Drink: Chrysanthemum

There are few places where history inspires the present more flavorfully than a cocktail bar. The Golden Age preceded Prohibition, which did its best to bury that past.

And though many classics today are now well-known, there are at least as many obscure gems from that era that remain largely unappreciated.

Consider the Chrysanthemum at Brick & Mortar, a vermouth drink tinged with absinthe and Benedictine first published 99 years ago in Hugo Ensslin's Recipes for Mixed Drinks. Brick & Mortar's Christina Rando works here from the less-sweet proportions of a more recent version in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930, when the drink was all the rage on a German cruise ship, the S.S. Europa, that docked in New York that year.

A perfect warm-weather fit for the lower-alcohol "session" section of the cocktail list, Rando's Chrysanthemum is golden clear but beguilingly complex, the dry vermouth balancing the Benedictine's herbaceous sweetness on one end and absinthe's anise kiss edged by orange bitters on the other. For a place aiming to bring new life to a historic neighborhood, is there a more apt end-of-summer sip?

- Craig LaBan

Chrysanthemum, $10, 315 N. 12th St., 215-923-1596; brickandmortarphilly.com