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Allsorts Inc. is an ode to the company that built the interior of Greenpoint, Brooklyn's Beloved (everything except the actual bar, a Stones Tavern relic). "They did an amazing job," says Rene Hidalgo, who splits his time between Beloved, Lantern's Keep and The Beagle. Hidalgo developed Beloved's opening menu with wife and Allswell lead bartender Heather Ash. "We're extremely fond of them personally, so we wanted to do a drink to honor them. They're named after an Allsorts, a kind of slimy, dive bar thing where you pour a little bit of beer from each tap. They initially wanted us to do an Allsorts. We're not going to do that—it's disgusting—so we figured we'd make a drink with lots of ingredients."
The Allsorts guys are tequila drinkers, so their namesake drink is agave-based. "We use the Vida mezcal from Del Maguey. It's a milder, less smoky mezcal," Hidalgo explains. "You get a lot of stone fruit flavors up front and some grassy notes." To play off the hints of stone fruit, he adds an ounce of pear eau de vie. "I love the idea of baked fruits to inspire a drink—apple pie, peach cobber, that sort of thing."
He achieves that spiced-style sweetness with John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum, "a mix of lime zest, almonds and spices like cloves and star anise cooked down, sweetened and fortified with white rum" and allspice dram. Hidalgo uses the dram as one might add bitters, in tiny amounts. "It's extremely fragrant, really big stuff so you never want to use too much of it...Add the lemon juice and orange bitters, and you get this really great stone fruit, baking spice, citric combination that's delicious all year round."
Allsorts Inc. is a far cry from its sudsy muse. It's fun, but there's nothing sloppy about it. "There's complexity but it's still approachable," says Hidalgo. "These aren't flavors people aren't used to having; it's just the combination of how they play together."
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