Cocktails
658 recipes found
Our Lady of the Harbor
This twist on the Last Word substitutes Irish whiskey for the traditional gin, and uses a pineapple syrup (simply a mix of pineapple juice and sugar) in place of maraschino liqueur. The Chartreuse, despite being the smallest component in the mix, still asserts its herbal self, as Chartreuse tends to. Equally boozy, fruity and vegetal, the cocktail tastes like a whiskey sour that went to a Friday night garden party and decided to let loose a little.
Il Sorpasso
Sherry Margarita
Manzanilla sherry, produced exclusively in the seaside township of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in southern Spain, is extremely dry and acidic. It’s also distinctly more saline than other fino sherries (which you could also use in this recipe). Combined with a pinch of salt, manzanilla amplifies and brightens the lime, rounds tequila’s edge and allows this margarita to go down that much more smoothly.
Drunken Pharaoh
To add some funk to Manischewitz, the notoriously sweet kosher wine that’s used as often for a punchline as, say, a punch ingredient, Jill Schulster, the co-owner of JoeDoe, mixed it with Old Pogue bourbon along with a splash of lemon juice and some mellowing fizz from club soda. “To remind you that it’s Passover,” Ms. Schulster said, she added a chunky and slightly chewy rim of crushed matzo, tempered with confectioner’s sugar, to the glass the drink is served in. While the Manischewitz’s cloying sweetness comes through (one suspects it would take a full gallon of bourbon to subdue that candied Concord grapiness), the drink is determinedly balanced, and rather festive to boot.
Batched Boulevardier
Some drinks are meant to be made and consumed immediately, others benefit from aging. The Boulevardier — a wintertime Negroni that substitutes bourbon for gin — swings both ways. Give this blend of bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth time to mesh in a tightly sealed bottle in the fridge and the drink’s texture skews softer and more velvety. This batch recipe is lightly diluted, enough to enjoy the drink up, without ice, but not so much that it can’t be enjoyed over ice. One rule to follow: If you’re letting the batch sit for more than two weeks, leave the water out and add it the day you’re serving. Otherwise, marry it all, let it sit and drink as desired — or needed.
Lunchbox
Edna Scott, the owner of Edna’s Club & Restaurant in Oklahoma City, came up with the lunchbox by accident while trying to make another drink, probably a boilermaker, according to her daughter Tammy Lucas. For such a low-brow cocktail, the instructions are very specific. The beer must be Coors Light, not another light beer. And the glassware must be ice cold. As for the orange juice, no need to squeeze it fresh. Store-bought juice is fine.
Dark ’n’ Stormy
The dark ’n’ stormy has become a cult highball due to a felicitous combination of its no-fault simplicity and the balance of its headstrong ingredients, each of which is perfectly suited to the common goal: reviving the flagging, heat-pummeled constitution. It is simply dark rum — very dark rum — with ginger beer and some fresh lime. The rich spirit is shaken awake by the buoyant piquancy of the ginger beer, while the lime slashes through the sweetness of both. The drink has its roots in Bermuda, and emigrated up the Atlantic seaboard with the sailing set. Gosling’s rum has a rather sniffy and debatable lock on the recipe, having in fact trademarked its version, even going to the point of threatening with the specter of litigation anyone who might suggest concocting one with another rum. Gosling’s is a delicious rum, and being the dark rum from Bermuda, it is unquestionably synonymous with the dark ‘n’ stormy. But, any number of dark rums are interchangeably lovely in this drink, including Coruba, Zaya, Cruzan’s Blackstrap and the Lemon Hart 151 from Guyana.
Pimm’s Cup With Muddled Cucumber
Pimm’s No. 1, a gin-based liqueur, is named after James Pimm, the bar owner who created it in the mid 1800s. By the 1860s, it was bottled. At one point, there were other “cups,” numbered 2 through 6, based on brandy, rum and other spirits. But the No. 1, a reddish tonic with citrusy and bitter notes, has always been the star, and it is not quite like anything else on the shelf. The Pimm’s Cup’s skeletal components are nothing more than a measure of Pimm’s and roughly three measures of either lemonade, lemon soda or ginger ale (your preference), served over ice in a long glass and typically garnished with cucumber.
Hotel du Pont Cocktail
This austere cocktail, as elegant and proper as the hotel it’s named after, has long been associated with the Wilmington, Del., landmark, which still stands. This version of the drink is served at Le Cavalier at the Green Room, the hotel’s new restaurant, which recently opened. It was devised by Tyler Akin, a Wilmington native and Philadelphia chef who is running the kitchen and is a partner in the restaurant.
Heirloom Tomato Mojitonico
Muddled tomatoes and herbs are mixed with gin then topped with a bracing fizz of tonic water. It's the cocktail as salad, or vice versa.
Wibble
Whiskey Crusta
Emperor’s Garden
On a warm spring night, the Emperor’s Garden, a rhubarb and gin cocktail spiked with Thai basil and seasoned rice vinegar (a condiment used to make sushi rice, flavored with sugar and salt), is a perfect way to celebrate spring and also to use up some of the rhubarb you bought at the green market.
Cold-Weather Negroni
This wintry adaptation of a Negroni gets a deeper character and color from an amaro that’s heavier than the typical bright Campari, and the dusky richness of amontillado sherry. The burnt thyme adds a woodsy aroma, but can be an optional touch. At a winter pop-up in the Williamsburg restaurant Sunday in Brooklyn, where the drink is being served, it is called Ugly Sweater Weather.
Caprice
Mai Tai
There are raging debates about the invention of and the proper recipe for this drink among tiki connoisseurs. The more accepted versions are granted to Victor J. Bergeron, the irascible, wooden-legged “Trader Vic,” from his eponymous restaurant bar in Oakland, Calif., in the ’40s. Contrary to what you might think, the mai tai is actually just a rum sour, employing orgeat alongside Curaçao or triple sec as the sweetener, and using two rums to add complexity. The rest is just lime juice, and that’s it. No coconut, no passion fruit, pineapple, mango or orange juice. No umbrellas. It’s a relatively simple drink, but as such, each element has to be of the utmost quality; great rums, fresh lime juice and prefab orgeat syrup equal disappointment. But when concocted with homemade orgeat, all the tumblers click. The rums, the lime, the orange aromatics and the heft of the almond all play in stupendous balance.
Jimbo and Ginga
The lowly Mexican bulldog (a frozen margarita with an upturned bottle of beer in it) was the inspiration for this quirky variation on a whiskey and ginger highball. As with many of the bulldog variations created by Eben Freeman at Genuine Liquorette, a bar in Little Italy, the booze comes from a 50-milliliter mini-bottle and the mixer from the short can the bottle is emptied into. Don’t expect a lot of finesse from this drink; it is a highball, after all. But expect a little more fun than usual. If you can’t find a mini of Jim Beam, another light whiskey like Jameson will do.
Kentucky Mule
Larry Rice’s Louisville bar, the Silver Dollar, is all about whiskey. So its version of the Moscow Mule is bourbon based. Nothing complicated here, just good Kentucky whiskey subbed for the usual vodka. Ginger syrup is used instead of ginger beer, pushing the drink very close to whiskey sour territory, albeit one served under a mound of crushed ice.
Falling Leaves
Many cocktails that ask for nocino employ trace amounts, since a little of the liqueur goes a long way in terms of flavor. Here, Columbus, Ohio, bartender Travis Owens uses a full third of an ounce. The liqueur is prevented from taking over the drink by the assertiveness of the two Scotches and the strong, herbal quality of the Punt e Mes. This is a rich, potent nightcap that lies somewhere between a Rob Roy and a Boulevardier.
Brandy Crusta
More than most cocktails, a properly made brandy crusta requires a little effort. Achieving an even sugar rim on a glass and paring a long lemon twist (known as a horse's neck) may take a few tries before you get it right. This recipe, to be used at the new New Orleans bar Jewel of the South, is not very far removed from the one first printed by the bartender Jerry Thomas in his seminal 1862 cocktail manual. Thomas credited the drink’s inventor, the New Orleans bartender Joseph Santini, who had his own bar named Jewel of the South. The resulting cocktail may look too beautiful to drink. But that’s what iPhones are for. Take a picture and get to drinking.
Gold Rush
The Gold Rush was created in the early aughts at Milk & Honey, the famed cocktail speakeasy on the Lower East Side in New York. It came to be when T.J. Siegal, a friend and colleague of Sasha Petraske, the founder of Milk & Honey, came in one night and asked for a whiskey sour. Spying a batch of honey syrup Mr. Petraske had whipped up for a different cocktail, Mr. Siegal asked for his drink to be made with that instead of sugar. The winning result, silkier and richer in flavor than the average whiskey sour, was soon served to customers.
Out of State
The Out of State pairs tequila with carrot purée, sweetened by agave syrup that has been infused with makrut lime leaf.
The Old-Fashioned
Negroni Bianco
The Negroni deftly toes the line between sweet and bitter. A pinch of salt helps navigate that balance, muting bitter edges and highlighting sweetness, all without actually tipping the drink salty. This variation swaps in blanc (also called bianco) vermouth for the classic’s red, but feel free to use whatever vermouth you like or have on hand.