how you drink it is up to you. Combine the ingredients in a tall shot glass or (as I did) in a stolen port glass. Let the gold settle at the bottom, representing the buried treasure in Poe’s tale. If you’re making one for a guest, present it with a “yo-ho-ho.”

This is a visually appealing and Poe-evocative drink that packs a punch. But I wouldn’t say it’s especially delicious. Goldschlager is essentially cinnamon Schnapps, which may or may not bring back horrible memories from high school. Still, the cloying taste of the Goldschlager is somewhat attenuated by the tequila, resulting in a tolerable, warming drink that can be shot (to get it over with) or sipped by the fireplace as you labor over a cryptogram. I opted for the latter.