The Adonis is the most beautiful of sherry cocktails

The plate is placed on the table and the plump, milky oyster quivers. It plucks at some grey and primordial instinct in my brain. Aha, wriggly things from the sea. Bring out the blanc de blancs! The muscadet! The albariño! I scan the menu looking for a familiar friend, but am instead reminded about a cocktail I love. An Adonis.

An Adonis, to me, is a flagship sherry cocktail. I’m on a near-constant campaign to make sherry a thing, but it’s one of those drinks with a few hang-ups. Is it an acquired taste for an older crowd? Isn’t it just a sweet wine? Well, no and no, but I will acknowledge it’s more approachable to a curious drinker when stirred into a cocktail. So, a sherry cocktail was what I ordered to have with the oysters, proof that often, a cocktail can be just as ideal a pairing as wine.

Classically, an Adonis is a two- ingredient stirred drink made from sweet vermouth and sherry. Unlike many other cocktails, the Adonis has a straightforward origin story: it was created to celebrate 500 performances of the 1884 musical of the same name on Broadway.

The sherry used in an Adonis needs to be dry, which can mean a number of styles – and this is where the fun happens. Some prefer to use a fino or manzanilla sherry, which, on the sliding scale of sherry, will be the lightest in both colour and texture. They are aged under a layer of yeast which imparts a nutty, salty texture that makes them brilliant with picky bits: almonds, olives, anchovies.

Then things get darker: amontillado, oloroso, palo cortado. All still dry, but richer, nuttier – which sherry you choose will vastly impact the resulting cocktail. This one I ordered, the one with the oysters, was a darker version at a Brooklyn bar named Maison Premiere – somewhere I try to go to every time I’m in New York. Anywhere you can get an oyster menu that looks more like a dim sum order sheet is a place you’re likely to find me.

Maison Premiere’s version of an Adonis is different in a couple of ways. To start, it’s served with ice, rather than poured into a chilled coupe, which is foregone in favour of a taller cocktail glass. And, instead of a simple twist, a long shoelace of what appears to be the rind of an entire orange loops around the ice in the glass, with a neat knot tied at either end.

William Elliott of Maison Premiere tells me this brooding version is a “reimagining” of a classic Adonis. It’s made with oloroso sherry – dark but dry – but also, more intriguingly, a dash of Pedro Ximénez, another dark sherry that’s anything but dry: it’s smooth and full, sweet like raisins, and frequently served as a dessert wine. Elliott saw a balance in its richness: “Rather than headline the oft oversold salinity of sherry, I wanted to profile more depth and nuance.”

For a taste of this classic sherry drink a little closer to home, seek out the classic rendition in London’s Bar Flor. Theirs is equal parts manzanilla and sweet red vermouth, which means a cocktail like this typically comes in with low ABV. For those of us looking to take less alcohol while still not depriving ourselves of the glamour of a cocktail, perhaps an Adonis is the answer.