Cocktails
658 recipes found
Classic Champagne Cocktail
This minimalist drink of sugar that’s been soaked in bitters and topped with Champagne was first mentioned in Jerry Thomas’s book 1862 “How to Mix Drinks.” It’s both festive and resplendent with bubbles as written, but there’s also room to customize: Split the amount of Angostura bitters with a lesser-used bitter (grapefruit, celery, orange, persimmon, for example) from your bar. Trade granulated or Demerara sugar for the sugar cube: The drink’s flavor will remain the same, lacking only in the drama of the cube bubbling to its demise at the base of the glass. Finally, use Champagne if you’re on a champagne budget, and dry sparkling wine if you’re not.
Spicy Cucumber Margaritas
Verdant and herbaceous, this margarita is slightly more work than the classic, but you can produce it hours in advance. Some cocktail recipes call for preparing simple syrup on the stovetop, then combining with other ingredients, but this one uses a blender to combine the cucumbers, cilantro, sugar, lime zest and juice as a shortcut. Using delicate, thin-skinned Persian cucumbers ensures a vibrant color, and cilantro adds grassy notes. Because the heat levels of jalapeños can fluctuate, allow guests to garnish with sliced jalapeño to taste.
Mulled Wine, but Chilled
Warming in all but touch, this drink is ideal for cusp season, when the days can feel like autumn in morning and summer by afternoon. Cognac anchors the drink, fresh lime brightens it, and a simple syrup steeped with ginger, cinnamon, clove and cardamom evokes a classic mulled wine. The simple syrup here makes extra and keeps for a month in the refrigerator. Add it to lemonade, drizzle it over oatmeal or substitute it for standard simple syrup in another cocktail to make it automatically cozy.
Not Quite Picon Bière
Walk by any sidewalk bar or tabac in France, and the chalkboard menu is bound to include Picon Bière: a combination of Amer Picon — a sweetened, lightly bitter, burnt orange-flavored apéritif — and a long pour of light, often cheap beer. While Amer Picon is widely consumed all over France, the bottle is not available in the United States. Instead, approximate the French staple by combining a sweet, citrus-leaning amaro, orange liqueur, and a pilsner or light lager. Serve it in a Collins glass or build it directly in the beer bottle or can by taking a few big sips and pouring in the rest of the ingredients directly.
Hot Toddy
Whether you’re sick in bed or fresh off the slopes, a hot toddy warms everything up. The classic formula of whiskey, sugar and hot water is like the steamy cousin of an old-fashioned, but these days, a lot of other ingredients (citrus juice, apple cider, various spices) get added in the name of innovation, with mixed results. This version cozies up to the original, with a few optional additions based on preference. First, warm the mug with hot water, which primes the vessel to hold heat longer, yielding a truly hot toddy to the last sip. Then add scotch or bourbon, or for a modern twist, rum, cognac or amaro. Stir in a little honey, maple syrup or Demerara sugar, add hot water and stir to dissolve. Garnish with lemon peel and spices, if you like.
Batched 50-50 Martini
Martinis are bound to kick up strong opinions that tend to intensify as more martinis are consumed. Gin versus vodka. Shaken versus stirred. Dirty? How dirty? Olives, lemon twist or both? This batched recipe makes the biggest decisions for you: Gin — the spirit of choice — is paired with vermouth in equal measure, a ratio that means you and your guests can and should pour freely. From there, the drinker has full control to dirty and garnish to their heart’s content.
Rosé Cooler
Making a wine cooler at home is a grown-up opportunity to choose your own adventure: If you decide to pour a dry rosé, turn to crème de cassis to sweeten the final glass. If you opt for a sweeter-leaning demi-sec rosé, turn the page — and skip the cassis, so your drink doesn’t skew too saccharine.
Kir
A classic kir is made with aligoté wine and crème de cassis (black currant liqueur), both of which come from the Burgundy region of France. Once you have the classic down (a glass of white wine with just a hint of cassis), variations abound. Substitute sparkling wine for the aligoté, and it becomes a kir royale. Add red wine, and it’s a Bourgogne. If you’re over wine entirely, dry hard cider (and a splash of Calvados, if you’re feeling extra) turns the drink into a kir Normand, its name nodding to Normandy. Whatever base you choose, kirs easily veer saccharine when weighed down with a hefty pour of crème de cassis. Exercise restraint with the potent liqueur — aim for a more dusty rose hue than magenta — but feel free to drink in rapid succession.
Fanciulli Manhattan
Francesco Fanciulli (1853-1915) was given the unenviable task of succeeding John Philip Sousa as the leader of the United States Marine Band. After he refused an officer’s request to play a tune, Mr. Fanciulli was arrested for insubordination. But Fanciulli later had a cocktail named after him. The drink’s origins are murky, but it is clearly in the manhattan family, the chief difference being a touch of the amaro Fernet Branca, perhaps a nod to the musician;'s childhood years in Italy. This recipe is from Philip Greene, a Washington-based cocktail historian.
Mulled Wine
If coziness has a fragrance, it’s the aroma of red wine simmering on the stove with citrus and spices (and a little brandy for a bit more zing). Choose a red wine that isn’t bone-dry—a little fruitiness is just fine here. I like the inexpensive Zweigelt from Erdenlied for this, which conveniently comes in 1-liter bottles. This recipe is easily doubled for a larger crowd.
Mezcal Negroni
Americans have been ordering classic cocktails with mezcal instead of the typical spirits. One of the most popular is the mezcal Negroni, in which the gin is replaced with the smoky agave spirit. The switch works well because mezcal is as assertive in its flavors as gin is, and can stand up to flavorful tough customers like sweet vermouth and Campari. A number of different mezcals work well in this mix; Del Maguey’s Vida brand is a good place to start in your experimenting.
Mezcal Corpse Reviver
Charles Cerankosky, a Rochester bar owner, has fielded plenty of creative orders in his day. One of the most unusual requests was to use mezcal instead of gin in a Corpse Reviver, a sour that dates back a century. This twist is not a natural fit, so Mr. Cerankosky replaced the usual lemon juice with a mix of lime and grapefruit juice to better complement the mezcal. With all that’s going on in this drink, the mezcal almost gets lost, if that’s possible. Still, its smokiness lingers in the back, and the panoply of flavors is intriguing enough to lure you back for another sip.
Smithstreeter
Brad Thomas Parsons, the author of "Amaro: The Spirited World of Bittersweet, Herbal Liqueurs," created this invigorating highball that brings together an unexpected trio of ingredients: rye whiskey, Amaro Lucano and strong coffee. It’s a bold (and delicious) blend — and, thanks to the coffee, as good an afternoon pick-me-up as any drink that includes whiskey and amaro can reasonably be expected to be.
Oh, My Word!
Sother Teague, of the Amaro-centric New York City bar Amor y Amargo, devised this riff on the classic cocktail, the Last Word. Teague uses Old Tom gin (a style of the spirit that’s sweeter than London dry gin), and amaro Montenegro, with its pronounced notes of orange, replaces the fresh lime juice in the original. If you haven’t made cocktails with amaro before, this is a good place to start: elegant, straightforward and easy to make.
Tom Collins
The Tom Collins is perhaps the ultimate highball and one of history’s most enduring cocktails. It was historically made with Old Tom gin, which is sweeter than London dry gin, but the drink works well with both types of the spirit. (Old Tom only recently became available again, thanks to the clamoring of mixologists.) A peculiar methodology is used in mixing up a Tom Collins. Though it contains fresh juice, which usually dictates that the drink must be shaken, it is nonetheless often built in the glass in which it is served. But shaking the drink and then straining it into an ice-filled highball works as well, and arguably leads to a better integrated cocktail.
Old-Fashioned
The old-fashioned is one of the oldest mixed drinks in the cocktail canon. (Original name: whiskey cocktail, which became old-fashioned whiskey cocktail, and then just old-fashioned.) It is a stirred drink, usually built in the glass in which it is served. Both rye and bourbon are suitable base spirits. For the sweetener, purists muddle up a sugar cube with water and a couple dashes of bitters, but simple syrup works as well. Twists can be orange, lemon or both (known as “rabbit ears”). A fruited version of the drink came into vogue after Prohibition and involves the muddling of a cherry and orange slice along with the sugar. That version remains widespread, but we advocate the more elemental rendition that took hold in the late 1800s, one that allows the flavors of the whiskey to shine.
Clam in a Can
Jill Dobias, of the East Village restaurant Joe and Misses Doe, is a master of creative cocktails with irreverent names. The Clam in a Can is her spicy, beery riff on an oyster shooter. It also brings a michelada to my mind. Be sure to get your cans very clean and very cold before making the drinks.
Moscow Mule
Wickman House, a fine-dining destination at the tip of Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula, serves as many Moscow Mules today as it does the state’s beloved brandy old-fashioneds. The Wickman recipe is the classic formula: vodka and lime juice topped with ginger beer and served over ice in a copper mug.
Salty Dog
The Salty Dog is a Greyhound cocktail with salt — hence the name. Craig Claiborne first brought the recipe to The Times in 1968 for a Fourth of July barbecue feature. While his version calls for adding salt to the drink, other recipes salt the rim of the glass instead; see the variation below.
Tequila and Watermelon
The most crowd-pleasing summer highball there is: a little sweet, a little spicy and exuberantly pink.
Margarita
Tequila, lime, a touch of orange in the form of triple sec and salt (if that's your thing) is all you need to make a great margarita. No one really knows the true history of the cocktail — there are as many origin stories as there are variations of the beloved drink — but it's a practically perfect drink nonetheless. (Try a frozen margarita, too.)
Paloma
This lively cocktail is arguably the most refreshing highball. Try to find Squirt or Jarritos grapefruit soda if you can.
Snowbirds and Townies
Tonia Guffey, the head bartender at Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said he was inspired to create this holiday drink “by those chocolate oranges you get from your mom for Christmas every year and you kind of hate and love them — the ones with the hard chocolate shell you have to break open.” The bitterness of Fernet Branca is tamed by three sweet holiday flavors: orange, cocoa and cinnamon. As with most of her cocktails, the name is a music reference — in this case, a song about winter by the rock band Further Seems Forever.
