The Cocktail Artist

Now that we have most of the holiday decorations up its time to refocus our energy and make a cocktail! We were a bit parched after struggling with all of those strings of lights.  Mulling spice, cider, brandy, and citrus are all traditional ingredients in wassail – a warm punch that dates to the middle ages. Wassail is a great holiday drink, but it requires a bit of time and quite a few ingredients. We were looking to make something easier – preferably on the rocks since we worked up a sweat bringing those bins of decorations up from the basement!  We had some Apple Cider Simple Syrup leftover (previously used in our Apple Rye Cocktail ) and some terrific Spiced Rum from Far North Spirits , so we thought we would do a wassail riff on an Old Fashioned. A classic Old Fashioned contains a base spirit, a sweetener, bitters, and garnish. Our rum had plenty of spice, so we didn’t need the bitters, but we decided to throw in a bit more alcohol (and balance the spice) by ...

T his classic cocktail is well over a century old. It originated at Philadelphia’s Bellevue-Stratford Hotel – which was the meeting place for the men’s social group known as the Clover Club. It’s very similar to a Pink Lady, but without the Applejack. We have a Pink Lady variation on the blog – see our In the Pink cocktail where we replaced the gin with aquavit. Some Clover Club cocktail recipes call for grenadine (which is what is traditionally used for the Pink Lady), but most use raspberry simple syrup. We have a number of cocktails on our blog that call for raspberry syrup, so it’s an ingredient we make and keep on hand. Check out our Up North Raspberry and Rye or Raspberry Smash – or use the syrup in a Daiquiri .  Back in October, the Cocktail Artist team took separate overnight trips. Beth (the team mixologist) was in New York City visiting our daughter – where she went out for drinks at the Dingle bar in Fraunces Tavern . This historic tavern has been operating sin...