One of my favorite warm weather drinks is a glass of dry white wine. Pair a crisp Orvieto or a fresh Vinho Verde or a tart but not-too-grassy Sauvignon Blanc, like this inexpensive variety from Washington’s Columbia Valley with your favorite grilled protein and green vegetable. A simple delight.
The O’Neill
Ingredients:
Rye whiskey (e.g., Old Overholt)
Lemon juice
Simple syrup
Maraschino liqueur* (e.g., Luxardo)
Ice
Cocktail cherries – Sable & Rosenfeld’s Tipsy Cherries are a step up from the typical cherries they call maraschino.* Or if you can find them or make your own, try fresh sweet cherries preserved in whiskey or maraschino liqueur.
Tools:
Cocktail shaker
Strainer
Juicer
Steps:
Squeeze one half lemon to yield 1 oz of juice.
Add several ice cubes to a shaker or mixing glass, then add 2 oz rye, the lemon juice, ½ oz simple syrup and ½ oz maraschino liqueur.
Shake vigorously.
Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with fresh ice.
Garnish with a cocktail cherry.
*Maraschino is a bittersweet liqueur flavored with marasca cherries from Dalmatia, Croatia. The recipe for this distilled liqueur dates back to the 16th century. Maraschino cherries may have originally been marasca cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur. Now they’re just light-colored cherries soaked in red dye, syrup and artificial flavors.
I couldn’t decide what to call this classically inspired cocktail, which was created for Our American Theater Co. They went with “the O’Neill.”
The Sazerac
Now the official cocktail of the city of New Orleans (by countless accounts the birthplace of the cocktail), some say the Sazerac was the very first such spirited concoction. The story goes that apothecary Antoine Peychaud made an elixir of brandy, a spoonful of sugar (helps the medicine go down?) and his proprietary aromatic bitters in his French Quarter shop in the 1830s. The drink became popular in New Orleans bars, and a few decades later the restaurateur Thomas Handy switched the liquor from brandy to rye whiskey. At some point a bit of absinthe was added, and the recipe reached its pinnacle.
Chill an old fashioned glass, then coat the inside with absinthe* (rinse out the excess).
*The green fairy is legal again in the United States, but if you can’t get your hands on any, you could substitute with a pastis such as Pernod. Note that pastis is sweeter, so you’ll probably want to use less sugar.
In a mixing vessel, combine:
a sugar cube & a splash of water OR 1/4 oz simple syrup
4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters*
*Thanks to Jeffrey Morgenthaler for this suggestion – it may anger the purists, but it gives the drink a bit more flavor and body, so they can just hush.
Muddle til the sugar is dissolved (skip this step if using simple syrup).
Add several ice cubes and 2 oz. rye whiskey, such as Old Overholt.
Stir – don’t shake – til well chilled, then strain into the glass.
Squeeze a lemon twist over the glass to release the oils, then discard, or be saucy and drop it into the drink.
Am delighted with this mid-century Italian ice bucket I found on ebay. I think it’s quite chic. And the double-walled aluminum design helps keep those rocks solid.
I do enjoy mixing cocktails, but sometimes it’s fun to let the guests make their own highball, lowball… or screwball drinks. For this, a stylish ice bucket is a must.
Ingredients:
Metaxa or a good quality brandy
Fresh blood orange juice
Fresh lemon juice
Housemade grenadine
Bitters
Ice
Tools:
Shaker
Strainer
Juicer
Steps:
Use your juicer to extract 3/4 oz blood orange juice and 3/4 oz lemon juice.
Add several ice cubes to a shaker, then add 2 oz brandy, the blood orange juice and lemon juice, 1/2 oz grenadine and a dash of bitters – I recommend Peychaud’s, but if you can’t find it, use Angostura.
Shake vigorously.
Strain into a chilled martini-shaped glass
This cocktail draws upon the all-time classic sidecar and adds the vibrant colors and flavors of blood orange juice and grenadine (housemade from pomegranate juice). Around here, we only see blood oranges from November to early spring, and their juice is terrific in this zingy winter cocktail. Bottled blood orange juice may also work, although I have not yet tried it. Or you can substitute with tangerines or satsumas.
True grenadine adds color and sweetness as well as a fairly intense pomegranate flavor. If the flavor is too tart, you can add a little simple syrup.
Variation:
Strain into a rocks glass, top with a few splashes of club soda and you have a delightful punch!
It is always a good idea to practice the cardinal virtue of moderation when consuming alcohol.
I’ve been making this for some of my cocktail-loving friends who are wary of gin. The response has been very positive.
Ingredients:
Quality gin*
Good vodka
Lillet blanc**
Lemon juice
Simple syrup
Ice
Tools:
Cocktail shaker
Strainer
Juicer
Citrus twister
Steps:
Squeeze one half lemon to yield 1 oz of juice.
Add several ice cubes to a shaker or mixing glass, then add 1 oz gin, 1 oz vodka, 1 oz Lillet, the lemon juice and 3/4 oz simple syrup.
Shake vigorously. Put some elbow into it.
Strain into a chilled martini-shaped glass.
Garnish with a twist of lemon peel.
*It’s not just juniper anymore: If you’re not a lover of gin, you may be surprised at the range of flavors to be discovered in various brands of the spirit. In recent years, some small-batch distillers have entered the market with new offerings, like the velvety, iconoclastic Hendrick’s, from Ayrshire, Scotland, which adds cucumber and rose to the mix. I must say I think it’s a brilliant choice for this cocktail.
**Lillet, an apéritif wine from the Bordeaux region of France, is available in blanc (white) and rouge (red) varieties. Lillet blanc also features in the Vesper, the cocktail created by James Bond in Casino Royale.
Featured in Bohemian hellhole magazine | Fall 2008
Mimosas and Bellinis are fine choices for brunch time imbibing, but for a zippy change, try this fresh combination with Prosecco, lime and ginger.
Prosecco is a dry Italian sparkling wine, the original ingredient in the Bellini (made with peach puree). Prosecco is gaining popularity in the United States, and with good reason: It is delightful, crisp, low in alcohol – perfect for summer! And it’s affordable – a good wine merchant or supermarket may stock several bottles in the $12-15 range.
Ingredients:
Ginger juice
Crystallized ginger
Superfine sugar
Limes
Chilled Prosecco
Tools:
Sparkling wine glasses
Juicer
Your favorite knife and cutting board
A shallow dish
Steps:
Juice some fresh ginger root (put it through an electric juicer or grate it and press the gratings through some cheesecloth or a fine-meshed garlic press) or purchase bottled juice.
Chop some crystallized ginger, grind it together with an equal amount of sugar in a food processor (a couple tablespoons of each should be enough for 6 to 10 drinks, depending on the glass shape* you use), then spread it out in a shallow dish.
Juice some fresh limes, then sweeten the juice to taste (superfine sugar works best, but you could try another sweetener). Each lime will yield an ounce or two of juice.
Fresh juice is a must for quality cocktails. If you don’t have a juicer, a stainless steel or glass reamer is a great purchase, and not too expensive.
Run a lime wedge around the rim of each glass, keeping the glass upside down so the juice doesn’t run down the sides, then dip the glass into the ginger sugar. If your crystallized ginger is too fresh, it might not stick. You can pour a little simple syrup into a shallow dish, and dip the glasses into that instead of using the lime wedges.
For each drink, combine a half ounce (about a tablespoon) of the sweetened lime juice with a 1/4 teaspoon of the ginger juice*. Use a measuring cup or a glass and mix together the total amount for all the drinks you’ll be making.
Pour a half ounce or so of the lime-ginger juice into each glass. Then SLOWLY pour in Prosecco to not quite fill the glass.
*Small champagne glasses from the mid-20th century, like the one pictured, are lovely. But they hold less volume than the more common flute shape. If you use flutes, you won’t need as much ginger sugar for the rims, but you’ll need more of the lime-ginger juice for each glass – about an ounce.
Featured in Bohemian hellhole magazine | Summer 2008
One day when I was browsing some of the bygone cocktail recipes in my Savoy cocktail book I found one or two that I wanted to try, but was discouraged by a certain ingredient: grenadine. All the commercial versions of this syrup that I’ve ever tried are too high-fructose-corn-syrupy artificial and I could never bring myself to use them in cocktails for my friends or family.
Grenadine is, in theory, made from pomegranate. Well pomegranate is an unwieldy fruit – unless you have an industrial juicer, getting the good stuff out of that seedy globe would be overly daunting. Luckily pomegranate juice is now available in a bottle, which means that making your own grenadine at home is quite easy. POM is a good option; Odwalla offers one that is pomegranate with a little berry juice added.
I found a couple of helpful posts on this topic, such as this one at the Cocktail Chronicles. The recipe that worked best for me is as follows:
Pour 2 cups of pomegranate juice into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and let simmer until reduced by half (about 20 minutes). Slowly stir in 1 cup of sugar. Remove from heat and let cool completely. Transfer to a sealed container and refrigerate. Now this is true, deep-red grenadine syrup, and it makes a lovely clover club cocktail. You may choose to temper the flavor a bit by adding some simple syrup.
You can also try a cold process – simply combine equal parts juice and sugar. I found the syrup produced by this method to be too bright and assertive, but you may very well prefer it.
Simple syrup is a bar staple – here’s how to make it.
Add one part sugar to one part boiling water, stir until it dissolves, remove from heat, let cool (it will thicken slightly), then transfer to a clean bottle with a lid and refrigerate.
You can store it in the refrigerator for a month or so. Some recipes say it can be stored indefinitely; others say it will only keep for a week. In my experience, it lasts at least a few weeks. I did discover mold growing in a bottle one time, but that was after several months.
If you use superfine or baker’s sugar, you can dissolve equal parts of sugar into water pretty quickly – without heat. Just stir it up! Please do use filtered water.
