The box contained a rather unusual cast of characters.

The lemon and peppercorns made sense and a childhood full of pancakes has given maple syrup a permanent pass in my book. Maple syrup can do no wrong... I've even been known to put it in my coffee. In was the last ingredient... the latest jar of jam which threw me for a loop.

Wild Child Foods offers a variety of tropical fruit jams from the island of Mauritius. Canning bananas had never occurred to me. They are always eaten so quickly that preservation never seemed psychologically possible let alone a culinary possibility. The consistency is strange for a jam... it's more of a sweet mashed-up-banana paste than something resembling the average jar of Smuckers. The taste was great though. It has the sweetness of an overripe banana, but without any of the off flavors that come when you lose a game of chicken to your bunch of bananas. I couldn't really imagine it being good in a cocktail, let alone one made with peppercorns, Nolet's Silver, and maple syrup.

There are times when you just need to ignore your instincts and trust that other people actually know what they are doing. Alchemy happens in the boston shaker with this cocktail.. all the ingredients become something else. There is sweetness from the maple syrup and tartness from the lemon juice, but the banana flavor is gone and replaced with simply a sense of roundness. If one was coming to this drink blind there is no way anyone would reverse engineer it. The flavor is full and lingering the bite from the gin isn't masked completely like other tropical drinks, but accented subtly with the muddled peppercorns.

They call it The Nolet's Silver Solstice and was conceived of by Jaymee Mandeville over at DRAGO Centro in downtown LA. It's a great drink to sip outside on a hot day (especially as the summer solstice nears) and a wonderful expression of the unique flavor profile of Nolet's Silver.

1.25 oz Nolet’s Silver Dry Gin
.75 oz banana jam
.5 oz maple syrup
.5 oz fresh lemon juice
4 peppercorns
Muddle peppercorns in a mixing glass. Add remaining ingredients and shake with ice. Fine strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon twist.