The Cocktail Artist

The Sweet Corn Cocktail and White Owl Barn - original watercolor painting by The Cocktail Artist We just returned from a wonderful long weekend in Minnesota where we ate and drank our way through the Minnesota State Fair. If you've never been to a "real" state fair we highly recommend that you add it to your bucket list. Minnesota's state fair is a celebration of the state and it's agricultural heritage. Beer is the drink of choice at the fair (and there are plenty of excellent beer options), but we decided to memorialize our trip to the fair with a cocktail that features one of our favorite fair foods - fresh sweet corn. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune  Minnesota is the number one producer of sweet corn in the country. We always stop to admire the award winning corn in the Agricultural Building at the fair and grab a few ears of fresh roasted sweet corn from the Corn Roast booth - where 25 acres worth of corn is sold during the 12 days of the fair....

Mai Tai and Tropical Flowers - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist We couldn't let summer slip by without  having a Tiki cocktail. Tiki cocktails typically contain quite a few ingredients - often masking the taste of the alcohol. Not only does this make a cocktail a bit dangerous, but it's not really suited to our preference. We like to taste the liquor in our drinks - which is what keeps us from drinking more than we should.  Tiki cocktails typically contain rum (often several different rums in the same drink), and the long list of ingredients gives you plenty of room to experiment with flavors and ratios. We decided to do a variation of the classic Tiki cocktail - the Mai Tai, which is named for the Tahitian word for "good". We have a good bottle of Appleton Estate Jamaican Rum, and some Denros overproof white rum, and that’s where we started. As it says right there in it's name, Denros Strong Rum is strong (80 proof). So even though we've kep...

Fishing Boats in Port - original watercolor by the Cocktail Artist This is another cocktail we developed while on vacation in Northern Michigan.  After visiting the Traverse City Whiskey Co distillery and picking up a bottle of their excellent North Coast Rye, we stopped in a local Italian specialty food shop and a bottle of  Festivo Portofino  caught our eye. It's an Italian bitter soda with a lovely peach color.  While doing a little research into Festivo Portofino we found some parallels between our summer vacation spot in Northern Michigan and the Italian region where this soda is produced. Niasca Portofino (the company that produces the soda) was founded to celebrate the beauty of Portofino, a small Italian fishing village and a popular summer resort, and to promote its agricultural products. According to their website they formed the company to “help Portofino be lively also during the winter months, when the weather conditions do not allow open air ac...

Lavender Hill Farm - original watercolor by the Cocktail Artist Northern Michigan is filled with gorgeous scenery - clear blue lakes, pine forests, and idyllic family farms. In mid-summer, the sea of purple blooms at Lavender Hill Farm is absolutely stunning. This lavender farm is located in Horton Bay (Boyne City), Michigan - a small hamlet where Ernest Hemingway spent many summers and the setting for his story "Up in Michigan". If you are anywhere near this part of the world during the month of July you shouldn't miss visiting the farm. Not only will you be treated with the visual beauty of the lavender fields, but the scent is utterly intoxicating (in a completely non-alcoholic way). Research shows that lavender produces soothing effects when its fragrance is inhaled, and we can verify that this place fills you with a sense of calm. Coming from Washington, DC (where we live most of the year) we are quite desperate for some calm. We picked fresh lavender at the ...

Red Sky at Night - watercolor on aquaboard by The Cocktail Artist You have probably heard that old saying "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." According to the Library of Congress Research Center there is some truth to this saying - which apparently can be traced back to the Bible. You can do some Googling (or use the link we've provided) if you want to learn more, but we are moving on to creating some artwork and mixing a drink. We cannot take credit for creating this cocktail. It came to us via   Sailing World magazine's Ginger Beer Cocktail Contest back in 2013. The beautiful color of this drink comes from purple basil. You can't achieve the same effect or the same taste using green basil, so if you don't have the purple variety we suggest that you try our  Basil Gimlet recipe. We didn't do much to modify the original recipe, other than to prepare the cocktail in a mixing glass and then fine stra...

North Coast Rye - original watercolor by the Cocktail Artist We've been spending some time in Northern Michigan (like we do every summer) and picked up a bottle of North Coast Rye from the Traverse City Whiskey Co. We've been fans of their bourbon for awhile, but this rye is really nice. Right now black raspberries are in season here in the north, so we've been picking them for pie. These berries have a wonderful flavor, but they are pretty fragile and don't keep for more than a day or so. After using what we needed for the pie, we simmered the remaining berries with water and sugar to make a black raspberry syrup. The syrup is a beautiful deep purple/red color - a color, by the way, that will stain absolutely anything, so work with this carefully! The berry syrup can be added to club soda or to lemonade to make a refreshing non-alcoholic drink, but since we started out this post talking about the rye whiskey you can probably guess where we're going... Our ...