The Poet's Dream Is Ready for the Spotlight

"There are several iconic cocktails-from the Bobby Burns to the Singapore Sling to the Vieux Carré-that call on Bénédictine . But despite the cocktail revival's best efforts, there are dozens more that have remained in obscurity. Shawn Lickliter, owner of the newly opened Vandell in LA's Los Feliz neighborhood, is perhaps the perfect practitioner to steward long-lost drinks made with the liqueur back into the spotlight."

"To build his ideal recipe, he started with the gin. Though Fords is the standard at Vandell, Lickliter found that this drink shone ever more brightly with No. 3 Gin, a London dry from England's oldest wine merchants, the Berry Brothers, which Lickliter describes as "super clean." The gin keeps the non-juniper botanicals to a minimum, while offering a touch of grapefruit. There's a wildcard ingredient in this drink: pisco. "Gin can be a bully sometimes when you're adding in a liqueur like Bénédictine,""

Shawn Lickliter champions long-forgotten cocktails that feature Bénédictine, drawn to the liqueur's honeyed leather notes since working with vintage expressions at Manzke. He reimagined the Poet's Dream, a stirred cocktail with roots in the Café Royal Cocktail Book (1937), which originally used a 2:1 ratio of dry gin to dry vermouth plus small amounts of Bénédictine and orange bitters. Lickliter tested multiple iterations over years to find his preferred balance. He selected No. 3 Gin for its clean profile and grapefruit hint to complement, then introduced pisco as a balancing element when gin threatens to dominate, producing a layered, thoughtful modern version.

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