Private Richard Travis is a Martian Marine assigned to Roberta Draper’s squad aboard the MCRN Scirocco. He emigrated from Earth at age 5 and is viciously bullied by his squadmates for not being Martian-born, but he staunchly defends his loyalty to Mars. Later, Martian intelligence tries to frame him for initiating the Ganymede Incident.

When making Private Travis’s cocktail, we wanted to combine the spirit-forward, classic bourbon flavor of a strong Martian Marine with the slight bitterness developed through years of bullying. We also wanted to add just a hint of some Earth flavor that wouldn’t be obvious, like the mark of first-generation Earth immigrant otherness that he can’t seem to shake.

The spirit for this was actually easy to come up with: Hans Reisetbauer’s carrot eau de vie. On its own, it tastes amazingly of clean, sweet carrots, and makes a great garden highball with homemade rhubarb syrup and hedgerow bitters. While its price tag makes it more of a spirit for Hilly’s rich Martian family, it was the perfect thing here: earthy but not too aggressive, changing the character of the drink while being difficult to identify.

The resulting drink is complex, with layers of bitter and sweet, finishing strong. No matter what pressures Travis’s team put on him, he remained patriotic, brave, and good-hearted.

In our hint for Richard Travis, we said his favorite Broadway musical would be Hamilton, and quoted the line “Immigrants — we get the job done!” from the song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)”.

Instructions:

Pour all ingredients into a rocks glass over one large ice cube and stir briefly to combine and chill them.