Category Archives: Cocktails

For the most part, I can make a pretty decent cocktail. Years of practice have refined the process, and I can usually find my way around gin, vodka, tequila and bourbon pretty well. (Rum and whiskeys remain mysterious, but I’m open to experimentation.) That said, I still get tripped up from time to time. A desperate attempt to make use of all the pretty dogwood fruit one year resulted in a libation that looked far better than it actually tasted. A pisco sour using an egg white should have stayed in its shell.

Then there’s this number, which suffers from the same fate of looking vastly superior to how it tastes.

It seems to be the season for blood oranges, so I picked up a couple from the market. Using the juice of one (and a slice of its vermillion flesh for garnish – the only time I like a slice in my drink) I added some vodka and Cointreau then shook it all up with some ice. (The secret to a good drink is to take ample time to shake and/or stir it with the ice. Far too often people rush through this step. I like when a little of the edge is taken off, and that only happens when there’s a slight bit of melting, and an instant or two of evaporation. Purists may scoff, but I’ve never been pure.)

Maybe the quantities were off, maybe the blood orange wasn’t quite ripe, or maybe I’ve just finally outgrown vodka, but this one did not turn out well. It did look pretty, though. Some days that’s enough.

It was a punch that was present at most of our childhood holiday gatherings. The Ko House always seemed to have a bottomless crystal punch bowl in which a fancy ice ring floated, keeping things cool from the very start of a long Christmas Day all the way through to the evening. At various times the pack of us kids would travel by and dip the ladle in to grab a few more drops of sugary sustenance, dodging adults and disappearing into the background, or so we hoped. 

This year I brought back the holiday punch, with a couple of twists. It came about out of necessity, as Andy notified me we had an entire box of Orange Dry soda. In the punch of my childhood, ginger ale formed the effervescent fizz, so the Orange Dry seemed a suitable adult substitution. It also blunted the sweetness, which I did my best to avoid (but really, a punch is designed to be sweet, to go down smoothly). 

The tartness was accomplished by a frozen pink lemonade. The current generation isn’t as familiar with frozen concentrate, and I’m not all that different, but for some reason it works in this recipe. I whipped up a batch of the lemonade, and poured a few overflowing cups of it into a bundt pan, sprinkled in a healthy pile of fresh pomegranate seeds and raspberries, then froze it overnight for the fancy ice ring. I also put a bottle of vodka into the freezer (or leave it outside if there’s no room) to cool that down too. 

Right before guests arrived, I mixed the pink lemonade, 6 or 7 cans of Orange Dry, a few cups of vodka and a cup or so of triple sec (it’s a big punch for a big bowl), then scooped some orange sherbet on top of it all. The ice ring, knocked loose with some hot water and careful maneuvering by Suzie, floated in the middle of it all. 

It wasn’t quite the same as the innocent punch of our youth, but it was close. Its spirit was intact. The memories it conjured were warm and fuzzy. That’s the best one can conjure the older we get. 

It doesn’t take much for me to find a quick and easy theme and throw a dinner party around it. In this instance the gold rim of these cocktail glasses provided all the impetus Andy and I needed to surround ourselves with four of our favorite people. The earliest hints of the upcoming holiday season glittered in the background as I served up a few Ginger Gold Rushes, recipe below.

GINGER GOLD RUSH

1 ½ OZ. BOURBON (BLACK MAPLE HILL)

1 ½ OZ. GINGER LIQUEUR (CANTON)

½ OZ. FRESH LEMON JUICE

SERVE WITH CITRUS TWIST. 

Of course the real secret to a good dinner party is not in the cocktails or hors d’oeuvre, not in the tablescape or entree, but always, and only, in the guests. Which is what made this gathering one of the best. 

“Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people’s lives. Yet from this fog his affection emerged–the best contacts are when one knows the obstacles and still wants to preserve a relation.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Libation literature would have it that a classic cocktail has to be tried and true with minor but not major room for variation. The Martinez defies this, made in several wildly differing forms, each one just too drastically separate from other incarnations because in this one every ingredient is vital, and every change results in a totally new drink. For my purposes, I used one of the more common versions to get a feel for the usual before branching out into anything outrageous. Only when you know the rules can you break them. 

With its gin and sweet vermouth base, this is largely considered the love child of a martini and a negroni. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about that, since I love each dearly, and can’t picture a happy hybrid. Fortunately, like its parents, the Martinez is distinctive enough to stand on its own. Consider it the Liza Minelli of cocktails. Here’s the recipe I used for my first try:

The Martinez 

• 3 1/2 ounces Old Tom Gin

• 1 3/4 ounces sweet vermouth

• 2 bar spoons maraschino liqueur, preferably Luxardo

• 4 dashes orange bitters

• Ice

• Orange twist, for garnish (optional)

They say Old Tom Gin is the traditional one for this, but I used the Bombay that was already open. For me, the key to this drink being good is in the sweet vermouth. There’s a lot of crappy sweet vermouth out there, and more dangerously, the longer vermouth stands on your shelf, the worse it gets. It’s imperative to use fresh sweet vermouth – the Carpano Antica Formula is delightful, and it conveniently comes in smaller bottles to avoid a batch getting stale. (You can also drink enough on a regular basis so that this isn’t even a question.) In a negroni, the campari is so prominent that you sometimes get away with less than stellar sweet vermouth – in this one you need the best, because there’s no disguising it. 

The other trick is to get that bottle of maraschino liqueur – you will use it for the Last Word if you have any sense. And bitters. Orange bitters. They will accentuate and highlight the orange peel with a deeper complexity and resonance than if you make one or the other stand alone. The devil may be in the details, but heaven is there too. 

Somehow we have twisted fate into finding an agreeable dinner date for a gathering with four of my favorite people, and I’m about to begin planning an adults-only dinner with a Gold Rim theme. (Everybody wants to go for the obvious rim-job reference, but it’s really just based on the cocktail glasses you see here. Sickos.)

For a Gold Rim glass, one needs a proper gold-themed cocktail to go with it. This is a perfect match:

GINGER GOLD RUSH

1 ½ oz. Bourbon (Black Maple Hill)

1 ½ oz. ginger liqueur (Canton)

½ oz. fresh lemon juice

Serve with citrus twist.

We’ll also have sidecars on hand, and lots of gold, including a new pair of curtains I bought specifically for the season. Yes, I’m that anal. It’s a Gold Rim party. What did you expect? The only question is which Tom Ford Private Blend best goes with gold. I’m torn between Amber Absolute and Rive d’Ambre. A delicious dilemma. 

I love Campari. It’s a bit of an acquired taste – its bitterness is not instantly user-friendly, especially to a generation of drinkers weened on appletinis and other such nonsense. For the adults, a bit of Campari adds sophistication and flair to many cocktails. My favorite is the negroni, but simpler delights call to me when the weather turns lighter and brighter. For instance, this Campari spritzer – the simplest thing on earth. Just some Campari and club soda on chipped ice. When spring verges on summer, the simpler that things get, the better.

Don’t be fooled as I’d been for so many years: the daiquiri is no joke. The pretty thing packs a pretty punch, no matter how fancy the glass or presentation might be. This recipe is a rather rugged spin on the frozen concoction – with white rum, lime juice grapefruit juice and maraschino liqueur forming the base of it all, served over copious amounts of crushed ice. It’s a perfect poolside libation – easy to craft, fresh and vibrant in spirit and taste, and pretty with its peachy-pink tint. But again, it’s no joke. Hell, it was named after Hemingway, who knew his way around rum and gin.

Fridays are for cocktails. Grab yours.

My only previous exposure to Mr. Harvey Wallbanger (and the only reason we have an impossible-to-store bottle of Galliano in the house) was in this Harvey Wallbanger cake. That thing was heavenly, and in the years since I made it, I’ve been tip-toeing around the original cocktail from which the cake was derived. I finally tried it a couple of weeks ago, with some fresh Florida oranges, and I have to say that I was less than impressed. It turns out I don’t like Galliano all that much. It has a sweet medicinal property that disagrees with my palate completely. Still, there are those who will wax nostalgic for this, and if you happen to have some Galliano still hanging around from the 70’s, now’s your chance to give it a whirl.

 Harvey Wallbanger

• 1 1/2 ounces vodka
• 4 ounces orange juice
• 1/2 ounce Galliano
• 1 orange slice for garnish

Behold the Manhattan.

Though I prefer most of my cocktails on the less-sweet side of things, I do indulge in a Maker’s Mark Manhattan now and then. It’s not technically winter yet, but at 30 degrees it certainly feels like it, so I say let Manhattan season begin. This is my favorite warming drink. As cold as it is, the whiskey just warms the soul from the inside out.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s a trio of extra virgin olive oil drops plunked down in the midst of a ‘Steady Cocktail’ – a fanciful take on the traditional martini (with some élixir végétal thrown in, and a small bowl of olives on the side). I like my cocktails on the dry shade of the spectrum, and as I get older I find myself leaning toward the savory over the sweet. (You won’t see me sipping from any sort of fruity/chocolatey/bullshit-tini monstrosity any time soon.) In this instance, those three drops threw me for a bit of a loop. They quickly coalesced into one larger pool of EVOO, and though such fleeting prettiness has a certain appeal, I’m not sure I liked the end result. Personal preference, of course, as all cocktails are, and maybe it’s just my stubborn refusal to open my mind to the idea of oil in my drink.

The proper garnish can make or break a cocktail, and yet it is often one of most widely  I can’t tell you the countless number of times my martini glass has arrived with a hefty chunk of citrus rudely cut into a wedge and stuck on the rim like some parasitic overgrowth.

A wedge of lemon is never right for anything other than a clam bake, and wedges of orange or grapefruit are simply obnoxious. The twist is more than enough, and it’s what any decent bartender will serve when you ask for a particular fruit.

Sometimes, though, more is more – such as in these featured photos from a recent drink at Wink & Nod. A gin-based cocktail, it plays up the peppery notes with a pepper-dipped slice of cucumber, which, when dunked in the drink, adds an effervescent bite, the melon-like coolness of the cuke spiked with the freshly grated spice of the peppercorn. A good cocktail is all about that balance, and the proper garnish.

A cocktail off-the-fly. Or is it on-the-fly? No matter. Here’s a quick do-it-your-own-damn-self cob-job of a cocktail that incorporates vodka, limoncello, lemon juice, St. Germain, and a couple of basil leaves – shaken with ice – and poured out poolside to satisfy a summer afternoon idyll. What’s your favorite refreshment for a sunny summer day?