The Cocktail Artist

From the Oxford American Dictionary:  vesper,  ˈvespər | noun; to evening prayer;  archaic  evening.  To the Cocktail World the Vesper is the martini version that James Bond introduced in 1953’s Casino Royale —the first Bond book by Ian Fleming. The cocktail was named for double-agent (and Bond love interest) Vesper Lynd. The drink takes a gin martini and ramps it up with a dose of vodka. The original recipe (that Bond recites to a bartender in the book) uses Kina Lillet instead of a martini’s typical dry vermouth. Kina Lillet has been replaced by Lillet Blanc – a sweeter variant without the quinine of the original. Well, since you can’t even obtain the actual ingredients in the original recipe why not just try something completely different – which is what we do with most recipes anyway. We were fortunate to acquire a nice vodka and a lovely quince gin recently and thought that using the Vesper as a template would be a nice way t...

A Gin & Tonic is the quintessential summer cocktail. It's easy to make, only requires a couple of ingredients, it's low alcohol-by-volume, and it's hard to mess it up - unless you use bad gin. A Gin & Tonic also makes a great blank canvas for your mixology art. The Spanish have turned this cocktail into an art form. In Spain a Gin & Tonic involves all kinds of fruit, herbs, and spices. It is usually served in a large wine goblet with plenty of ice, and it's as attractive as it is thirst-quenching. As fresh fruit becomes available at local farm markets, we are taking a cue from the Spanish and planning to do frequent G&T experiments. We'll post our best results on the blog. To get things started we have this combination of strawberry, lime, and rosemary to add to gin and tonic. We made a strawberry simple syrup by simmering fresh strawberries and sugar in water for about 15 minutes, and then straining out the liquid (recipe below). This makes fo...

This post is a week late, but this blog is our hobby (not our real job) so we’re not going to worry about it. Anyhow, we came up with this drink for Mardi Gras as the “last call” before the beginning of Lent – a time when some of us stop drinking for 40 days (we’ll let you know how that works out). The name “Last Call” also references the classic “Last Word” cocktail. The Last Word is really a perfect cocktail. It’s equal parts of four ingredients (gin, Green Chartreuse, Maraschino Liqueur, and lime) and a superb balance of tart, herbal, and sweet. It’s one of our fallback cocktails – one that we mix up when we can’t make up our mind about what we want to drink.  Another classic that we regularly enjoy is the Aviation Cocktail. The Aviation is another gin cocktail and is one of the few that uses Crème de Violette – a sweet, floral liqueur that is typically a deep purple hue. It takes mixing quite a few Aviations to go through a bottle of Crème de Violette, so it’s prob...

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...

We recently returned from a trip to Tahoe City, California – where we spent a week hiking, enjoying the beautiful blue water of Lake Tahoe, and attended a lovely family wedding. We rented a cozy (and well equipped) mountain cabin – which was perfect for our family in almost every way. The kitchen had all the culinary tools we needed to prepare meals, but upon our arrival, we found that there were absolutely no cocktail supplies. Being located in California, there were plenty of wine glasses (and champagne flutes) but no cocktail glasses, no mixing glass or shaker, and no measuring jigger. We had considered packing some of these items, but when push came to shove, we needed the space in the suitcase for those shoes for the wedding. Being a resourceful group, we were able to manage just fine. We didn’t want to purchase more liquor (and other ingredients) than we could use during our stay, and we needed to keep the cocktails simple enough to eyeball the measuring. We came up with a...

In case you don’t know us personally, or haven’t read the bio on our blog , you may not realize the “The Cocktail Artist” is really a partnership between two architects (who also happen to be married to each other). One of us comes up with the recipes, does the photography, and writes the blog posts – the other one creates all of the original artwork and offers opinions on the cocktail recipes. Being architects, we sometimes let our design-sense get the better of us – meaning we have been known to purchase a bottle of booze because we like the design of the bottle.  Occasionally this backfires, but rest assured (with some creative mixology or a bit of barrel-aging) we have always been able to make use of the contents of those impulse-buy bottles. Right now, two of the most attractive bottles in our liquor cabinet contain Italian spirits – Malfy Gin Con Limone and Italicus . Italy has always been a design trendsetter, so it’s not surprising that these bottles stand out...

We can’t say why it has taken so many years for us to get around to trying the classic pre-prohibition cocktail “The Last Word”. It’s an equal parts mixture of gin,  green Chartreuse, lime juice, and maraschino liqueur. The balance of sour (lime) and sweet (liqueur) marries perfectly with the herbal (Chartreuse and gin). So shame on us for not only ignoring this cocktail, but for not using this recipe as a launching pad for an array of variations - as so many others have done. In this article from  Punch , bar owner Padraig O’Brien says that The Last Word “is like lasagna… There are 100 different variations on lasagna, but they all work. It’s about getting the ingredients and the proportions right.” By the way, O’Brien’s bar (in Astoria, Queens) is named “The Last Word”. So we’re including the original recipe in this blog post, and a version we came up with that incorporates Aloe Liqueur (that we recently purchased on a whim while browsing through a liquor store) and mi...

Spring hasn’t officially arrived here in Washington, DC, but we have had some intermittent spring-like weather over the past few weeks, and the cherry blossoms are already starting to come out. We took a quick trip to Philadelphia last weekend to see the annual Philadelphia Flower Show, and this threw us into full-throttle spring mode. We’re ready to spiff up our outdoor spaces, mix up a tall drink, and enjoy cocktail hour outside. To get things started, we decided to freshen up a simple classic cocktail with some floral notes. A Rickey is a highball that originated here in the District of Columbia in 1883. This drink was born when a local bartender added a lime to Colonel Joe Rickey’s daily dose of bourbon and sparkling water, and it really became popular a decade later when the bourbon was replaced with gin.  Traditionally, a Rickey doesn’t contain any sweeteners (so maybe our cocktail is more like a Tom Collins ), but we’re going to call it a Rickey anyway. Our cock...