The Gem from Easthampton: Gigantic bar manager’s recipe makes it across the pond to a speakeasy in Scotland

By CHRIS LARABEE
Staff Writer

With 3,100 miles and the Atlantic Ocean between them, what could Easthampton and Dundee, a city of approximately 148,000 people in Scotland, possibly have in common?

Well, if you really do some digging, you might unearth a Gem of a connection between the two communities.

Hidden in an alleyway underneath Franks Wine and Pasta Bar is Draffens, a Scottish speakeasy dressed up as an American Prohibition-era bar, with a wide variety of cocktails. I was visiting Scotland with my girlfriend in July and we were directed to Draffens. After a drink, she stepped away for a moment, so I scanned the menu looking for my next cocktail and saw a drink called The Gem, which is a classic 19th-century cocktail featuring rum, cognac, lime juice, pineapple syrup and cinnamon.

“A reimagining of an 1800’s classic,” the description began, although nothing could have prepared me for the next few words. “By Ned King from bar Gigantic in Easthampton, USA.”

At first, I thought Ned King was just an old-timey bartender from the 1800s who happened to be from the Pioneer Valley, but, much to my shock, when my girlfriend returned to our table, she said she had been to King’s bar before. Determined to try and get a news story out of this, we excitedly posed the cocktail on our table and took a photo for safe keeping.

The Gem, by the way, is a fantastic drink if you like rum.

Back in the U.S., I connected with King last week to learn about The Gem and to see if he had any idea that his revival of a 19th-century cocktail had somehow found its way to a speakeasy in Dundee.

“I’m stoked, when I saw it, I was like, ‘holy crap,’” King said of my email to him during a conversation at Gigantic. “I think the cocktail community in general is so small that these things do kind of get around to different bars … I think because it was easy, it was able to get into a bunch of different places.”

King found the recipe for the drink in a copy of the 1891 book “The Flowing Bowl: When and What to Drink” by William Schmidt, which is this sort of 19th-century encyclopedia of mixed drinks and cocktails. As he was digging through a copy of the book during the pandemic, he was intrigued by the drink’s history – it’s like a Daiquiri, but was actually introduced five to 10 years before the Daiquiri became a thing — and, of course, he likes the taste.

In reintroducing with the drink, King made only a few tweaks, partially for ease of making the drink, such as using easier-to-obtain Jamaican rum, and partially for taste purposes. The biggest departure is the use of Angostura bitters, which are not in the original recipe and complements the cinnamon.

“For instance, it just says, ‘the juice of a lime’, like what does that mean? It’s so vague, limes vary in size so much, so you kind of have to piece it together,” King said of the original recipe. “We engineered it based on more of a modern palette.”

While the Gem is an old drink, the method in which it found its way to Dundee is very 21st century.

King’s revival of the Gem was featured in the online cocktail website Punch when local writer and historian Al Culliton featured the drink in the publication’s “Bring Back the …” series in June 2022. Culliton’s story can be read here: bit.ly/3ykpq5H.

Over in Dundee, Draffens General Manager Ross Dalton said he and his staff were looking for a mix of historical and contemporary cocktails to include on the speakeasy’s menu and he just so happened to come across Culliton’s piece in Punch.

“I realized we didn’t have a cognac drink on the menu and I kinda sat there and was like, ‘We need to get one,’” Dalton said in a phone call. “It works really well and it’s exactly what we want on the menu … For us, it fits exactly with what we what and gives us that tiki-esque thing we want.”

Dalton said Draffens mostly sticks to King’s recipe, although the pineapple syrup they use has a little bit of a different makeup.

While cocktails typically spread from “culinary hubs”– Dalton noted the Cosmopolitan coming from New York City and the espresso martini emerging from London – he said it was nice to see a much-smaller city making some waves.

“Two very small places having that connection with a drink on a menu, I think it’s pretty cool … hopefully it’s cool for him as well, to see that drink grow legs and arms,” Dalton said. “It’s shown how global this industry is now becoming.”

At Gigantic, the Gem is not currently on the menu, although King said it is on their roster of cocktails that they’ll happily make on request. If you want to try the drink, or another one of King’s creations, for yourself, Gigantic is located at 78 Cottage St. in Easthampton and opens at 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and at 6 p.m. on Sundays.

If you find yourself in Dundee, ask around for Draffens, the locals will direct you to the speakeasy, but you might have to do a little searching to find the hidden entrance.

Other places to go in Scotland

I’m no travel writer, but I’m happy to share some travel recommendations if you’re heading to Scotland.

We were attending a wedding in St. Andrews, so our home base was Dundee, which is a wonderful little city with great restaurants and a train station that can get you to any of the major cities in the country. If you’re in the area and have even a cursory interest in golf, it’s worth stopping by the Old Course in St. Andrews, where modern golf was born.

From there, you can hop on Scotland’s public transit system, which is quite useful and you can get to most places in the country within a few hours by train or bus.

In Glasgow, you should seek out the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which is free and contains a trove of Scottish art, including many pieces from The Glasgow Boys, a group of about 20 influential painters who worked in the city. If you like beer, Glasgow also contains the Tennent’s Brewery, which brews the country’s most popular beer and offers an entertaining tour that encompasses hundreds of years of brewing history.

Finally, if you have the time, you should make a trip up to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. The intimate city sits on the River Ness and the Caledonian Canal and is jam-packed with businesses and restaurants. If you have a few hours to kill, I fully recommend renting a bicycle from one of the nearby shops and riding to Loch Ness. The route takes you through the city, down farm roads with the highlands rising up around and then ends with a grand view of Loch Ness in all of its glory — no, we did not see Nessie.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.