The Cocktail Artist

Winter is here, the holiday season is upon us, and it has (finally) become cold outside. There's a bright red cardinal sitting on a bare branch in our yard - looking like a Christmas ornament. Northern Cardinals are not migratory birds. They stay put throughout the winter. It's heartening to see them in the colder months, and during the holidays they appear festive and provide a reminder of the warmer seasons to come. So, after birdwatching for a few minutes, our team got to work. The Artist pulled out his paintbrush to do watercolor of the bird, and the Mixologist decided to use the cardinal as an inspiration for a holiday cocktail. A margarita is something we mix up most often during the summer (or on the occasional taco night), but there really isn't any good reason to push the tequila to the back of the cabinet during the colder months. For this "winterized" version, we are adding to the tartness by mudding pomegranate seeds in the cocktail. We have anot...

We love our desserts and we love our cocktails, but we don’t really like our cocktails to taste like dessert. When the flavors of the spirits are overwhelmed by sugar, a cocktail just isn't very interesting (at least not interesting to us). Last summer we were asked by a family friend to make an amaretto sour and, after briefly considering mixing up one of those soda-pop sweet cocktails, we talked her into something else. Thinking back on it, we felt a little bad - we really should have risen to the occasion and put our creativity to the test.  A couple of weeks later we saw a piece in the New York Times food section ( When Bad Drinks Go Good , August 2017) about how bartenders are taking on the challenge of improving classic cocktails that have a poor reputation. For the Amaretto Sour, the suggestion was to cut down on the amaretto and add some cask-proof bourbon to the mix. So, we reached into the back of the liquor cabinet and pulled out that dusty bottle of Disaronno...