Grab your can opener and your warmest coat. It’s time to toast the quiet apocalypse with a mint julep with a distinctly Canadian twist.
You’ll need
- 2oz (60ml) Canadian whiskey
- .75oz (20ml) peach syrup
- Mint leaves
- Cracked ice
Add the mint leaves and whiskey to your vessel and muddle thoroughly. Fill the rest of the vessel with cracked ice. Pour the peach syrup over the top. Garnish with a sprig of mint and a straw. Serve!
“High-quality peaches, halved. Sounds alright, but I wonder if we can’t do one better…”
-Mackenzie
In The Long Dark, resource management is key. You can’t lug around every tool, every piece of clothing, every crumb of food and drop of drink you find without incurring serious penalties. You have to be very choosey with what you bring out into the snow.
Pinnacle Peaches gets a bad rap as a result. Canned peaches are heavy, it doesn’t restore too many calories, and you need a can opener to open it without spillage – a tool rarer than you might expect in the quiet apocalypse. Sure, it restores thirst as well as hunger and, if you can heat it up, it buffers you against the cold, but that doesn’t mean much when you have the choice between it and a hatchet.
If you like this, you might like the Pungent Blood Cocktail from Bloodborne too.
So when I decided to make a drink inspired by what is one of my most favourite games ever, I knew I wanted to revamp this maligned item. And how better to make new friends than with a generous helping of booze?
The Pinnacle Peaches Cocktail is based, in fact, on a very American drink: a mint julep, the state drink of Kentucky and the (in)famous Kentucky Derby. It’s most notable feature is the use of cold: both in the cracked ice that creates the drink’s iconic frostiness, but also in the mint muddled at the bottom of every silver cup.
I wanted to retain that frostiness that’s so appropriate for The Long Dark, but give it a distinctly Canadian flavour. So I subbed out the usual bourbon for a batch of Canadian whiskey instead. This whiskey is usually drier and a little lighter than most bourbons, which also makes it cleaner and keeps the peaches at the forefront of the flavour profile.
All up, it’s a relatively simple drink that anyone with ample amounts of scavenged peaches and alcohol could make. And, I hope, it does something to bring back the rep of Pinnacle Peaches, that stalwart companion for any starving, freezing survivor. Cheers!
If you want to keep seeing video-game-inspired cocktails and get a hold of some exclusive recipes, head on over to Experience Bar’s Patreon page and consider slinging me a credit or two. You help keep this blog going!
