Now that Thanksgiving has passed, it’s officially the holiday season!  There are plenty of things to plan for – holiday travel, big family meals, and the crowds you’ll entertain or be a part of in someone else’s home. The most important thing is to surround yourself with the people who are most important to you – but food and drinks only add to the fun.

In years past, we’ve shared a variety of holiday cocktails on this blog, and we’re excited to do the same this year! We’ve teamed up with some mixologists and members of our local libations community to bring you some fun and inventive holiday cocktails, but before we get to that we’ve compiled a round-up of some of our favorite cocktails from the archives!

Pear Ginger Whiskey Smash – Sweet Fruit with a Spicy Bite

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Sure, eggnog is a holiday tradition, but so is fruit cake. Personally, I’ve always liked it, but if that many people really loved eggnog, I think we’d see cartons of the non-alcoholic stuff for sale year round. Most people tend to prefer their alcohol without raw eggs and in my experience, punch bowls, pitchers, and non-alcoholic cartons largely go untouched at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings. This is all not to say that eggnog doesn’t have it’s devotees, those who love its sweet, creamy taste and frothy texture, and who couldn’t imagine Christmas without it. But this is the minority.

If you’re entertaining this weekend, let me caution you against putting out an entire punch bowl of homemade eggnog in an attempt to either please the few or project a guise of being traditional. The majority of your guests will thank you for something lighter like punch, champagne cocktails, or beer, wine & basic spirits.

Eggnog is a drink best made to order. Mixing it immediately before serving in individual portions keeps it colder, frothier, and saves eggs, milk, and booze from your drain pipes. Here’s a quick recipe for a single glass of eggnog that you can mix up for Uncle Chuck, or whomever wants it this Christmas. We served ours in a Simon Pearce Norwich Beaker, Simon Pearce’s curvaceous spin on an old fashioned glass. Like all Simon Pearce barware, it’s a substantial piece of glass that’s a pleasure to drink out of because of its weight and clarity. Continue Reading

The Whiskey Smash. A classic Southern drink tradition that tempers the heat and grit of straight whiskey with sugar and freshly muddled mint. The original used whiskey, sugar, mint, and shaved ice. Modern versions often replace the sugar with simple syrup and include dashes of bitters and citrus. The edgiest versions depart from tradition altogether, adding liqueurs and the muddled pulp of things like peaches and pumpkin–both of which we tried earlier in this cocktail series. The Pumpkin Smash went a little too far from tradition for us.

For this go ’round, we stuck to sweet and accessible flavors; pear, ginger, and lime. This smash leaves out mint altogether, substituting it with the bite of ginger provided by Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur. Pear pulp and ginger ale sweeten the whiskey.

We mixed ours up in a Rosle cocktail shaker and served them in a Schott Zwiesel Basic Bar Allround glass. It’s sort of a hybrid between an old fashioned and a highball, perfect for this tall, refreshing drink that’s topped off with ginger ale.

Muddling the pear with a Rosle fruit muddle

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Written by Hairee Lee

Just like how I remember it . . .

Remember back when you were a kid, you slugged your way into the corner store after riding your bike around the neighborhood all summer afternoon, and you wanted, no needed, something to drink real bad, and there was the slushy machine whirring away, humming its inexorable, irresistible serenade to your thirst like some Slushy Siren Song, when you didn’t know what a Siren was let alone a song by one, but you felt that desperate pull, as strong as a hunger pang or the sexual impulse, before you knew what real hunger or sex was even.

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