We needed to throw together a quick cocktail for the 2019 winter solstice and I was looking for something tart and cool to reflect the season. I started searching for martinis and came across several variations of this delightful little mix and it looked like it had potential. Ingredients 1.5 oz vodka .5 oz triple…
Rhubarb & Elderflower Cordial
I inherited a bottle of handcrafted, small-batch, Ontario cordial from my mother and had no idea what to do with it… until I read the recipe on the back of the bottle. Here’s how we made it. Ingredients 1 1/2 ounces dry gin (we used Sipsmith) 3/4 ounce Split Tree Rhubarb & Elderflower Cordial 1/2…
Wine Spritzer
It was a long hot summer day and I wanted something light, refreshing and…well…easy. So I settled on a spritzer and did a little research to see if there were any variations I hadn’t tried yet. I found a bunch of different recipes but the one that called for bitters intrigued me. We had a…
Blueberry Margarita
Spring is on the verge of being sprung, and that means bright, fruity cocktails. In this case, margaritas. The pantry was pretty bare, but thanks to frozen blueberries, shrivelled lemons, and the “emergency” tequila, we were able to whip up this… Ingredients (makes 4) 1/2 cup blueberries (we used frozen) 2 oz freshly squeezed lemon…
Ginger Fizz
I was looking for some thing that said SPRING! I wanted a bit of bite so I figured it was time for some ginger beer and put Google to work. It came up with two fairly similar recipes: a Ginger Fizz and a Cilantro Lime Fizz. They both used gin, ginger beer, limes and cilantro…
The Paper Plane
This little cocktail’s been on my radar for a while now, so when I stumbled across it on Bar Clementine’s “Cocktails to Try Before You Die” menu, I decided I should work on that. But first some totally unverified info brought to you by the Internets: Invented by a New York bartender named Sam Ross,…
Singapore Sling — version 2
D. A. Embury stated in the Fine Art of Mixing Drinks: “Of all the recipes published for [this drink] I have never seen any two that were alike.” This cocktail was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender working at the Long Bar in the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Over the years the original recipe was lost and even…
El Presidente
I received a copy of Old Man Drinks by Robert Schnakenberg for Xmas and we were eager to give it a try. Most of the classics we’ve tried were there and were short of a lot ingredients for others but the El Presidente caught my eye and it was decided. Supposedly named for Gerado Machado,…
The Charles
I was looking for something simple and tasty and a bit sweet. So I went digging through my compiled wishlist and came across two that called for cognac. I chose the Charles because it had a bit more history. The Cocktail Bar was published by “Charles” in London in 1952. This eponymous drink is one…