The Best Tall as a Tree and Twice as Shady Recipe

Some drinks arrive like an invitation; others arrive like a dare. And in case it’s not obvious, the drink in question—a tiki cocktail spiked with an ingredient (Batavia Arrack) that most people have never heard of and can barely pronounce, sitting on the improbable base of Scotch whisky and arriving under the name of “Tall as a Tree and Twice as Shady”—is an example of the latter.

In 2012, it was announced that Paul McGee was leaving the Whistler in Chicago. At the time, McGee was one of the leading figures in Chicago’s cocktail renaissance, the kind of bartender whose decision to leave one bar for another earns urgent coverage from all the local publications, and the cocktail community was atwitter. When it was further revealed that the project would be a tiki bar, the anticipation became more breathless still—McGee was a serious bartender and the Whistler was a serious bar, but he also had a gift for the tropical, and had been hosting intermittent tiki nights at the otherwise buttoned up Whistler for a long time.

That bar was Three Dots and a Dash, which opened in the middle of 2013 with some 4,000 square feet of basement space in Chicago’s bustling River North neighborhood, and it landed with an impact that was felt far beyond the borders of the city. Three Dots and a Dash was a revelation, the first of its kind anywhere, an assembly of delicious contradictions. The space was enormous, but intimate. The drinks were baroque, but precise. The vibe was tropical, but urbane. It was, in short, a tiki bar, but refined, itself an oxymoron until McGee and his team proved it could be done. Three Dots and a Dash, combined with McGee’s next bar Lost Lake, so cemented his reputation as one of the tiki movement’s leading talents that it’s often a surprise to cocktail people (those not from Chicago, anyway) to hear that he had ever done anything else.

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This leads us back to the Tall as a Tree and Twice as Shady, a drink on the opening menu of Three Dots and a Dash that’s as good an example as any of McGee’s tiki sensibilities—unexpected and delicious, creative and precise. He was inspired by Trader Vic’s London Sour from 1972 (scotch, lemon, orange, and almond), but found room for improvement: McGee kept the scotch, lemon, and almond syrups, subbed the orange for pineapple, and, in an inspired move that more firmly brings the drink back into the tiki embrace, added in a funky, fruity Indonesian proto-rum called Batavia Arrack as an accent. The result is a cocktail that is very much a scotch drink but also very much a tiki drink, a delicious contradiction and a perfect representation of the ethos.

As for the wonderful name: “I grew up in the South and sayings like this one are thrown around quite often,” McGee says, “I can’t specifically remember where I heard this one, though.” I will say that thorough internet search reveals no such phrase (except for references to this cocktail), so perhaps it was specific to McGee and his childhood friends, or perhaps it’s from the hills of a South so deep that even Google doesn’t know about it. In any case, I think it’s perfect for this drink because it’s a signal to the drinker, even a challenge—whatever answers to this name will be a different kind of thing, and a delightful one at that.

Tall as a Tree and Twice as Shady

Shake all ingredients on crushed ice, or, if you don’t have that, then the smallest ice you can muster. Shake good and hard for eight to 10 seconds and pour, broken ice and all, into the closest thing you have to a tiki mug. (A tall glass is also fine.) Garnish with pineapple leaves and/or mint.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Blended Scotch: McGee himself favors a single malt or blend that has a mild-to-medium smoky note. He originally used the blended scotch White Horse, which, he says, “has a bit of smoky Islay whisky from the Lagavulin distillery in the blend which I really like.” He also notes that if money is less of an issue, a 10-year-old bottling from Springbank would be great. I agree on all fronts, and will just add that this works phenomenally well with an even simpler blend like Compass Box Artist Blend, Famous Grouse, or Scottish Glory.

Batavia Arrack: The wild card! This is made from 98 percent sugar cane and 2 percent red rice, and adds, McGee says, “a bit more tropical fruit and that subtle smoky element which really complements the other flavors in this drink.” Batavia Arrack is fun—the flagship brand is Batavia Arrack Van Oosten, and if you’re a serious cocktail or tiki fan, it’s a solid ingredient to have around. 

If you don’t identify that way but like the sound of this drink, you can substitute it. My assumption has always been that an unaged rhum agricole would provide similar flavors, but when I tried it for this article, it was all wrong—the grassiness sticks out. Side-by-side, you realize it’s the fruit and funk of the Batavia Arrack that makes it all work, not the grass, so I’d grab an aged Jamaican rum, either mild (like Appleton Estate) or intense (like Smith & Cross), depending on you.

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Lemon Juice: You’d think lime, because tiki, but lemon and scotch go much better. It takes more than a little Batavia Arrack to get lime and scotch to get along.

Orgeat: An almond syrup—accept no substitutes. You can make it if you have a mind to, but it’s a little annoying. Far easier is to buy it, from almond-forward brands like Liquid Alchemist or Small Hands Foods, or more marzipan-forward brands like Giffard. Both work.

Pineapple Juice: Needn’t be freshly juiced. The cocktail will be better if it is, to be sure—fresh pineapple is more subtle, with better texture—but cans of Dole work perfectly well.