Photo: Brian Klutch • Food Styling: Jessie YuChen • Prop Styling: Paige Hicks. Photo: Brian Klutch • Food Styling: Jessie YuChen • Prop Styling: Paige Hicks
Queens, New York bar 929’s twist on a whiskey sour swaps out bourbon for Kinmen Kaoliang, a Taiwan-made light-aroma baijiu. In keeping with the bar’s theme of Mandarin and Cantonese pop music, the drink’s name nods to Hong Kong singer Anita Mui’s 1988 hit “Drunk in Dreams Together,” which samples the theme song of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film “The Last Emperor.” To make this baijiu cocktail recipe, 929 founder Haoran Chen quickly infuses baijiu with tea leaves using a sous vide machine, but we found that letting the two ingredients steep slowly at room temperature also works nicely.
Featured in “Baijiu, the World’s Most Popular Spirit, Is Coming for Your Cocktail” by Megan Zhang.
Yield: 1 cocktail Ingredients Ingredients For the infused baijiu: 4 cups light-aroma baijiu ¼ oz. whole oolong tea leaves For the cocktail: 1 oz. umeshu (Japanese plum wine) ½ oz. egg white, or aquafaba ½ oz. fresh lime juice ½ oz. pineapple juice ½ oz. simple syrup Dehydrated pineapple slice, for garnish (optional) Instructions Make the infused baijiu: To a 1-quart jar, add the baijiu and tea leaves, seal, and set aside
