A friend of mine sent me this recipe for a cocktail called Remember the Maine. The linked article gives some background, so I suggest clicking through, but here’s the recipe:

Remember the Maine

1 1/2 oz. rye whiskey (Reitz uses Bulleit Rye)
3/4 oz. Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth
1/4 oz. Cherry Heering
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir over ice, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass that has been “rinsed” in absinthe.

It sounded fantastic, but the problem was that I’ve never had any Carpano Antica nor any Cherry Heering handy with which to make it. So after doing some quick research into these ingredients, I came up with some more common-place replacements that I figured would do the trick. While the end result is a quite different drink, I must say that it’s quite tasty. Here it is:

1 1/2 oz. rye
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth (a very common brand in my case)
1/4 oz. creme de cassis (a not-too-sweet variety, mine comes from a small winemaker in Burgundy)
1/4–1/2 tsp. Fernet Branca
1/4–1/2 tsp. orange liqueur (I used a homemade version, again, not too sweet, but Grand Marnier might be nice here)
2 dashes Angostura bitters

The Fernet Branca and orange liqueur are meant to beef up the profile of the every-day sweet vermouth to bring it closer to the alleged complexity of Carpano Antica, while the creme de cassis stands in for the Cherry Heering. The rest of the preparation (stirred over ice, absinthe) is the same.

I’ll be keeping my eye out for Carpano Antica and Cherry Heering for sure, but in the mean time, this variation is doing just fine.