The Cocktail Artist

Back in the pre-prohibition days, Vodka was one of those spirits that people (who weren’t Eastern Europeans) didn’t know what to do with. Thanks in large part to the creation of the drink known as the Moscow Mule (and more recently the proliferation of flavored vodkas) vodka is now the most popular spirit in the world. The Moscow Mule is a combination of vodka, lime, and ginger beer – traditionally served in a copper mug. It’s a refreshing drink with an interesting backstory, but as is the typical case with any story involving liquor, things tend to be a bit muddled (sorry, couldn’t resist the cocktail pun!). The Moscow Mule fell out of fashion during the Cold War, but (despite our current tensions with Russia) it has made quite a comeback. Read this article from Vine Pair to learn more about the history of the Moscow Mule. We decided to do a “martini style” version of the Moscow Mule using ginger liqueur in place of the ginger beer. Since we’re serving this in a cocktail coupe...

Many people take some time off from alcohol in January (do a Google search for Dryuary). This isn’t a bad idea – especially if you overdid it during the holiday season, but then again, the East Coast got hit with a nasty cold snap…. Since it was too cold to go outside and take down the Christmas lights, we started flipping through Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails book and came across “The Soother”. It sounded like the perfect cold weather cocktail. This drink splits the base spirit by using half cognac and half Jamaican rum. It also includes orange curacao, lemon juice, apple juice and simple syrup. This relatively long list of ingredients allows plenty of room for experimentation. The original recipe came from the Waldorf Astoria’s Old Bar and dates back to the early 1900’s. It’s included in The Waldorf Astoria Bar Book by Frank Caiafa – where the author suggests that you could serve this as a warm drink. Now the possibilities were becoming overwhelming! ...

This week, the Cocktail Artists took a break from blogging and decided to give their youngest daughter (that's me!) a go at mixology. Due to my parents' impressive knowledge of cocktails, I've become a bit of a mixed-drink aficionado as well. However, because of my clumsy tendencies and talent for kitchen spills, my parents usually don't let me mix my own drinks. That being said, they took a chance on me and gave me full reign of their blog. Here's to hoping I do them justice! This holiday season I've been particularly drawn to ginger. Ginger snaps have always been a favorite holiday cookie of mine, as I tend to favor spicy treats over sugary ones. Every Christmas, our family creates a new structurally ambitious and aesthetically impressive gingerbread model. I suppose I'm the driving force behind the lofty gingerbread designs (three years ago we created a scale gingerbread model of our house). But don't get me wrong, my architect parents and structu...

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...