The Cocktail Artist

As promised in our previous blog post we are using this post to give you our Mezcal version of the Penicillin Cocktail. A key ingredient in our Penicillin No. 2 was homemade Orange Honey Simple Syrup. A batch of simple syrup will keep for a couple of weeks, so once it’s made we like to experiment and create a couple of different cocktails so that we use it before it expires. A Penicillin Cocktail features peaty Scotch along with lemon, honey and ginger. We were quite pleased with our version using the orange-honey syrup and thought another riff using Mezcal to replace the smoky Scotch could be interesting. We tried it with and without ginger liqueur, and with lime in place of lemon juice, but in the end the recipe that our taste testing team preferred the one that had fresh lemon juice and orange liqueur. We also cut the Mezcal a bit and replaced it with another agave spirit – silver tequila. We are calling this one the “Agave Sunset” and have paired it with a Cocktail Arti...

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 a good margarita.  Not one of those made with syrupy mixes - we want to taste real lime and (naturally) the tequila.  Awhile ago we started experimenting with mezcal - a tequila-ish liquor.  For more information about mezcal check out the  Mezcal Phd  blog, but in short: mezcal is an agave based liquor made in one of eight regions of Mexico. With artisanal mezcal (which is what you want to use), the "pina" from the agave plant are cooked in an underground, earthen pit lined with volcanic rock - which smokes, cooks and caramelizes them for days, imparting a deep smoky flavor.  Mezcal can be a bit much on it's own, but we decided that the best approach was to balance it with tequila. So here's a smoky version of the margarita - and a nod to our friends south of the border.   We're calling this one "Against the Wall", and we think it will go well with your Super Bowl nachos! Against the Wall 1 oz. Silver Tequila 3/4 oz. Mezcal 1...