Cocktail Notes || EP. 16 “Blue Affinity", by Branden Nguyen || Les Framboise Apres

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, so I wanted to keep with the theme and feature an original that is a little bit more sultry and provocative. I wrote this song a few years back as the R&B installment to my blues composition project. The form is AABA, with the first and last sections having a 12-bar blues structure. The B section is an 8 measure melody, outlining a more “Major”  sound to contrast the “Minor” sound of the A sections. In recording this video, I needed more takes than I planned for. My improvisation during the video was not as rhythmically clean as I would have liked, but I chose this take for my overall performance on the melody portion of the song. It was a compromise in quality that is sometimes to be expected for songs with improvisational elements.

The original cocktail I created for this video is called “Les Framboise Apres”, or the “raspberries after”. The idea behind making this drink was creating an after-dinner type of cocktail that is sweeter, but also leaned towards the spirit-forward side. The inspiration was something along the lines of chocolate and raspberries. I challenged myself to use ingredients that were associated with dinner-dates/romance. This drink includes cognac (french, classic), chambord (are raspberries sexy?), vermouth (wine is certainly romantic), elderflower liqueur (in place of giving flowers), and chocolate bitters (obligatory chocolate). It was honestly a bit of a mess, maybe too much on the sweet-syrupy side. I will have to take a look at this recipe and revise it a little. Not bad for its first iteration though! Cheers!

[February 11, 2021]