White Russian
The Dude's fault, entirely
- Method
- Built
- Style
- Classic
- Glass
- Rocks glass
- Time
- 5 min
Ingredients
- 60mlVodka
- 30mlCoffee Liqueur
- 30mlCreamsingle or double, lightly not whipped
Make it well
Built, properly.
Fill a rocks glass with ice.
Add the vodka and the coffee liqueur and give them a short stir.
Pour the cream gently over the back of a so it sits on top. You get the layered look for about a minute, which is long enough for anyone who wants a photo.
Stir it in before you drink it. The layers are for looking at, the drink is for drinking, and an unstirred one is just cream on top of a Black Russian.
On the palate
On the nose the cream flattens the coffee right down, so it smells softer and milkier than a Black Russian and much less like a coffee shop. On tasting it's round and cold and quite sweet, the cream taking all the edges off, and the vodka only reappears at the end once the fat has cleared. It drinks far easier than it should for the amount of alcohol in it, which is worth knowing before the third one. Use decent cream and don't shake it, you're after a soft drink not a milkshake.
Where it came from
The White Russian is a Black Russian with cream in it, and that's not a slight, it's literally the history. The Black Russian was made in Brussels in 1949; the earliest record of "White Russian" as a drink is the Oakland Tribune in November 1965, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Sixteen years, one ingredient. Then it did what most 1960s vodka drinks did, which is fall out of fashion completely. What brought it back was a film. The Dude drinks White Russians throughout The Big Lebowski in 1998, calls them Caucasians, and makes one with non-dairy creamer out of the fridge at one point. That is essentially the whole reason anyone under fifty orders this drink. It's the same story as the Last Word being pulled out of an old bar manual in Seattle, except instead of a bartender doing the rescuing it was Jeff Bridges in a dressing gown.
Keep pouring
If you like the White Russian, try these
The bartender’s note
One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.
Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.