Cocktails
658 recipes found
Spiked Mulled Wine
Wine-based cocktails require particular attention to balance, so neither the wine nor the spirits overwhelm the flavors. In this seasonal drink from Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse in New York (where it is called Mull It Over), a pair of unlikely bedfellows, cabernet sauvignon wine and bourbon, are in total harmony, united by the bitter and sweet accents of amaro and cassis. Sip it by the fire.
Manhattan With Amaro and Cocoa
A mixture of rye whiskey and amaro, with the addition of bitters, sets this simply made cocktail on the road to a manhattan. But then there are detours: the chocolate liqueur to add a mellow accent, and the cardamom for a hint of spice. I also tried substituting coffee liqueur for the chocolate, with great success. It is from the 18th Room in New York, where it is called Before Night Falls.
Coconut Daiquiris
Kir Royales
Isle of Manhattan Fizz
The Seelbach
Peach Sake
Classic Sherry Cobbler
This cocktail’s combination of sherry, sugar and citrus is infinitely adaptable. Swap in a different sweetener. Use lemons or clementines or blood oranges instead of traditional orange slices. Add in seasonal fruit, say berries in summer, plums in autumn or jam any time of the year. Use different varieties of mint or another herb to garnish. Nuttier than fino or manzanilla, lighter and spicier than oloroso, amontillado sherry strikes the ideal middle ground in this drink. But you could also combine amontillado with another sherry — or tap in another variety altogether.
Classic French 75
Drinkers who know and love the French 75 have strong personal preference on whether to use gin or cognac as the base. This classic recipe offers both options. Pour what you like, or, if you’re on the fence, let season or mood determine your choice. Gin tends toward a cleaner, more botanical, refreshing drink, ideal for warmer weather drinking; cognac lends heft and weight, especially great in cooler weather.
Adonis (à la Oloroso)
A 19th-century classic, the stirred, vermouth-forward Adonis was invented at the Waldorf Astoria’s bar in New York and named after a Broadway musical. A classic Adonis is often made with a lighter fino or manzanilla sherry. Swapping in oloroso here further deepens the drink’s rich flavor and silky texture, making it an ideal, low-A.B.V. cold weather apéritif. If you prefer to use a lighter sherry, shift the proportions to 1 1/2 ounces sweet vermouth and 1 1/2 ounces fino or manzanilla sherry.
Porto Cooler
The key to this citrus-forward nod to Portugal’s venerable porto tónicos lies in the citrus wheels that stack along the inside of the glass top to bottom. As aesthetically pleasing as they are functional, use any one citrus or mix of citrus, seeking out those with thin piths for glass-lining ease. Lime, lemon, orange, blood orange, mandarin, Meyer lemon, even kumquat are all excellent choices, depending on your personal preference and season. To keep the citrus rounds in place, use a wider-mouthed highball glass and alternate adding citrus and ice. Once the white port, vermouth, bitters, and tonic are added, the citrus will gradually impart its flavor into the cocktail as it sits, shifting the cooler's flavor as you drink.
Amaro Sour
This drink, run through with amaro, riffs on the endlessly adaptable sour template (spirit-citrus-sweetener). A maraschino cherry and half a grapefruit wheel are muddled with sugar early on, to sweeten and flavor the drink, while another cherry and half-wheel are added just before serving. That allows the fruit to slowly become infused with gin and amaro, creating garnish and boozy snack. Reach for a sweeter-leaning amaro, or throw caution to the bitter wind and grab something more intense. If you want to balance the amaro’s bitter edges with a touch more sweetness, add a dash or three of the maraschino cherry syrup to your shaker or serve with extra cherries for middrink pops of sweetness.
Cassis Manhattan
With a rye-bourbon split and just enough slightly herbal crème de cassis to sweeten without overpowering, this manhattan variation is spirit-forward, with layered notes of sugar and spice. If you prefer to keep the drink to one type of whiskey, opt for rye and leave out the bourbon. The cocktail will be slightly more spice-forward and boozier in feel. Whatever you do, let the cherry garnish sit until the very end of the drink for an especially flavorful final snack.
Mezcal-Tequila Margarita
The spirit base of this margarita is split between tequila and mezcal, which gives the final drink a deep, complex flavor, and provides an excellent excuse to rim the glass with sal de gusano, or worm salt. With roots in Oaxaca, Mexico, sal de gusano is made from toasted, ground gusano (the moth larvae that feeds on the agave plant), salt and dried chiles, and is traditionally served alongside mezcal. If you’re running low on tequila or mezcal, feel free to use 1 1/2 ounces total of whichever agave-based spirit you have.
Gin Cidre
Bright, botanical and lightly bubbly, this cocktail is an ideal entry point to fall drinking — and one that can easily take you straight through to spring. Look to a cider that’s dry, light and not overly powerful in acid or funk here: You want the botanicals of the gin and the salinity of the sherry to play an equal role in balancing the drink.
Grenadine Punch
Death in the Afternoon
The earliest known recipe for this bracing little number appears in the magnificently named 1935 cocktail book, "So Red the Nose, or — Breath in the Afternoon," to which many famous authors of the day contributed recipes. This one came from Ernest Hemingway, who explained: “This was arrived at by the author and three officers of H.M.S. Danae after having spent seven hours overboard trying to get Capt. Bra Saunders’ fishing boat off a bank where she had gone with us in a N.W. gale.” Even under less dramatic circumstances, it’s a drink that packs a punch. Pastis is often substituted for the absinthe, but if you want to be as Hemingwayesque as possible, stick to the original specs.
Captain’s Blood
The Captain’s Blood is similar to a daiquiri, except that it’s made with dark rum instead of white and a small but essential measure of falernum (a syrup flavored with spices, often nuts, sometimes lime, sometimes alcoholic and sometimes not, often used in Caribbean rum drinks). I prefer my Captain’s Blood on the tart side, but you can adjust the amount of sugar to make it as sweet or as sharp as you like.
Tequila-Watermelon Punch
To make watermelon puree, put seedless chunks of watermelon in a blender and pulse, then push the puree through a mesh sieve to make it smoother. (Cutting a whole watermelon might make your kitchen look like a Gallagher set, so it’s O.K. to use precut watermelon from a supermarket.)
Stalk and Trade
Some green things — like mint and basil — get plenty of play in cocktails, but one doesn’t see arugula very often. It’s a bright, peppery surprise in this refreshing cocktail by Brian Means of the San Francisco bar and restaurant Dirty Habit. Means advises using Krogstad aquavit here, for its assertive anise note.
Outcast of the Islands
Does a cocktail have to include rum in order to be considered a tiki drink? No — gin will do just fine, too. Jeff Berry created this for Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 in New Orleans, and it has become one of its most popular menu items. Ginger liqueur and cinnamon syrup give this gently effervescent number a spicy kick.
Allspice Alexander
The vintage-cocktail expert Ted Haigh considers allspice dram an ideal “secret ingredient”: A small amount can add tremendous depth and flavor to many classic drinks. Here, I use it to perk up the otherwise staid — if indisputably delicious — Brandy Alexander.
Mona Lisa
Gates Otsuji of the bar Le Bain at the Standard Hotel in New York created this refined, but lively spritzer. It riffs on the popular Aperol spritz, but, Otsuji notes, “the addition of vodka raises the A.B.V. of the cocktail just enough to take it from aperitif to anytime, and the orange juice adds some body to the texture."
