Cocktail Recipes for You to Ponder (and Make) This Thanksgiving

The Biscotti Manhattan offers a hint of the famous Italian cookie, with notes of cocoa and cherries. Perfect with Bacon-wrapped Apricots.

We are the proud yet ashamed owners of cocktail recipes scribbled across stacks of mismatched scratch papers, napkins, business cards, index cards, menus, and the ubiquitous Post-Its. We call them strays. As Thanksgiving approaches, we decided to shed ourselves of things that do not or no longer give us joy. Scraps of paper are those things. So before tossing them into the wastebasket of thwarted dreams, we decided to publish a few recipes that actually sounded good. Invite one of these strays over for Thanksgiving. Feel free to substitute whatever you see fit, or better fits with what you have on your shelf. Don’t have Dubonnet rouge, then substitute a sweet vermouth or another quinquina. Try them all up or on the rocks with a splash of soda. We hope you enjoy experimenting behind the bar (and in the kitchen) as much as we do. Here’s to you and all the fun you bring to flavor.

Fall Pear Manhattan
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 ounce bourbon
1/2 ounce pear liqueur
1/2 ounce Dubonnet rouge
dash whiskey bitters
1/4 teaspoon Velvet Falernum
pear slice, as garnish

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Add garnish.

Biscotti Manhattan
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces bourbon
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1/2 ounce Faretti Biscotti Famosi liqueur
1 dash mole bitters
maraschino or brandied cherry, as garnish

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Add garnish.

The Biscotti Manhattan pairs perfectly with Bacon-wrapped apricots with fresh sage. So easy to make, yet the rewards are infinite.

Bacon-wrapped Apricots with Sage
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
package quality bacon
package unsulfured dried apricots
bunch fresh sage

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover baking tray completely with parchment paper, so that it hangs a little over the sides. If apricots do not seem bite-size, cut in half. Cut bacon slices into thirds. Wrap bacon slice around apricot piece and place on parchment, seam-side down. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until bacon has reached desired doneness.

Pair them with any of the cocktails on this page, or with a William Tell All cocktail or a ’69 cocktail for a “Perfect Pairing.”

Maple–Rye Highball
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/4 ounces rye
1/2 ounce Sortilège maple liqueur
2 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6
maple water, carbonated

Method
Shake for 15 seconds in ice. Strain into chilled glasses and top with maple water.

Dutch Negroni
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 ounce genever gin (we used Bols)
1 ounce Aperol
1 ounce sweet vermouth (we used Martini & Rossi)
dash camomile tincture
orange peel, expressed and rubbed around rim

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Add garnish.

Gin and Aperol
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces G’Vine Floraison gin
1 ounce Aperol
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/4 ounce Galliano l’Autentico
1 dash Boker’s bitters

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Add garnish.

Golden Bees
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 ounce bourbon
1/ ounce Berentzen Bushel & Barrel
1/2 ounce goldwasser
dash Boker’s bitters

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Add garnish.

❤ ❤ ❤

Even if you never make any of these tantalizing concoctions or nibbles, we hope they inspired some of your own ideas. Share them with us.

photos © Cocktail Buzz

Three Winter Cocktails, Two Warm, One Frosty, To Get You Out of the Rut You’re Probably In

Orange, tarragon, and vanilla: these are the flavors at the fore of the cachaça-based

O Sonho de Paulo.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by these extraordinary cocktails.

Okay. We can’t attribute this entire quotation to Shakespeare; but our amendment to the opening of “Richard III” suggests that when the winter doldrums have gotten you down, some fine tippling of superb drinks can bring the warmth of summer back into your life. We hear you say this winter hasn’t been such a bad one. That may be true for our neck of the woods, but as our planet shifts meteorologically into uncharted territory on a global level, we can feel safe and secure knowing that at least a well-crafted cocktail can calm our nerves.

So we’ll celebrate this strangeness of wintertime with three somewhat-strange cocktails, one from our hands, one from from a newish Williamsburg, Brooklyn, establishment that knows how to craft a supremely sippable wintertime drink (and some small plates of deliciousness to accompany it), and the third from a posh Midtown Manhattan restaurant mixologist.

Our first cocktail is one we came up with a few years back. We have no idea why we didn’t publish it sooner since we turn to it every time we crave some fresh-squeezed orange juice, which usually happens every winter. The cachaça in it makes it a little exotic, along with the tarragon-infused vodka, but we think that once you take the time to make this drink, you’ll keep all of its ingredients on your home bar shelf, or cabinet, or sideboard—wherever it is you allow your spirits to rest. It all comes down to the flavor. Imagine a creamsicle, but for adults only. The burnished sweetness of the cachaça and the anise flavors of tarragon mitigate the all-out vanilla yumminess of the Licor 43. An orange wheel touches your lips every time you sip and keeps the crushed ice in your glass. We call it O Sonho de Paulo, Portuguese for Paul’s Dream.

O Sonho de Paulo
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces cachaça
1/2 ounces tarragon-infused vodka*
1 ounce Licor 43 (or other vanilla liqueur)
1 ounce orange juice,

orange wheel, as garnish

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into double-rocks glass or goblet filled with crushed ice. Garnish with thin orange wheel.

* Tarragon-Infused Vodka
2 cups vodka
12 tarragon sprigs

In an airtight container, add 12 tarragon sprigs for every 2 cups of vodka. Let infuse for at least three days and up to five days (the longer you wait, the stronger the anise-grassy flavor), shaking the container at least once a day. Strain into another airtight container and label.

❤ ❤ ❤

Where we drank and dined at Betto. A small plate concept restaurant and bar, Betto graces the hipster streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with satisfying food and cocktails.

Last week we spent a night noshing on small plates and sipping well-crafted cocktails at Betto in Williamsburg with our lovely friends Tony, Jim, and Brooke. It was Tony’s birthday, and we had originally tried to get in to Fette Sau, but, lucky for us, it was overcrowded with what seemed like a Brooklyn geek pork-lovers convention mixed with some hotspot-seeking out-of-neighborhooders who caught the whiff of this popular BBQ joint. But enough of that. Let’s focus on Betto. Even though we feel that the small plates concept of dining has peeked and is now slouching towards back-lash territory, Betto seems to defy all odds and offers creative, seasonal fare, but with specials that are dinner-plate sized as well. Case in point: the pork shop slathered in a sage butter. What made chef Jason Denton’s chop so special was its level of doneness (slightly pink), and its saltiness (a little above average, to coax out the porky, sagy goodness). From the small, tapas-style plates we munched on, the roasted acorn squash with pepitas and the pillowy meatballs reigned supreme. We also could have eaten a whole bowl of the spaghetti with tomato (we had this dish separate from the meatballs for our non-mammal-eating friend), very al dente, bursting with umami savoriness.

Paul’s drink piqued everyone’s curiosity because of its ingredients and temperature: The Westburns cocktail boasted strangely both Breuckelen gin (a one-of-a-kind gin that’s a cross between a malty genever and a botanical traditional-style gin, made right here in one of the creative hubs of the universe) and Four Roses Bourbon (one of our favorites, especially the Single Barrel). But what made it unique was the hot water added once all the other ingredients (sweet vermouth, sugar, muddled orange slice and maraschino cherry) were mixed together. Imagine an old-fashioned toddy. It was love at first sip. Matt Carr, the man behind the stick who helped create this exquisite concoction, was kind enough to write out the recipe for us. Now you can enjoy it too.

The Westburns
(created by Matt Carr and Brittany Rogers, Betto)

Ingredients
1 ounce Four Roses bourbon
1 ounce Breuckelen gin (or another genever gin)
1/2 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters #6
1 raw sugar cube
1 orange slice
1 maraschino cherry
5 ounces hot water

Method
In a double-rocks glass, add the fruit, sugar cube, and bitters. Muddle. Add the booze and hot water. Stir and serve.

❤ ❤ ❤

Feel a little chill? Then make one of these Latin Lavas, hot-buttered rum at it very best. The secret: Santa Teresa 1796 aged rum.

We both recently attended another fabulous Hanna Lee Communications cocktail-and-food event at Michael’s New York, where mixologist Michael Flannery came up with the perfect hot-buttered rum drink he dubbed the Latin Lava. Made with the divine Santa Teresa 1796, from Venezuela’s oldest rum producer, this brew was considered a favorite by the cocktail cognoscenti there to support the brand, taste chef Kyung Up Lim’s take on Korean street food (yummy!!!), and see Hanna Lee tango. It was quite a spectacle. In fact, a night to remember.

The Latin Lava
(created by Michael Flannery, Michael’s New York)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Santa Teresa 1796 rum
1/2 ounce Marie Brizzard anisette liqueur
1 pat housemade compound butter*
4 ounces hot cider
cinnamon stick, as garnish

Method
Add hot cider to melt a pat of butter in an Irish coffee mug. Once the butter is melted, add rum and anisette liqueur. Serve with cinnamon stick.

* We’re not sure what additions were a part of the compound butter, but warming holiday spices, such as cinnamon, seemed to be included. Check out what’s in your spice rack, and if it sounds like it would go with hot cider, then go ahead and mix it in with your butter.

O Sonho de Paulo photo by Steve Schul © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz; Betto photo by Noah Fecks; Latin Lava photo coutsey Hanna Lee Communications

Bitters Is Better: The Bitter Truth Mingles with Bols Genever at Clover Club

Four down, five to go, but Paul’s just sipping this time.

Let me start by saying that, although I very much wanted to, I did not even come close to finishing the nine cocktails served to me at the recent Bols Genever Classic Cocktail Series: The Influence of Bitters. Even though bringing each coupe to my lips was like tasting history, I only took two sips of each drink (three if I really liked it), and gently pushed them away from me as I listened to the estimable Stephan Berg, who cohelms The Bitter Truth company in Germany. He began his presentation, behind the bar at Brooklyn’s newish classic cocktail hot spot Clover Club, by saying, “I’ll tell you anything you’d like to know . . . except the recipe for The Bitter Truth.” For those of you not familiar with The Bitter Truth, Stephan Berg and business partner Alexander Hauck travel around the globe promoting their excellent line of cocktail bitters (Steve and I have two in our collection: Orange and Celery). They are amazingly balanced, well-crafted bitters, and have spiced up cocktails throughout the free, drinking world for several years now. Germany, which once only had Angostura bitters available, now has a host of flavoring agents to be proud of. While at the event, I was lucky enough to try the hard-to-find, small-batch Jerry Thomas’s “Own Decanter Bitters,” A piquant blend of citrus fruits and clove, derived from a recipe from the 19th century’s master bartender, Jerry Thomas. A truly masterly concoction. (I even got to try a Holland’s Pride Cocktail, made with the extinct Boker’s bitters—a rare treat, indeed!)

Holland's Pride
(adapted by Stephan Berg, mixed by Brian Miller)

Ingredients
2 ounces Bols Genever
1 ounce dry vermouth
1/4 ounce simple syrup
2 dashes The Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas bitters
1 dash absinthe

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe.


Stephan Berg shares cocktailiana with his rapt audience.

We began sipping bartender extraordinaire Brian Miller’s take on one of the first published cocktails, the Brandy Cocktail, a simple and flavorful classic, and then moved into cocktails highlighting Genever, an old-school maltwine-based gin that Bols has reintroduced to the world in the form of a smoky-gray bottle containing this unique spirit (the smell reminds one of yeasty, fresh-baked bread). Bols rep Tal Nadari had explained to us in his opening remarks the history of Bols Genever and its reemergence into the world of cocktailiana, and now we were about to taste Genever in action with our second sipper, the Gin Cocktail . The Genever truly is a revelation, closer in flavor profile to a dry whiskey than a London dry gin. Just adding a dash of bitters, some curaçao, and some simple syrup to create the Gin Cocktail was only the racehorse out of the starting gate. I couldn’t wait to see what drinks would come out next, and which ones would be my favorites.

Brandy Cocktail
(adapted by Stephan Berg, mixed by Brian Miller)


Ingredients
2 ounces brandy
1/4 ounce simple syrup
1/8 ounce orange curaçao
2 dashes The Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas bitters

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a lemon twist.



Those that did stand out were the early Martinez Cocktail (a Manhattan essentially, but with Genever substituting for whiskey), the early Martini Cocktail (not to be confused with a current-day bone-dry Martini—this one contains Old Tom gin, a sweeter and mellower cousin of Genever, and a dash of absinthe), and the Bamboo Cocktail (a mix of dry vermouth, sherry, orange and aromatic bitters, garnished with an olive).

Martinez (19th c.)
(adapted by Stephan Berg, mixed by Brian Miller)

Ingredients
2 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Bols Genever gin
1/8 ounce orange curaçao
4 dashes Angostura bitters

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe.

Martini (19th c.)
(adapted by Stephan Berg, mixed by Brian Miller)

Ingredients
1 ounce Old Tom gin
1 ounce dry vermouth
1/4 ounce simple syrup
1/8 ounce absinthe
3 dashes The Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas bitters*

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a cherry, olive, or lemon twist.

Bamboo Cocktail
(adapted by Stephan Berg, mixed by Brian Miller)

Ingredients
1 ounce dry vermouth
3/4 ounce oloroso sherry
2 dashes orange bitters
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a lemon twist.

❤ ❤ ❤

During the seminar, we listened to Stephan expound the different eras of the cocktail, backed up by a photo presentation (my favorite: an old snap of bitterly stern Temperance Movement ladies underneath the banner “Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Not Touch Ours”—the poor dears looked as though they had never been touched by anyone, or anything, except perhaps the catarrh). It was comforting to see some familiar faces at this event, such as those attached to the able bodies of Erik Ellestad (Underhill-Lounge), Joaquin Simo (Death & Co., and one of Playboy Magazine’s top 10 bartenders of the year), Jonathan Pogash (The Cocktail Guru), Zachary Sharaga (Louis 649), Michael Anstendig (food and lifestyle writer), Francine Cohen (Food & Beverage Magazine), and Dave Wondrich (Imbibe!, the book).


Giuseppe Gonzalez, head bartender at Clover Club, and Tal Nadari, the man behind the bols Genever Classic Cocktail Series.

And it was equally delightful to meet some new comrades, especially the two amicable gentlemen sitting next to me: Giuseppe Gonzalez (the head bartender at Clover Club), and Chris Stanley (Foodbuzz Featured Publisher, An Exercise in Hospitality); also Greg Boehm (mastermind behind the re-release of classic cocktail books from MudPuddle Books), and the charming Julie Reiner, the lady with her finger on the pulse of the Cocktail Renaissance and owner of Clover Club. Without her help (and gorgeous bar), and the talents of Stephan, Tal, and Brian, I would not have been able to spend a sybaritic afternoon in my favorite place on Earth—Brooklyn—with some of the nicest folk around. Here’s to Bols Genever, The Bitter Truth, and Clover Club. Cheers and Bottoms Up.



P.S. My slight hangover the next morning was only cured later in the evening by a cocktail at the new Prospect Heights bar, Cornelius. Good luck and welcome to the ’hood.

* Because the Jerry Thomas bitters is difficult to come by, you can substitute it for another bitters, such as Regan's Orange Bitter No. 6, or perhaps a combination of Angostura and The Bitter Truth Orange Bitters (you want both citrus and spice flavors). —Cocktail Buzz

photos © Cocktail Buzz