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I don’t make cocktails with sparkling wine very often, because good sparkling wine can be expensive, cocktails alone rarely use the whole bottle, and it tends to lose its fizz too fast if stored. But sometimes you just need the effervescence that only sparkling wine can provide. We first tried the Airmail cocktail at Beretta [...]

It may sound like the title of a bad spy novel, but the “Esquire formula” is really just shorthand for an interesting “universal” cocktail ratio proposed by Esquire magazine. The idea is that, armed with this ratio and one secret ingredient, you can make a tasty cocktail from pretty much any other ingredients you have [...]

I say it a lot, but that’s because it’s true: it doesn’t take much to metamorphose one cocktail into another. Just take an existing drink and swap out one component: a Daiquiri with Swedish Punch in place of the sugar becomes a Doctor Cocktail; a Corpse Reviver No. 2 with elderflower liqueur in place of [...]

One of the downsides to being a home cocktail enthusiast, rather than a bar, is that any time you open a bottle of fortified or aromatized wine, it can be hard to get through it before it spoils. To combat this problem, obsessives like me tend to curate recipes oriented around our favourite cocktail wines, [...]

Thanks to the generosity of a friend visiting from the U.S., I recently came into a bottle of Del Maguey Chichicapa mezcal. Once I got it home, there was no question in my mind about what to make first: it had to be a Oaxaca Old Fashioned. From a certain perspective, mezcal is the Islay [...]

L’Amour en fuite (“Love on the Run”) is the creation of talented Canadian mixologist Jamie Boudreau, who currently works in Seattle at Canon. It’s one of the first cocktails he made when St. Germain elderflower liqueur was initially released, and is a perfect example of his Golden Ratio. (In fact, a drink with the same [...]

When I first became interested in classic cocktails, the Sidecar was an early one to pique my interest. For me, it falls into the same category as the Martini, the Manhattan, the Daiquiri: classics that are classic for a reason; drinks that have never gone – and will never go – out of style. But [...]

With summer now in full swing, I decided to whip up another batch of passion fruit syrup. While I could never truly tire of Hurricanes, sometimes I’m in the mood for something other than rum. Fortunately, my husband – a confirmed rum-lover – has recently discovered the merits of bourbon as well. I’m thrilled that [...]

I’ve written about variations on the Corpse Reviver No. 2 before, but just recently happened across another one that’s worth mentioning: the Sunflower Cocktail. Created by Sam Ross of New York’s Milk & Honey, it’s a straight-up substitution – akin to a “minimal pair” in phonology – replacing only the Lillet with St. Germain elderflower liqueur. St. Germain [...]

In pretty much any field of experience, there are signals you can send to let other people know that you’re part of the “in” crowd. In the cocktail world, it sometimes involves ordering specific drinks, or drinks that feature specific ingredients, which are usually trendy, obscure, or both. This is often referred to as a [...]