A hundred years ago, maraschino would have been a common ingredient behind any good bar, and was often paired with vermouth to sweeten up a drink. This brings us today’s recipe, the Martinez — a drink that’s said to be the forerunner to the martini, if only because the two drinks are near homonyms. You’ll find the association ends there.

Today, when we teach bartenders to make martinis, the recipe is akin to grilling a steak; a dash of vermouth is all that we add to the vodka or gin, much like a grade-A ribeye only needs a sprinkling of salt and a grind of pepper to perfect it. The complexity that’s been stripped away from martinis is mainly an aftereffect of the top-shelf clear liquors that can now be produced, thanks to modern distilling technologies. We don’t add much to a martini because the hooch doesn’t need anything; top-shelf gin (or vodka) is plenty palatable all by itself.)

Gin was once a raw, unprocessed, harsh spirit, though, and was mixed into cocktails much like whiskey is now, with liqueurs, sweeteners, and additives stirred in to accentuate the flavor and cover up some of the harsher flavor notes.  The original Martinez recipe does just that. Following the food analogy, it’s more like a stir-fry recipe you’d use to dress up a chuck steak you bought on sale. The other flavors do more than accentuate the taste of the meat; they change it entirely.

The Martinez recipe from Jerry Thomas’s 1860s bartending book actually reverses today’s typical cocktail ratios, with a 4-1 vermouth to gin ratio. I’m assuming this is because gin was not only harsher, but also stronger when Thomas was working. The recipe also adds a dash or two of bitters and a splash of maraschino liqueur to add a bittersweetness to the mix.

The net result is something between a gin Manhattan and a gin Old-Fashioned. It has the herbal sweetness and subtle complexity of both cocktails, but with the lighter body and cleaner flavor of gin, along with a nice, piney kick from the juniper. This is a fun drink to make now, but to get the full effect, you should probably whip up a batch of bathtub gin, or at least use the cheap stuff. Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire or Hendricks are just a bit too mellow for this.

Martinez

• 2 oz. gin
• 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1/4 oz. maraschino
• 2 oz. Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice; shake to combine. Garnish with a lemon slice. Thomas’s recipe suggests an extra dash or two of syrup if your customer prefers the drink sweet, but if you use nice enough gin, I don’t think that’s necessary.

I still clearly remember the first time I tried a dragon berry. I saw them in a grocery store and I was awed by the strange way they looked. They are about the size of a mango, colored rosy to bright red with hues of pink spread throughout. The fruits have little green petals growing upwards, toward the top of the fruit, in what looks like an entirely unnatural direction. It looked like something straight out of the original series of Star Trek. I thought “I have to try this.” That is the same feeling I got when I first heard of dragon berry rum.

This rum is a blend of strawberry varieties with dragon berry, also known as pitaya, which grows as the fruit of a cactus native to central and South America (as well as being cultivated quite widely in southeast Asia). The cactus only blooms for one night before wilting in the morning light. Each plant does this just four to six times a year. Its flavor is a little like a cross between a mango and a kiwi, but not quite as sweet.

The rum has a very strong fruity aroma and taste. There is no doubt that one is drinking a fruit-infused rum. This may actually be its biggest flaw in my book – the aroma and flavor are perhaps a bit too strong. I would have enjoyed it even more with a little less of the strawberry and dragon berry goodness. Or, since pitaya have a mellower flavor than strawberries, perhaps going to a blend heavier in dragon berry might offer a mellower flavor.

This rum is going to be wonderful for summer drinks – mixing well with nearly any fruit juice, Sprite, lemonade, triple sec, or any combination of many summer beverages. Try a shooter of dragon berry rum, pomegranate juice, lime juice, and triple sec. Or, how about a martini of this spirit with limoncello, amaretto, simple syrup and lemon juice? Another idea is to serve it as a cocktail with mango syrup, pineapple juice, orange juice, and lemon-lime soda. One unique use for this rum might even be to try it in your favorite fruit smoothie (although, for use with alcohol, I prefer the ice cream to the yogurt variety of smoothies, especially in summer).

If you like fruity drinks, and you enjoy rum, do yourself a favor and try dragon berry rum at home or at your favorite bar.

Always drink responsibly and cheers!

But I digress. The daiquiri, lamentably, has an undeserved reputation as a frou-frou drink, but it didn’t start out that way. Rather, it was one of the many elementary cocktails that developed by taking a base liquor (in this case, rum) and adding something to tart it up (lime juice) and something to sweeten it (sugar, originally, though a half-measure of triple sec would do just as well.) The daiquiri was designed to tame (or, at least, subdue) rum, one of the most elemental spirits out there (and, before the advent of  vodka, the closest you could find to pure ethanol.) Rum has always been big in America, seeing as it’s made from sugar cane, and there are sugar-cane producing climates and economies not too far from here. Wikipedia, that great anthropological source, tells me that rum was always plentiful, but was considered a drink of sailors, ne’er do-wells, and the lower class until World War II. Then, wartime rationing made other spirits scarce, but the ready supply of rum from our “Good Neighbors” kept those stateside good and buzzed. Hemingway loved ‘em, though you can say that about almost any spirit, concoction, or other consumable, and it would be just about as true. (Don’t believe me? Look up the recipe for Death in the Afternoon sometime. He drank those, too.)

Daiquiri

• 2 oz. rum
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 tsp. sugar, or 1 oz. Cointreau or triple sec

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice, and shake thoroughly. Strain into a cocktail glass, or into a rocks glass packed with ice (shaved, if you have it, though cracked will do in a pinch.) No garnish is needed, though if you insist, an extra wedge of lime perched on the rim of the glass wouldn’t hurt anybody.

P.S.: If you’re reading this recipe and thinking it sounds a lot like a caipirinha — it is. It’s exactly the same drink, but made with cachaça, a Brazilian liquor that is basically rum by a different name. Caipirinhas are usually made slightly differently, with the sugar, rum, and squeezed lime all combined in the same rocks glass with ice, but the end result is the same.

After a long winter, rhubarb is now in season.  Is there a way to use this first sign of the growing season in a cocktail?

You ask a very worrisome question. I’m sure you’re aware that rhubarb leaves are poisonous, so before we start talking about anything else, we need to start with a disclaimer; trim leaves from your rhubarb stalks as soon as you harvest them, dispose of the leaves immediately, and wash the stalks, your hands, and your tools thoroughly.

Now that that’s taken care of…

Rhubarb stalks are going to act a lot like celery would act in a drink, which is to say that while it could be a fun garnish, it can’t add a lot of flavor just by its presence. You can’t muddle up rhubarb like you would a softer, juicier fruit; it won’t impart any of its flavor that way. Rhubarb needs to be cooked to extract its flavor.

I’d suggest a couple of approaches, both of which are a bit more involved:

• Make a rhubarb simple syrup. Slice your rhubarb into thumb-sized pieces, stack them in a stock pot, cover them with water, and boil covered for at least an hour. When finished, strain all liquid from the fruit, and press the fruit to extract whatever juices you can from the flesh. (Once you’ve done that, you can discard the pulp.) Measure the liquid you’ve poured off the rhubarb, return it to the stock pot, and place it on the stove top. Add an amount of sugar equivalent to the liquid, which you’ve just measured (so if you measured 1.5 cups of water off the rhubarb, add 1.5 cups of sugar.) Stir the sugar into the liquid under low heat, turning off the heat as soon as the sugar has dissolved completely. Once the syrup has cooled, you can add anything from 1/2 oz to 1 oz of the syrup to cocktails.
• Make a rhubarb jam, either by itself or with other fruit. This option will only appeal to you if you’ve already made jam or preserves before, and if you think you could use your rhubarb preserves for something other than cocktail making, so I won’t spend too much time rolling out a recipe here. Whatever recipe you do use, shake a tablespoon or so of the jam into a cocktail.

Here are a couple of sample recipes using both approaches.

Rhubarb Sidecar

• 2 oz. brandy
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 tbsp ( .5 oz) rhubarb syrup

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice; shake to combine. Strain into a cocktail glass; garnish with a cherry.

Rhubarb Collins

• 2 oz. gin
• 1 tbsp rhubarb jam
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• Soda water

Combine gin, jam, and lime juice in a cocktail shaker over ice; shake thoroughly to combine. Fill a highball glass with ice. Pour mixed cocktail into highball glass, and top with soda water.

When I asked one of Keene, New Hampshire’s, favorite bartenders, Steve, what was most popular with people in their mid-20′s today, he recommended a Jamaican 10-speed. There are other variations on this drink, each named after a type of bicycle – 12-speed, 18-speed, and 21-speed — but let’s concentrate on getting the basic one right first.

One of the things that is unique about this drink is that it is both a milky drink, and a fruity drink at the same time. So if you love both creamy drinks and fruity drinks, the ten speed is a great one to try.

Here’s how you make it:

1 1/2 ounces Malibu (coconut) rum
3/4 ounce Midori (melon liqueur)
3/4 ounce creme de banane (banana liqueur)
1 ounce milk or cream
3 ounces pineapple juice
1 whole cherry (Maraschino)

First, fill a shaker with ice. Add the rum and the two liqueurs. Then, pour in your pineapple juice and the milk or cream. Here’s something to keep in mind: The more milk or cream that you add, the less sweet it will be. So, if you prefer a creamier drink, go heavier on the dairy. For a sweeter, fruitier taste, hold back. You may also find that this recipe could play into seasonal variations as well – a fruitier blend may be better in the heat of summer and the creamier version might be better in colder weather.

Give the drink a good shake and then pour into a hurricane glass (the ones that look like the glass part of an oil lantern), or even a regular pint glass. Lastly, garnish with the cherry (or if you really want to live la vida loca, a slice of orange wrapped around a cherry, skewered by a toothpick – or dare I say it? A small plastic sword?) is also a nice variation.

There’s never any reason to feel intimidated to make or serve drinks if you do not have all of, or exactly the right, ingredients. Food and drink is meant to be enjoyed, and you should always experiment and find what you and your friends and family like best, and what you can do with the resources you have on hand.

So try out a 10-speed and post your thoughts about the drink below, and also post any variations that you enjoy on the recipe above.
Always drink responsibly and cheers!

The mint julep is just about the simplest recipe around that combines mint and liquor… there is, in fact, just one extra ingredient (sugar) added, but the effect is transformative. This drink is also a chance for you to show off your muddling skills (though the mint only needs to be pressed, not necessarilysmashed.) This recipe uses bourbon, which is the “official” way to make a julep, but if you wanted to use some other whiskey, dark/spiced rum, brandy, or even something exotic like tequila, I wouldn’t stop you. And you’ll notice the julep uses crushed ice; if you’re home, and you absolutely have to, you can use ice cubes, but this drink would be vastly improved if you could find some way to crush those cubes (wrap them in a bar towel, and then smash them with the bourbon bottle, perhaps.)

Anyway, let’s get down to it:

Mint Julep

• 2 oz. bourbon
• 8-10 mint leaves
• 1 tsp sugar (or 1 tsp. simple syrup)

Place mint leaves in a rocks glass, and pour sugar or simple syrup over top. (If using sugar, add 1 tsp. water to help dissolve the sugar.) With a muddle, press the sugar and water to the bottom of the glass to release the essential oils in the mint leaves. Fill the glass with crushed ice, and add the bourbon. Stir to combine, and serve.

Here’s a quick history of liquor in America that should help to explain a lot about the drinks that were popular 10-20 years ago, and the drinks that are popular now:

• When the country was founded, brandy, rum, and whisky were the most popular spirits around, and could be produced either in America or (in the case of rum) close to our shores. Gin was also in favor, but a bit harder to procure.
• Flash forward to the mid-1850s, and advances in technology give bartenders regular access to ice, which gives rise to the cocktail. The aforementioned popular liquors, along with wines and some cordials, began to be mixed with non-perishable, complementary ingredients like sugar, bitters, and fruit syrups, along with some seasonal fresh fruit.
• By the 1950s, further advances in technology give bartenders year-round access to fruit juices and other perishable ingredients. At the same time, vodka is introduced into the country, and immediately becomes popular. Now, instead of worrying about ingredients complementing a liquor, we have a liquor that complements any other ingredient you mix with it. Traditional cocktails are forgotten.

Now, we’re at a point when customers at bars are developing a newfound appreciation for those old recipes, and the flavors they evoke. And with that, the Manhattan — which never went away, but certainly spent a couple of decades as the unused cousin of the martini — has become popular again.

Some notes on this cocktail: you can use rye, bourbon, or Canadian whiskey in your Manhattan, but not Scotch (that’d be a Rob Roy) or Irish (that’d get you something close to an Emerald.) You can use more sweet vermouth if you’d like; a 3-1 or even 2-1 ratio would not be unheard of, especially if you’re using overproof whiskey. If you use equal parts sweet and dry vermouth, you’ll have a perfect Manhattan.  Angostura bitters are standard, but you can experiment with other brands, or with bitter liqueurs like Campari, Aperol, or Fernet. A splash of cherry juice to sweeten your Manhattan wouldn’t be out of the question. And these can be served on the rocks or strained, with either a cherry or a lemon twist. Enjoy!

Manhattan

• 2.5 oz. whiskey
• .5 oz sweet vermouth
• 2-3 dashes bitters
• 1 tsp cherry juice (optional)

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice, and shake to combine. Strain either into a cocktail glass or a rocks glass with ice, and garnish with a cherry or a lemon twist.

Jay kay. El oh el.

If one is looking for a nice summertime drink, one needs look no further than a bottle of Ketel One Citroen and some tonic water. Having written about Ketel One’s neutral spirit in the past, I felt that it appropriate to share my thoughts on an oft-used, but under-appreciated flavor of the finely crafted vodka from the Netherlands.

Folks will typically use citrus vodka to throw a bit of an added bite into a lemon drop shot, but I feel like that’s a tired old habit that needs to simply go away. A more interesting way to spice up a spring evening is a bloody mary, utilizing the sour sting of Ketel One’s citrus offering, a little Worcestershire sauce, and some Old Bay seasoning as the special ingredients. Or if you’re looking for something a bit less salty, the aforementioned vodka-tonic or a vodka martini tends to do just fine.

Sure, you could go with Skyy, or Smirnoff, or Van Gogh, or (ick) Burnett’s, but the affordability and the drinkability of Ketel One keeps me coming back to it. I’m not sure exactly what these guys did, but they made a real winner. A crisp, clean taste that doesn’t leave you feeling like you licked a tattoo gun.

If you’re feeling even more sassy than usual, you can even just drop a couple ice cubes into your favorite tumbler and have at it. The smoothness and citrus bite is enough to make this one a sipping vodka, and enough to make me excited to try Ketel One’s other offerings.

If you’ve got any other clever uses for citrus vodka, feel free to share them in the comments. We’d love to read them.

Benedictine falls into the “less exciting” category, for the most part. An herbal liqueur made with a secret blend of 27 herbs and ingredients, Benedictine was falsely claimed to be made by the Benedictine monks, whose recipe was lost to time until it was “rediscovered” by the businessman who actually developed the stuff. Benedictine is a thick, sweet liqueur with complex herbal notes. It’s often paired with brandy to cut the sugary flavors. (There’s actually a pre-mixed version of the drink that’s sold — B&B, for Benedictine and Brandy.)

This week’s recipe is similar to that B&B, but it’s layered like a Pousse L’Amour (just without the raw egg.) It’s a French cafe drink — something that’s served at room temperature, and meant to be a pre-aperitif, to be consumed in the afternoon. Make it in a sherry glass, a narrow white wine glass, or a champagne flute, and make sure you use a spoon to layer the liqueurs.

Brandy Champerelle

• 1 oz . brandy
• 1 oz. curacao
• 1 oz. benedictine
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters

Pour 1 oz. benedictine into a sherry glass or champagne flute. Pour 1 oz. curacao over top of that, using a spoon and pouring slowly to create a second layer. In the same fashion, pour 1 oz. brandy over the curacao. Carefully float 3 dashes of  Angostura bitters to the top and serve.

Is there a way to keep an open bottle of sparkling wine from losing its carbonation?  I enjoy cocktails that have a float of sparkling wine but am left with a bottle that is more than half full when I make cocktails for just my husband and me.  Currently, I only make these drinks when we entertain a larger group, as I am more likely to use the entire bottle. 

This is a problem that’s beguiled bartenders ever since people started mixing cocktails, and while there have been attempts at solutions, none of them are perfect. You can buy any number of rubber-tipped champagne stoppers that are designed, one way or another, to stop up the charge in a bottle of sparkling wine. At one of the bars I work at, we use several of the devices listed on that page interchangeably; none are great, and none stand above the rest, but they all do the job, helping a bottle of bubbly hold its fizz for a day or two (but not indefinitely).

If you wanted to get serious about this, there was a more elegant (if not more complicated) solution used in the 1800s. Hollow corkscrews were invented around 1830 as a way to pull charged water or wine from a bottle without opening the bottle to the air. (This gave way to the siphon bottle, which was popular pretty much until screw-top bottled soda water became widely distributed in the 1950s.) I can’t find anywhere that sells a modern version of the hollow corkscrew, but check here for a photo (it’s picture number 5.) It looks like a serious piece of equipment — and since it looks like it would be hell to dig that into a cork, I’m somewhat glad we don’t use them anymore.

The simplest solution to your problem, though, would just be to buy smaller bottles of sparkling wine. While not every vintner sells splits, plenty do, and you don’t need to worry about getting your favorite label for your cocktails — any decent sparkling wine will add a bit of fizz and a bit of grapey sweetness to your drinks. 187 ml splits (a quarter of a normal 750 ml bottle of sparkling wine) are common. Depending on the cocktail you’re making and the recipe you’re using, that’s enough for a float for four-eight drinks — which might be more than you’d need for yourself and your husband, but this way, you only have to worry about a little more than a glass’  worth of bubbly turning flat.

One more quick note — make sure you don’t give any credence to the old wives’ tale that says a silver spoon inserted in the champagne bottle will keep it fizzy. That’s just not true (though it was the subject of a Mythbusters segment in 2004.)

At its core, though, the Cosmo is a model of the blueprint we use to create just about every flavored martini. There’s a long pour of a base spirit (in this, and many cases, it’s vodka.) There’s a smaller pour of a liqueur to add or change the flavor, and a splash of one or two juices — enough to change the flavor and color of the drink without diluting its strength. The same model, with a couple of tweaks, can give you a peach martini, a sour apple martini, a chocolate martini, and countless other derivations. (In fact, by this model, just about any cocktail — Sex on the Beach? Bay Breeze? — could be made into a martini by doubling the amount of liquor and reducing the amount of juice added.)

Cocktail purists could argue (quite successfully) that none of this should be called a martini. They’re certainly not the same as a classic 5-1 gin martini. You can even argue that flavored martinis are ruining their namesake. Witness the rise of the dirty martini, a “standard” martini with a measure of salty olive brine added. (Depending on the customer, most bars now carry much bigger martini glasses to accommodate cocktails with a decent portion of juice added to them, and many customers (especially younger ones) are used to the idea that they should be able to drink martinis that taste like candy. (I’ve had customers send back actual martinis — as in, martinis with vodka and vermouth as the only ingredients — complaining they taste too much like alcohol, so something must be wrong.)

But enough of all that — the Cosmo. So long as you use quality ingredients, it’s a good cocktail. That means more than just springing for good vodka. Make sure you’re using a quality cranberry juice, along with a good orange cordial like Cointreau instead of triple sec. (You can substitute fresh-squeezed lime for the Rose’s lime juice if you like a drier cocktail.)

Cosmopolitan

• 2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. Cointreau or triple sec
• 1 oz. cranberry juice
• 1/2 oz. Rose’s lime juice, or, the juice of 1/4 lime.

The extra spice makes ginger beer completely different from its more boring cousin, ginger ale, but it can be used in most of the same drinks — it mixes equally well with whiskey or rum, and would likely mix well with brandy too. (Everything, of course, mixes with vodka. But that’s getting ahead of myself.) Ginger beer is available in most large supermarkets, but if you can’t find it there, your local liquor store should have some in stock, sold in either four- or six-packs of cans or bottles. (I’ve occasionally seen it sold in two-liter bottles as well.)

Today’s recipes, the Dark and Stormy and the Moscow Mule, are the two most common drinks served with ginger beer. The former is popular in the sailing community, and seems to have hailed originally from the Bahamas; the latter became a craze when vodka became America’s liquor du jour in the 1950s. Neither is a complicated recipe, but both have singular flavors because of the ginger beer. Serve either one to guests at your next party and they’re guaranteed to be impressed.

Dark and Stormy

• 1.5 oz dark rum
• 4 oz. ginger beer

Fill a highball glass ice, and fill 2/3 with ginger beer, leaving room for the dark rum. Pour dark rum slowly, against the side of the glass, so that the liquor floats over the ginger beer. (To make this effect easier, you can rest a spoon upside-down at the top of the ginger beer, and pour the rum over the spoon.) Serve with a slice of lime; do not stir, but provide a straw, spoon or swizzle stick so that your guests can mix the drink themselves if they’d like.

Moscow Mule

• 1.5 oz vodka
• 4 oz. ginger beer

A few of the martinis that I have ordered at restaurants have been presented in a cocktail glass with a sugar coated rim.  To make the same presentation at home, can I use regular white sugar?  Also, what would I use to make the sugar stick?

You can use plain sugar — most bars do as well. The fancier bars use superfine sugar, a granular sugar with a thinner consistency than “regular”‘ white sugar, that is also known as “baker’s sugar.” Superfine sugar is still granular, so it’s not quite as thin as powdered sugar, but the smaller granules stick to the lip of a glass much more easily, and they look better, too. (Superfine is available at the grocery store for about the same price as regular sugar. Aside from working well to rim cocktail glasses, it also dissolves in liquid much more easily than table sugar. If you picked up a box, it wouldn’t go to waste.)

Sugar (and salt, for that matter) sticks to wet glass. When we rim a glass with either, bartenders moisten the lip first one of two ways; we either run a fresh slice of citrus around the lip once or twice, or we dip the lip in a liquid — usually Rose’s sweetened lime juice, but regular lime juice, lemon juice, or even water would work just as well. Once the glass’s lip is wet, we dip that in a salt or sugar cellar, let it set for a second, then shake off the excess and pour the drink into the glass.

Having one of these salt/sugar cellars makes the whole process dirt simple, but all you really need is a pile of sugar in a bowl, on a plate, or even on a napkin. Moisten the rim of the glass (either with a slice of fruit, or by pouring a small amount of lime juice or other liquid into a bowl or onto a plate wider than the rim of the glass, then dipping the glass into it), and then roll the lip through the sugar. Shake off any excess, set the glass down right-side-up, and pour your drink as you normally would. While you can rim glasses right before serving them, you can also do it well ahead of time — so if you’re planning a party, and you want to prepare a dozen sugared martini glasses a few hours before to serve your favorite sour watermelon margaritas, go right ahead. I won’t stop you.

Sugared rims are used both to accentuate the sweet taste of certain drinks and to offset the sour bite of  drinks like a lemon drop or a sidecar. A salt rim is de rigueur for margaritas, and is also used for the mysteriously named Salty Dog (simply a Greyhound — vodka mixed with grapefruit juice — with salt on the rim). Salted rims can occasionally be used elsewhere — a salt rim would work for a Bloody Mary, and if you mixed up a caramel martini and gave it a salty rim, it could be fun. (Oddly, while superfine sugar is used to rim glasses, salt for cocktail rims should actually be coarse kosher salt, rather than fine table salt.)

Now, I get it. We’re all trying to cut back on calories, and alcohol contains an unfortunate amount of our daily recommended amount of fuel.  Every drink is the equivalent of sucking down  a glass of sugar water. But is some sort of mass-marketed calorie-light substitute really the answer?

Let’s look at Bethenny Frankel’s “Skinny Girl” Margarita Mix. The concoction, at 12.7 percent alcohol by volume, is purported as a way for calorie-conscious consumers to enjoy a bit of alcoholic indulgence and diet at the same time.

Is it? The main problem the Skinny Girl line presents is the alcohol level — which is fairly low, for something that’s meant to be consumed as a cocktail straight from the bottle. Which isn’t to say you should drink solely for intoxication.

But the alcohol content is the main factor that drives the calorie count in most cocktails. And a normal margarita — with an ounce of tequila at 40 percent alcohol by volume, a half-ounce of triple sec at about 20 percent alcohol by volume, and around 3 ounces of mixer, comes up at around 13 percent alcohol by volume.  The Skinny Girl margarita mix is 12.7 percent alcohol by volume… and while it boasts a 100-calorie-per-serving figure, that’s really not much different from a normal ‘restaurant’ margarita.

I’m not saying the moniker is a lie, but I guarantee you, most of the low-calorie benefit is in the marketing. If you plan on having more than one “Skinny Girl” cocktail, you’ll find you’re taking on almost as many calories as someone ordering a normal drink.

Want to make a truly low-calorie margarita? Go back to what the original recipe would have been — tequila, orange liqueur, and pure lime juice. The resulting cocktail is sharp, strong, and delicious — and while it won’t make you skinnier than any other cocktail, it does cut the added sugar you’d get if you used a pre-made margarita mix. Plus, chances are, there’s so much flavor in this recipe, you won’t feel the need for a second.

Real “Skinny” Margarita

• 1 oz. tequila
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau or other orange liqueur (like triple sec)
• Juice of 1/2 lime (about 1 tsp.)

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker, and shake thoroughly to combine. Rim a cocktail glass with salt, and then strain the margarita into the glass. Garnish with a lime slice, and serve.

I have seen onions used in martinis when I am at a bar or restaurant.  If I were to make a drink like that at home, do I just use small onions or do I need to do something special to them?

They are special onions — they’re cocktail onions, and they’re usually sold in the same aisle of the supermarket or the liquor store as olives.

Funny thing about cocktail onions. They’re used in a Gibson, which is made exactly like a martini, but with the onion as a garnish instead of olives or a lemon twist. I’ve tried working with cocktail onions, and while they’re delicious at the end of a drink (especially if they’re soaked in vermouth,) they don’t have any effect on the flavor of a martini, or on anything else. (If you try whatever liquid used to pack them, you’ll notice the onions don’t impart any flavor to that, either.)

So what’s the point? Well, I couldn’t find any primary sources to corroborate this, but there are several apocryphal sources on the Internet suggesting the onions are primarily used to tell one martini from the rest on a table. Most of those stories suggest someone (who may or may not have been named Gibson) was trying to surreptitiously drink water instead of a martini, and wanted to make sure he knew which glass was his. Some tales suggest a teetotaling diplomat or socialite; others suggest “Gibson” was a businessman who wanted a leg up during a three-cocktail lunch meeting, and asked the bartender to serve him dummy drinks so that he could stay clear-headed while his negotiating opponents knocked back a belly full of gin.

Come to think of it, you could use small onions. (Pearl onions, that is… please don’t try to put a small yellow onion in there.) The flavor won’t be as good as a vermouth-soaked cocktail onion from a jar… but then again, the drink won’t taste any differently for it, anyway.

Now, if you did want onion-flavored liquor — maybe some onion vodka for Bloody Marys — it’d be doable, but you’d need to infuse it . Onions need to be either cooked down or pureed to release their flavor components. Dice a couple of onions, or a large one, and sweat them in a pot… or place the same amount in a food processor and blast them to hell. Either way, pour the onions and however much vodka you want to infuse into a sealable jar.

Let the vodka and onions sit and infuse for at between three days and a week — it doesn’t have to be refrigerated, but it wouldn’t hurt — and then strain the liquor through a coffee filter or a cheesecloth. Use it as you would use any other liquor in your favorite recipe.

I’m still not a believer in the vodka martini (what’s the point, other than “We’re out of gin, and we have to drink something, so here it is”?), but vodka can still help to highlight liqueurs and ingredients that are too rich and sweet on their own (kind of like adding salt to baked goods.) While it’s often mixed with ungodly things (Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Crystal Light), vodka can be part of pleasant cocktails as well.

For example, today’s cocktail, the French Martini, mixes it with the flavors of pineapple juice and Chambord (a sweet French liqueur infused with black raspberries.) Those two things together would be a bit cloying and syrupy-thick. Add vodka, though, and the same combination becomes smooth, nuanced, and very satisfying. I wouldn’t make this for myself very often, but for someone with a sweet tooth — or someone who was big fan of raspberries — this one’s great.

French Martini

• 2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. Chambord
• 1 oz. pineapple juice

Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker over ice, and shake thoroughly to combine. Strain into martini glass and serve.

There’s a slight variant of this drink called a flirtini, which substitutes champagne for the Chambord. Whatever your opinion of the French martini, you’ll think the flirtini is even more so. If you think the French martini’s a great brunch cocktail to sip while you catch up with your girlfriends, you’ll love the flirtini. If you’re rolling your eyes at this whole post, convinced that I’m pandering to the Sex-and-the-City crowd… chill out, man. Next week, I’ll write about tequila.

Maraschino has to be one of the most completely forgotten ingredients from that time. A clear, thick liquor made by fermenting, distilling, aging, and sweetening the juice from mashed-up marasca cherries, maraschino has a raw, foreboding smell (almost like moonshine), but a surprisingly sweet taste, with a sour punch from the cherries, and a bit of a kick from not-quite-mellowed-out cogeners. It makes for a pleasant, albeit bracing, after-dinner drink, and it’s employed in small amounts to sweeten and flavor many classic cocktails, but it’s not the featured ingredient in many. (The only one I can find, a pousse l’amour, is a layered drink that includes a full raw egg, and may be just a bit too avant garde for your average American drinkers. The recipe linked there includes an illustration that seems to be from Jerry Thomas’s 1860s-era bartending guide.)

This week’s cocktail, the Brandy Crusta, is a lost classic in its own right, and uses a few dashes of the aforementioned lost classic liqueur to punch up its flavor. Preparation for this one is a bit involved, but the end result looks and tastes great — it’s a singular cocktail.

Brandy Crusta

• 1 1/2 oz. brandy
• 1/2 oz. curacao
• 3 dashes Maraschino liqueur
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Pare a lemon peel into one long spiral. (Reserve the fruit inside to squeeze lemon juice for this and other cocktails.) Wet the rim of a wine glass, then dip it in sugar to coat the rim. Place the lemon peel spiral in the wine glass, then fill the glass with ice. Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, and shake to combine. Strain into the prepared wine glass.

p.s. — If you can’t bring yourself to buy a bottle of maraschino to attempt this, or if you can’t locate maraschino in your liquor store, this drink is almost as good if you substitute an equivalent amount of grenadine or a teaspoon of sugar. You could even omit the sweetener altogether.

Every year at St. Patrick’s Day, whether at home or at a friend’s, green beer is the drink of choice.  This year I would like to be able to provide a different option for those of us who despise beer.  Have any suggestions?

My first suggestion would be to try drinking beer that can’t be dyed green. (Not just for St. Patrick’s Day, but in general.) A nice, cloudy Belgian-style wheat beer, a fruity lambic, or a nutty, toffee-flavored brown ale might convince you to merely “strongly dislike” beer, rather than despise it. Guinness is nice, too. (Not just for St. Patrick’s day, but in general.)

I can empathize, however, with your aversion to chugging pint after pint of beer on a day that will likely be cold and wintry anyway. Even those of us who do like beer (and who do enjoy chugging pint after pint, on an occasional basis) don’t want it to be compulsory. Especially not on St. Patrick’s Day, which most of us in the service industry refer to as “Amateur Day.” Your question implies you don’t want to skip Amateur Day altogether, though, so let’s talk about a cocktail menu.

There are plenty of concoctions mixed in the “Amateur Day” vein, and if you want pure novelty, or if you’re planning a fraternity party, they can be fun. I’ve seen countless recipes for “emeralds,” “shamrocks,” or other such ilk that use green creme de menthe in conjunction with Bailey’s Irish Cream to produce a sickly green color. These are great drinks if you ever wondered what sipping on toothpaste might taste like. Mixing blue curacao with any fruit juice will also give you a greenish tint, if you wanted to serve margaritas or screwdrivers. (There is a decent variant on a Manhattan that also goes by the name “Emerald” — David Wondrich writes it up here.) There is also the infamous Irish Car Bomb (a shot of Bailey’s mixed with Jameson Irish Whiskey, dropped into a Guinness and chugged), but you don’t like beer, so there that goes.

What should you drink instead? I’d keep it simple. Jameson highballs (Irish whiskey with ginger ale.) Jameson on the rocks. Bailey’s on the rocks, or with soda water. Maybe an Irish coffee (Jameson mixed with your favorite brand of java, with Bailey’s floated on top, preferably in a glass coffee mug.) Magner’s Irish Cider would be another decent alternative — hard apple cider isn’t Irish by default, but this one’s a good one, and can be served either from the bottle or in a glass over ice.

If none of that sounds good, just drink whatever you want. But make sure you’re wearing something green. It is, after all, Amateur Day.

But I digress. During the majority of history of human drinking, if you wanted to drink something other than beer, wine, or straight liquor, you didn’t reach for your cocktail shaker. You made a cordial.

Cordials (or liqueurs) are defined as any spirit with added sugar, but the real way to look at them is any distilled spirit with added flavor. Whether you’re soaking neutral spirits in lemon peels to make limoncello, or mixing berries with rotgut to make sloe gin, you’re adding some sort of extra flavor to the alcohol. So instead of ordering a cocktail with orange juice, someone would just ask for a glass of Cointreau, an orange liqueur. (Which is a good thing — since until less than 200 years ago, ice wouldn’t have been readily available to bartenders. Imagine drinking a room-temperature martini, and you can understand why cordials seemed like a better option.)

Today, we think of liqueurs (or cordials — you can call them either) as potential flavorings for cocktails, and a lot of cut-rate schnapps is produced to that end. (Think anybody wants to sip Peachtree or Sour Apple Schnapps slowly on the rocks?) But there are still quality cordials out there that can be enjoyed on their own — or as a major ingredient in a simple cocktail.

Today’s cocktail features Drambuie, a complex honey-and-herbal liqueur made from a base of Scotch. Company materials claim the recipe is at least 250 years old, and hearkens back to the English royal family Stuart. Today, it may be enjoyed on its own, but its main use (and the only reason most bar managers keep it around) is to make the Rusty Nail, a cocktail that mixes Drambuie with Scotch, its mother liquor. As a cocktail, it takes the bite off modestly priced Scotch (though you wouldn’t want to waste a single malt on it.)

Rusty Nail

• 1 oz. Scotch
• 1/2 oz Drambuie

Combine ingredients over ice in a rocks glass and stir; if preferred, combine over ice in a cocktail shaker, stir, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon peel if desired.

P.S: The same recipe yields a Godfather if you substitute amaretto for Drambuie. Vodka and amaretto in the same proportions is a Godmother. And the same drink with Southern Comfort and amaretto is a Sicilian Kiss, and a terrible  idea.

So what does that mean to you, the home bartender? It means more than just splurging on good colas, tonic waters, and seltzers. It means checking labels on your juices to see if you’re getting 100 percent cranberry juice, and not some sort of sugared-up “juice cocktail”. It means leaving the pre-bottled sour mix at the store and making your drinks with sugar and fresh-squeezed lemons.

To that end, we have this week’s recipe, which will get you one of the more basic cocktails served at bars today. (Alongside the dirty martini, the cosmo, and the appletini, I’d say the Lemon Drop is pretty much ubiquitous.) This recipe uses plain vodka; yes, I know there are citrus-flavored varieties out there, but they almost always have an artificial saccharine aftertaste paired with a none-too-subtle hint of rotgut. Go with something good and basic, like Ketel One, Stolichnaya, or Grey Goose. If you have limoncello in your bar, adding a splash will give you a certain depth of flavor (more of a lemon zest flavor than a sour lemon juice punch), but it’s not necessary.

Lemon Drop

•  2 1/2 oz high-quality vodka
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice (about 3 tsp.)
• 1 tsp. sugar (superfine or powdered sugar will dissolve faster, but in a pinch, plain table sugar will do.)
• 1/2 oz. limoncello (optional)

Chill a martini glass. Combine sugar and lemon juice in an empty cocktail shaker, and add just enough water to dissolve the sugar (with the lemon juice, this should be a tablespoon or less.) Fill the shaker with ice, add vodka (and limoncello, if desired), and shake to combine. If desired, rim the martini glass with sugar by moistening the rim with lemon juice or water, then rolling the rim in a pile of sugar. Strain the cocktail into the glass, and serve.

Now, normally when I’m out at a place such as this I wouldn’t care which kind of gin is used. The bartender is going to make it the way he wants to anyway, and by the fifth one I’m not really going to taste it anymore. However, after watching him make several other various cocktails, I notice the bottle of house gin that looks like it hasn’t seen action since the Reagan administration. “What’ll it be?” the bartender asks.

“Tanqueray and tonic, please – with lime.”

You see, the great thing about Tanqueray is that it’s affordable, even at a bar where you’d be much safer eating the roaches than you would be eating the food. A gin and tonic is a difficult thing to screw up, but I’ve seen my fair share of bozos, and as anyone who’s ever had a glade of straight tonic water can tell you, it’s not worth the price of admission. Mix up a bit of gin and some lemon or lime, however, and you’re in business, son.

The bartender comes back with probably the goofiest glass of British gin and fizz water I’ve ever seen, with ice that looks like it were chipped off a tacky mermaid ice-sculpture and a lime wedge that must have owed the bartender money. Reluctantly, I take a sip.

“Not bad.”

You see, Tanqueray is a British gin, but it’s mostly produced in Scotland. Now, if the Scots know about anything, it’s distilled spirits. Using three key botanicals in the distillation process – juniper, coriander, and angelica root, Tanqueray has a more straightforward flavor than that of Bombay. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t point angelica root out on a map, much less taste it. The juniper, however, showed up to the party on time, yet the coriander was nowhere to be found. I guess he called in sick.

All in all, however, Tanqueray has made a dull evening far more interesting.

I’m familiar with an assortment of coffee drinks. I prefer tea and was wondering if there are any spiked tea recipes.

That’s a harder order to fill. Coffee’s roasted, robust flavor means it stands up well to equally strong flavors in a liquor, so it’s very easy to stir in a measure of whiskey, brandy, rum… just about anything (I’d stay away from gin or vodka). Tea, depending on your preferred variety, has a much more delicate flavor, which is harder to balance correctly in a cocktail. Brewed tea was sometimes used as an ingredient in older cocktails (specifically in punches), but it’s never gained any traction as a primary mixer like coffee has.

That said, what can you do to punch up your Darjeeling?

A very safe bet would be to find a cordial you like and stir that into your tea. Cointreau (an orange liqueur), Chambord (black raspberry), St. Germaine (elderflower), or Drambuie (honey and herbs) immediately come to mind, though if you try something a bit bolder and it tastes good, mention it in the comments. Bailey’s Irish Cream would work well, too, but only if you like milk in your tea.

If you do take milk or cream with your tea, you have more options. We could think of tea with cream as, basically, a nog or a grog, and treat it accordingly. Stir in a bit of rum or brandy, and top it with some nutmeg. (You could even whisk in an egg, if you wanted to get fancy.)

If you don’t like cream, you can adapt the recipe for a standard hot toddy to a cup of tea — just brew your favorite brand (leaving some room in the cup), pour in a shot of whiskey (preferably Irish), add a teaspoon of honey (or sugar), and squeeze in a lemon.

You could try to match specific varieties of tea to a drink recipe. If you like mint tea, and you stir in some sugar and bourbon, that’s basically a hot mint julep, right? Mixing orange tea and brandy would give you a warm riff on a Sidecar.

Whatever you do decide to add to your tea, I’d urge you to go easy with your pour — for every ounce of alcohol you add, I’d use at least 5-6 ounces of tea. (Colder highballs are usually mixed at a 3-1 ratio.) Flavors tend to get stronger as temperatures increase, and the subtle burn whiskey has chilled or at room temperature will become a wicked, sinus-scorching chemical weapon once it’s hot. So be careful, unless you’re into that sort of thing.

Of course, once the weather warms up, you could just cool down your tea and add whatever you have in your liquor cabinet. Iced tea mixes with everything.

What to drink, then? It’s a continual problem I’ve mentioned more than once — but once again, I think I’ve found a decent solution that balances the needs of winter and spring. A good gateway drink between the season we’re leaving (or, at least, the one we were supposed to be experiencing) and the one we’re approaching. I found this drink in Jerry Thomas’s bartending guide, published in 1887. It’s fairly simple, yet bracingly complex, with the sour punch of the whiskey complementing the grapey sweetness of the brandy. I’m guessing it was named after the New York town, and its accompanying racetrack. (Maybe to approximate the racetrack, or the sport of kings itself, at the same time base and cosmopolitan? Or maybe just because some of his customers there liked to drink it.)

Tonight’s drink mixes brandy, whiskey, and vermouth. You’d be well-served to use a good version of each — you don’t have to pour cognac into this, but make it a decent brandy, at least a couple years old. Your whiskey could be rye or bourbon, but don’t skimp on that, either, or you’ll pay for it the next morning. You could garnish this with a cherry or a lemon peel, and if you wanted to pour it over rocks and serve it well into the spring (or even summer,) you’d be fine.

-Clique Vodka

Now, to be fair, this isn’t a bad vodka. I don’t hate it because of the taste (I’ll have a bit more on that in a bit). I hate it because it’s trying to emulate the success of Patron by marketing itself to the hip hop crowd, when Patron didn’t do anything for its success but be an expensive and smooth tequila. That’s something that current mainstream hip hop culture has going against it, in my opinion – the more money you can spend on crap you don’t need, the more you’re seen as successful. In my opinion, that just makes you an idiot. But what do I know? I don’t chug Heineken and Jagerbombs all night, so I guess my opinion can’t be all that clever.

So anyway… this is a vodka, alright. When you pop the top and take a whiff, you’ll find that out pretty quickly. If I had to compare the aroma to something, it would be that of a lower-midshelf vodka. This is essentially Smirnoff in a bottle that looks like Snooki rubbed her face on it, which makes sense as Smirnoff is still slightly Russian and Clique is crafted “by fine vodka Artisans in the country of Latvia“. On a side note, if you click that link and then read about Premier Innovations’ other spirit offering, Don Pantaleon Tequila, you’ll see this little gem:

“Don Pantaleon is competitive in price with any house tequila and boasts incredible value with almost 100% pure agave and no additives or artificial flavorings”

If your tequila is not 100% de agave, it has additives, you twits. Moving on…

The taste of Clique vodka is what you’d expect for a bottle that costs 16 bucks. It’s got a good bit of smoothness to it, the vodka fire is there, along with a peppery finish. This is a good vodka for mixing, but not for sipping.

Once again, I can’t stress this enough. Clique is a decent vodka which won’t break the bank. However, Clique’s marketing department should be waterboarded with it. Pick this one up if you plan on attending a party with a lot of people who have fake tans.

(Editor’s note: Our reviewer received a complimentary bottle of Clique Vodka, but the opinion reflected in this article is solely his.)

But the weather just isn’t cooperating! Over the past week, I’ve had three days that look like fall, and one that could almost pass for early spring! And if you’re like me, the seasonal uncertainty is very destabilizing. Not just in your cocktail choices, I’m sure, but still…

What to do? I’ll admit, I didn’t know either. And then I flipped through my notes, and came upon this old standard… made notable if only for its name (which, apocryphally, is a shortening of “suffering bar steward.”) I’ve tried to do my own research to find the origin of this drink. No luck. Not in my late-1800s-era bartending handbook by Henry Craddock, or my 1940s-era Burke handbook, or the 1950s bartending book from Dave Embury, or the Playboy bartending book, or the 1981 Mr. Boston bar book.

So what is this drink, and where did I even hear of it? To answer the latter question first, I think it was a line of dialogue from a terrible episode of forgettable late-90s television. The former, I would never have found without the Internet. But eventually, I found several sources pointing to a clip from a 1959 New York Times interview with Joe Scialom. Regrettably, their archive isn’t completely electronic and free, so I can’t confirm it (at least, not without surrendering a good portion of my pay for this post):

“When liquor was short during the war, he had to concoct “something to quench the boys’ thirst.” He combined equal parts gin and brandy with a dash of Angostura bitters, a teaspoon of Rose’s lime juice, and English ginger ale. He garnished the drink with a sprig of fresh mint, a slice of orange and a cucumber peel. The bartender advised Americans to substitute ginger beer for the ginger ale because the British version of the soft drink is more heavily seasoned with ginger than ours.”

So… the Suffering Bastard:

• 1 oz. brandy
• 1 oz. gin
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1/4 oz. Rose’s lime juice (if a more tart drink is desired, substitute juice of 1/4 lime)
• 4 oz. ginger beer (ginger ale will do in a pinch, but your Suffering Bastard will have too much sweet, and not enough spice.)

Combine gin, brandy, bitters, and lime juice in a glass. Stir to combine, then fill with ginger beer. Garnish? Mint, orange, and cucumber peel are suggested, but a lime would work just as well.