Silk Stocking
The Silk Stocking is tequila’s dessert secret, and almost nobody knows it exists. Blanco folded into cream and white crème de cacao with a grenadine blush, dusted with cinnamon and served up. It comes out of the mid-century guides, from a period when the range of what tequila could do was still being mapped, and somebody thought to try it in the Alexander’s frame. The answer, improbably, was yes. Spirit, cacao and cream is the Alexander family’s constitution, and blanco’s pepper does what gin’s juniper does in the original: it cuts the richness and stops the whole thing sliding into a milkshake. Cognac in a Brandy Alexander joins the cream. Tequila argues with it. The grenadine is this version’s own signature, tinting the silk pink and laying a pomegranate seam underneath the cocoa. No author has ever been attached to it, which is a shame, because it is the best after-dinner argument tequila has.
Glassware: Nick & Nora Glass
Garnish: Ground Cinnamon dusted over the silk
Ingredients
45ml
The argument inside the silk: agave pepper cutting the cream where a softer spirit would sink into it. A characterful bottle is the recipe, not a preference.
22.5ml
White rather than brown, and the colour is the reason. The brown bottle turns the blush a muddy beige, and both carry the same cocoa butter roundness anyway.
22.5ml
The stocking itself. Single cream shaken hard enough to aerate is the Alexander family’s law, and it wants a double strain afterwards so nothing gritty reaches the glass.
10ml
The blush and the seam at once. Real pomegranate tints the drink pink and brings fruit with it; cheap red syrup delivers the colour and nothing else.
Instructions
Add the tequila, crème de cacao, cream and grenadine to a shaker with ice.
Shake very hard for 12 seconds.
Double strain into a chilled Nick & Nora.
Dust the surface with cinnamon.
Expert Tip
A characterful blanco is the whole thing. A soft, industrial tequila with the pepper polished out of it disappears into the cream and leaves you holding a cocoa milkshake, at which point the drink has stopped having a reason to exist. Something with real agave bite is what keeps it a cocktail. White crème de cacao rather than brown, and not for taste reasons: the brown bottle turns the blush a muddy beige and the pink is half the point. Shake it hard, because cream needs violence to aerate properly, and double strain so nothing gritty reaches the glass. Use real pomegranate grenadine too. Ten millilitres is doing flavour work as well as colour work, and cheap red syrup only does the colour.
Behind the Silk Stocking
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The Silk Stocking threads its way through the mid-century guides among the era’s many cream drinks, with no author attached to it anywhere. What it represents is a period of genuine experimentation: tequila had arrived in American bars in quantity and nobody was certain yet what it was for, so it was tried in every existing frame to see which ones held.
Most of those experiments deserved to be forgotten. This one did not, and it was quietly rediscovered when the revival rehabilitated cream drinks generally, having spent several decades being dismissed alongside everything else with dairy in it.
The Alexander Frame
Spirit, crème de cacao and cream in roughly two to one to one is the Alexander family’s constitution, and it has held up under a remarkable range of bases. Gin built the original, cognac built the famous one, and the frame is forgiving enough to take almost anything with character.
What it needs is a spirit that will not simply be absorbed. Cream and cacao are both soft and both sweet, and a base without an edge to it produces something closer to a pudding than a cocktail. The Silk Stocking is the agave answer to that requirement, and it happens to be one of the sharpest answers the family has.
Why Blanco
Unaged tequila is the correct choice here for exactly the reason it is the wrong one in an Old Fashioned. Blanco has raw agave, white pepper and a citrus edge, none of which need barrel weight to be heard, and all of which stand out against dairy.
Reposado and añejo both soften those qualities, which is the whole purpose of the barrel, and in this drink that softening is a loss rather than a gain: the oak simply adds another round note to a glass that already has two. Save the aged bottles for the frames that need weight. This one needs friction.
The Grenadine
Ten millilitres is what separates this from being a tequila Alexander, and it is doing more than tinting the glass. Pomegranate is tart underneath its sweetness, which gives the cream a second thing to work against and stops the cacao having the sweet register entirely to itself.
The colour matters too, and it is the reason for every other decision in the build: white crème de cacao instead of brown, a clear spirit instead of an aged one. Get any of those wrong and the blush turns muddy. Real grenadine gives a clean rose. Red syrup gives a flat, slightly synthetic pink that announces itself immediately.
How to Serve It
After dinner, up, in a chilled Nick & Nora, with cinnamon dusted over the surface the way nutmeg finishes a Brandy Alexander. It is a pudding in a glass and it should be served where a pudding would be.
It is also the most effective thing to hand anyone who says they do not like tequila, largely because they will not identify what is in it. Serve it last in a flight of Alexanders and it reliably wins, which is a strange result for a drink almost nobody has heard of.
Make it at home
The Spirit
TequilaRead the label before the price. Tequila only has to be 51% agave sugars, and no bottle is ever labelled mixto, so the words 100% agave are the only thing separating a spirit made from the plant from one made half from cane or corn.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Silk Stocking?
Why blanco tequila in a cream drink?
How does it relate to the Alexanders?
Does the grenadine have to be real?
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Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits