Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients: Rye or bourbon, lemon juice, cinnamon simple, bitters, apple garnish
Gear: Cocktail glass, shaker, strainer, ice
Pre-enjoyment preparations: Make cinnamon simple syrup, squeeze lemons
Flavor Profile: Like autumn in a glass.

Ingredients:
1.5 ounces bourbon (or rye)
1.5 ounces of good apple cider
0.5 ounces fresh-squeezed lemon juice
0.5 ounces cinnamon simple syrup (instructions below)
Angostura bitters
Apple as garnish

Introducing The Whiskey Thankful

Following TRB’s Foolproof Thanksgiving Wine Guide, we are serving up a handful of festive and easy-to-make cocktails, starting with the Whiskey Thankful.

This recipe is a riff on a simple drink we discovered last month as the first crisp fall breezes blew into town. The original recipe called for whiskey, apple cider, maple syrup, and bitters. The resulting cocktail was good but somewhat flat. It was all sweetness and spice, yet empty in the middle.

The drink was out of balance.

To fix this, we added fresh lemon juice to increase the acidity. The lemon juice filled out the center, bringing additional body and firmness to the resulting cocktail. Without the additional citric acid, the drink is too soft, like a flat cola.

Finally, we swapped out the store-bought maple syrup for homemade cinnamon simple syrup. The cinnamon brings baking spice notes to the party, which complements the flavors of apple cider and bourbon.

Let’s Make Cinnamon Simple Syrup

Making simple syrup couldn’t be easier. Simple is right there in the name. Make it ahead of time so that it’s readily available for use. Try some in your coffee, over ice cream, or with pancakes. Or find other interesting places to drizzle it. Just remember: you have company coming.

To make the syrup, add one cup each of granulated sugar and water to a small saucepan and heat on medium until it simmers and the sugar has dissolved.

Reduce to low, add 2-3 sticks of cinnamon, and continue to simmer for 30-60 minutes. Simmer is the keyword here—we’re aiming for low and slow. Too much heat, and you’ll end up making cinnamon caramels, and that’s a discussion for another newsletter.

When the syrup cools, bottle it and store it in the fridge. Restaurant-style squeeze bottles are perfect for storing and dispensing simple syrups.

What kind of cinnamon should you use? You can get standard cinnamon sticks at the grocery store or get the good stuff online like we did. We enjoyed the depth of flavor from these Ceylon cinnamon sticks, and it’s hard to beat the price.

(Note: in a pinch, you can use ground cinnamon, though you should stir it well—it doesn’t dissolve easily. Gritty syrup ain’t good syrup, and you don’t want that floating around the bottom of your cocktail. Use 2-3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon to replace 2-3 cinnamon sticks. )

Recipe and Step-by-Step Instructions

Prerequisites:

1. Squeeze those lemons. Fresh lemon juice is so much better than the bitter nastiness we find in pre-bottled lemon juice. Avoid “bitter cocktail face” and take a few minutes to squeeze your own. A good-sized lemon should produce about an ounce of lemon juice, which should be enough for two cocktails. Squeeze ahead of time and store your fresh juice in the refrigerator.
   

2. Make the cinnamon simple syrup. You’ve probably already made your cinnamon simple ahead of time, so grab it from the ‘fridge.
   

Initial Set-up:

1. Grab two small plates or saucers.

2. Pour a small amount of your cinnamon simple syrup onto one plate.

3. Sprinkle granulated sugar onto the second plate.

4. To rim your cocktail glasses, dip the rim of each glass into the plate with the cinnamon simple syrup and then into the sugar. We like to rim half of the glass, but rim the entire edge if you like!

Make the cocktail:
(Amounts below are per-cocktail)

1.5 ounces bourbon (or rye if you prefer)
1.5 ounces apple cider (fresh is best)
0.5 ounces fresh-squeezed lemon juice
0.5 ounces cinnamon simple syrup
Angostura bitters
Apple as garnish

1. After your glasses are prepped, add all ingredients to a Boston Shaker. We generally use two shakes of bitters per cocktail.

2. Add ice.

3. Assemble both halves of the shaker and shake briskly for 15 seconds.

4. Strain into a sugar-rimmed cocktail glass.

5. Garnish with an apple slice (or get fancy with an apple fan as pictured.)

6. Enjoy!

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Folks, let’s talk turkey.

The phrase literally means “let’s talk honestly and openly.” And if we’re being open and honest, the item on your Thanksgiving Day Menu that you put the least amount of thought into is the wine.

Right?

You have the entire menu planned out. You’ve already procured your turkey, know which sides you’re making, and know what dishes the guests are bringing. But the wine? Oh, just plop down a bottle and be done with it.

If you’re a guest invited to dinner, you may be thinking about bringing a bottle. Maybe you’ve asked The Google and were served up one of a million different sites with recommendations that look suspiciously similar.

Whether host or guest, when it comes time to procure your Thanksgiving wine, the small sliver of confidence provided by that cursory Google search fades like winter twilight when you’re faced with an endless row of bottles mocking your Turkey Day purchasing efforts. The labels stare into the depths of your soul in recognition that you have no idea what to buy! You’ve been exposed as a wine fraud and shall be promptly dispatched to the light beer aisle with a sneer!

[Editor’s note: dial it back a little, Ferguson—you’re going off the deep end.]

Whatever, dude.

Regardless! The Reluctant Bartender’s Thanksgiving Wine Buying Guide is here to help. Thanksgiving is a holiday that lasts all day and has distinct phases. Unlike, say, Christmas Day—which is mainly focused on the activities of the morning—Thanksgiving starts early and ends late. We’ve broken Thanksgiving Day into four essential phases with corresponding wine recommendations, each with a spectrum of pricing options.

Your friends here at The Reluctant Bartender will never cast you asunder in the wine aisle of your local liquor mega-mart, abandoning you with enough questions to stuff a thousand turkeys! Alas, no!

[Editor: you’re doing it again…]

Ahem…as I was saying.

Our goal is to arm you with enough info to put quality wines on your table this Thanksgiving—wines that will enhance your day, from breakfast through to dinner and dessert.

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A Few Quick Notes

Recommending specific wines and vintages can be difficult due to regional variations in availability. We tried to select wines that should be available at any decent liquor/wine/beer store, but there is no guarantee. Knowing this, we have made multiple recommendations for each category in the hope that at least one will be available. If, for some reason, none of the recommended bottles are available, don’t hesitate to ask for help. A reputable wine merchant should be able to point you to something similar in your price range.

Make sure you’re going to a decent liquor store. The package store or 7-11 down the street probably won’t meet your needs, even if it appears that they have a lot of wine. Go the extra ten minutes out of your way to a store with a better selection.

Finally, while we have provided links to Total Wine in the sections below, these are for reference only. You can order from Total Wine, but we are not affiliated with them and receive no compensation should you choose to do so.

Estimated pricing will vary; prices at your local store will almost certainly differ, but hopefully, these are decent ballpark estimates.

Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er.

Thanksgiving Morning

Turn on the parade, fire up the holiday tunes, and put breakfast on the table! What wines go best with breakfast? Bubbles, baby. Mimosas and other bubbly cocktails are a great choice for Thanksgiving morning, and sparkling wines are festive, tasty, and relatively low in alcohol.

TRB recommends Prosecco for Mimosas and other bubbly morning drinks. Sure, you can fancy-up the proceedings with Champagne, but since we’re mixing these wines with ingredients like orange juice, we may as well choose something less expensive.

Prosecco is Italy’s answer to Champagne and is made in large quantities in steel tanks to keep the cost low (this method is literally called the tank method). By comparison, the bubbles in Champagne are created in the bottle via a more time-consuming and expensive process. Prosecco is the perfect sparkling wine mixer—inexpensive, readily available, and not so fancy that you’ll feel guilty about mixing it.

Prosecco Recommendations

La Marca Prosecco, est. $19

La Luca Prosecco, est. $13

While both La Marca and La Luca are good choices, we prefer La Marca if the price is close, but we’ll happily reach for La Luca if it’s significantly less expensive, especially when buying multiple bottles.

Alternatives

Cava is a good alternate choice if you can’t find Prosecco. A decent entry-level Cava is Dibon Brut, which cost us $14 locally (the linked Total Wine price of $9 a bottle is a good deal if you can find it). If you opt for a Cava, aim for an entry-level bottle that is relatively young and unaged.

Remember, at this price point, these wines aren’t sippers but rather mixers. However, if you want to sip on any of these, feel free! These aren’t life-changing sparkling wines, but they’re all fine for sipping while enjoying pancakes and bacon on Thanksgiving morning.

Avoid: Champagne (due to the cost) and sparking Rosés (better for drinking by themselves rather than mixing.)

Thanksgiving Afternoon: Football Games and Holiday Movies

Breakfast has been cleared, and now it’s time for the grand holiday tradition of Thanksgiving football. Or maybe you're not a fan of The Sportsball and prefer to watch a holiday movie. Either way, Thanksgiving afternoon is prime wine-consumption time! We want something light, relatively low in alcohol, but with a celebratory kick.

It’s getting cold outside, so we’ll avoid the light and sunny porch-pounders of summer and focus on wines to make your Thanksgiving afternoon festive.

Afternoon Sparkling Wines

As we move into the afternoon, we’re moving away from the sparkling mixers used for breakfast. These are the sippers. Serve cold in a champagne flute or coupe.

Iron Horse Classic Vintage Brut, 2019, est. $56
A little pricey, but worth it. There’s loads of character in this wine, and it’s guaranteed to enhance a Lions game—or the 35th time you’ve seen Elf. Iron Horse is one of our favorite wineries in California, and we’re always happy to recommend their wines.

Iron Horse Wedding Cuvee, est. $30
Despite the name, this is not just for weddings, folks. A great value at $30.

Roederer Estate Brut, est. $30
Another great sparking wine from a well-known California producer.

Chandon Rose´ California Sparkling Wine, est. $22
Perhaps switch things up a little with this sparkling Rose´ from Napa Valley. If you prefer the non-Rose´ version, you can save yourself a coupla bucks and go with the Chandon Brut Sparkling Wine for $19.

Still Wines for the Afternoon

We covered the bubbles, but if your preference is for still wines—or maybe you’d like to offer both—here are some suggestions.

Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, 2024, est. $16
Don’t let the French name scare you! This is a fun, easy drinker. As is the tradition with French wines, Beaujolais is named after the location where it is produced. “Nouveau” indicates that the wine is new or young. These young wines are released on the third Thursday of November each year. Beaujolais Nouveau can be enjoyed without food—perfect for a Thanksgiving afternoon when you’re not having a big lunch—yet they pair well with mid-afternoon snacks. We particularly enjoyed this wine and found the aromas of sour cherries and pear drop candy to be fun. (Tasting note: Pear drops are British candy that tastes like, well, ripe pears and is a signature aroma found in Beaujolais Nouveau wines. Buy and bag and enjoy.)

La Vielle Ferme, Rose´, est. $11
A light, tasty rose´ wine from the Rhone Valley, France. This wine has bright acidity balanced with fruit that reminds us of white peach and perhaps a little strawberry. This is not a sweet wine, but it has a nice, fruity punch. A great value at $11, but if you can find it for the Total Wine price of of $6.99—well, that’s a steal. We really enjoyed this one.

Francis Coppola, Diamond Collection, Rose´ of Pinot Noir, 2022, est. $15
This rose´ has more body but is still a light drinker, accented with red fruits and a touch of blood orange. (Link to Coppola wines for reference. Coppola wines are distributed widely so you should be able to find this rose´ without too much difficulty.)

Michelle’s Idea: To kick off the day's celebration, greet your guests with a welcome pour as they arrive. Any of these wines, including the still and sparkling recommended here, can be used as Welcome Wines!

Dinner!

It’s dinnertime, and hopefully, you aren’t too sloshed. The turkey is ready to be carved, the taters are on the table, and it’s time to sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Someone pass me the cranberry sauce…

Here are some wines to pair with traditional Thanksgiving menus that include turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

Pinot Noir

Pinot Noir is a great choice for Thanksgiving. It is an earthy, medium-bodied wine with notes of cherry and cranberry. Pinot Noirs feature moderate levels of acidity and relatively lower amounts of tannins (compared to a Cabernet Sauvignon, for example.) This makes them a good choice to pair with lean meats like turkey, which do not have the fat content of beef.

Have you ever wondered why cranberry sauce is so good with Thanksgiving dinner? The answer lies in the bright acidity of the cranberries which cuts through the buttery mashed potatoes, the delicious gravy, and the creamy green bean casserole your aunt brought.

Pinot Noir acts in much the same way. The wine's acids clear your palate to make way for more taters and turkey, and the flavors of Pinot complement a traditional Thanksgiving menu.

Below is a range of recommended Pinots to fit any budget. We would be happy to have any of these wines on our table at Thanksgiving:

• Merry Edwards Pinot Noir, Sonoma, CA, 2019, est. $74

• Joseph Phelps Freestone Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast, CA, est. $67

• Bouchaine Pinot Noir, Carneros, CA, est. $34

• Decoy Pinot Noir Limited, Sonoma Coast, CA, est. $26

• Decoy Pinot Noir, Andersen Valley, CA, est. $19

Beaujolais

Earlier, we recommended a Beaujolais Nouveau as a mid-afternoon easy drinker, but other Beaujolais wines pair wonderfully with food. Beaujolais wines are graded into three tiers: Beaujolais, Beaujolais-Villages, and Beaujolais Cru.

Wines labeled Beaujolais can come from anywhere in the region. Beaujolais-Villages wines must come from one of the specific villages in the region. Beaujolais Cru wines must come from one of the ten Crus-designated areas of Beaujolais. The Crus are the premier growing regions of Beaujolais, with the best soils, sunlight, and drainage, producing the best possible grapes.

While sampling Beaujolais wines for this newsletter, we came across two good ones, a Beaujolais-Villages and a Cru from Brouilly.

• Mary Taylor Marine Descombes, Beaujolais Villages, 2021, est. $18

• Bonne Neige, Beaujolais, Brouilly, France, 2021, est. $19

Both of these wines are delicious and will go great with Thanksgiving dinner. Of all the wines listed here, these two may be the most difficult to find at your local wine store. But don’t worry, the French have you covered—their wine classification system means it’s easy to find a quality wine from the region.

When comparing the two wines above, we preferred Bonne Neige, the more prestigious Cru-level wine, and would gladly pay the extra dollar per bottle for the Cru wine versus the Villages wine. If pricing at your local store is similar, grab the Cru version.

Chardonnay

Thanksgiving is an opportunity to have both red and white wines on the table. While many white wines go well with a traditional Thanksgiving menu, we feel Chardonnay is a great choice and has a range of pricing options to suit different budgets.

Chardonnay is a versatile grape that can be made in both still and sparkling styles (for example, Blanc de Blanc Champagnes are made from Chardonnay grapes). Chardonnay wines may be aged in different varieties of oak or produced in an “un-oaked” style that utilizes stainless steel tanks instead of wood barrels.

Chardonnay wines that have been aged in a large proportion of new American oak barrels can often take on a buttery flavor that we do not appreciate here at The Reluctant Bartender. We prefer our Chardonnays to be lean and less oaky. A touch of oak is always welcome; movie theater popcorn flavors are not.

Of course, this is just our opinion, and if you happen to like your Chardonnays on the buttery side of the continuum, we will not stand in your way. There are many buttery Chards out there, and lots of them say so right on the label. Un-oaked versions are available too, though there will not be as wide of a selection available.

The following Chardonnays will go great with your Thanksgiving dinner; we have tried them all multiple times, and we can guarantee that none of your guests will go home gossiping about the buttery cougar juice you served with the turkey.

• Rochioli Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, CA, 2023, est. $69

• Ramey Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, CA, 2021, est. $49

• Gary Farrell Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, CA, 2019, est. $44

• Trefethen Chardonnay, Oak Knoll, CA, est. $32

• Decoy Chardonnay, Sonoma County, CA, est. $19

What About Non-Traditional Thanksgiving Pairings?

For those who may be replacing or otherwise supplementing the traditional Thanksgiving menu, how does this impact the wine selection?

Great question!

If your menu includes a pork roast or similar dish, the wines above should work well. Pork has more fat than turkey, but it’s not as rich as many beef dishes. However, if you’re smoking ribs for Thanksgiving, then I have to ask: where is my invite? If you are smoking ribs or a brisket, go grab yourself a Seghesio Zinfandel from Sonoma, and enjoy that wine pairing.

If you’re serving a beef tenderloin or similar beef dish, you’ll want a bigger wine like a Merlot or Cabernet. Any wine store can make decent Cab recommendations, so let’s take a look at some Merlots instead:

• Trefethen Merlot, Oak Knoll, CA, 2021, est. $50

• Gundlach Bundshu Merlot, Sonoma County, CA, est. $35

• Rodney Strong Merlot, Sonoma County, CA, est. $19

• Decoy Merlot, California, est. $19

Thanksgiving Evening

Dinner may be finished, but the day is far from over. There is more football, more movies to be watched, and more discussions to be had—just make sure to avoid all mentions of politics, okay?

Bellies are full, but the desserts are set out for perusal, and yes, there’s plenty of opportunity for interesting wine pairings here at the sweeter end of the day.

It’s difficult to anticipate what may be on the table for dessert, so we’ll choose three common examples and offer possible pairings. There is one thing to keep in mind when pairing wine with sweets: the wine should be as sweet as, or sweeter than the food. In other words, a bone-dry, tannic red is probably not going to pair well with sweets, no matter how many times high-end chocolate companies insist otherwise.

Got it?

Coolio.

Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is sweet and velvety but also spicy and earthy. To complement the spice notes, try a Tawny Port.

• Fonseca 20 Year Tawny Porto, Portugal, est. $65

• Graham’s 10 Year Tawny Port, Portugal, est. $38

• Taylor Fladgate 10 Year Tawny Port, Portugal, est. $28

Apple Pie

While the Tawny port above may pair fine with apple pie, the bright flavor of tart baked apples would be better suited with a dessert wine made from white grapes. One of our favorites is a French dessert wine called Sauternes.

• Chateau D'Yquem Sauternes, 2021 (375ml), Bordeaux, France, est. $225

• Chateau Doisy Daene Sauternes, 2021 (375ml), Bordeaux, France, est. $38

• Ch Bastor-Lamontagne Sauternes, 2011, (375ml), Bordeaux, FR, est. $29

Anything Chocolate

For those serving chocolate cream pie, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, etc. a great choice is a sweet Sherry called Pedro Ximenez (one of our all-time favorite dessert wine styles.)

• Alvear Pedro Ximenez Solera 1927 Sherry, Spain, est. $35

• Mil Pesetas Pedro Ximenez, Spain, est. $18

Parting Thoughts

• The sparkling and white wines should be served chilled. The reds can mostly be served at room temperature or slightly below (just don’t serve them warm). One exception: the Beaujolais Nouveau. This is a lighter red that is best served chilled. Stick it in the ‘fridge for 45 minutes and let it cool off a bit.

• Good wine glasses go a long way toward enjoying wine. Really, it’s true! You don’t have to buy those exact glasses we linked—there are lots of economical options—but our advice is to avoid stemless wine glasses. The stem is functional and is there to prevent your hands from warming the wine.

• Proper stoppers are critical for saving sparkling wines. Don’t just cram a cork in the bottle. The pressure can build up, causing the cork to fly out and possibly injure someone. Wine and physical injuries never pair well.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to our faithful readers. Enjoy your time with family and friends, and keep an eye out for some Thanksgiving cocktail ideas in the coming days.

Post your questions below, and we’ll get to them ASAP.

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Difficulty: Easy/Medium
Ingredients: Gin, fresh lemon juice, honey syrup
Gear: Shaker, fruit juicer, mesh strainer, jigger, bar spoon, cocktail glasses, ice
Flavor Profile: Citrus forward, sweet, light but with depth
Countdown to Enjoyment: 10 minutes

Ingredients:
2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce honey syrup (recipe below)
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice 

(Scroll down for recipe and instructions.)

Introducing the Bee’s Knees

We here at The Reluctant Bartender are often fascinated by the history behind the food and drinks we enjoy. Particularly fascinating are those moments when food or drink are the drivers of social, political, or economic change.

Think, the Boston Tea Party. Or, the French Revolution. Or, New Coke.

Or, Prohibition.

That’s right, Prohibition, the grand experiment of cancel culture gone awry. That sad 13 year period when the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol was illegal in the U.S. Ironically, Prohibition and The Roaring Twenties overlapped, which doesn’t seem to make sense at first blush. The mental images associated with Prohibition and The Roaring Twenties don’t align in any way: police dumping hooch in the sewers and taking axes to barrels of wine rub coarsely against images of flappers dancing to jazz in lavish nightclubs.

The Roaring Twenties

As the 1920’s dawned, Americans were ready to par-tay. World War I was over, and the country was in an era of peace and economic prosperity. The decade boomed and there was an explosion of art and culture around the world. It was the Jazz Age, the days of Gatsby and art deco. The world was crazy for movies, telephone, radio, automobiles and aviation.

And alcohol.

Can you even imagine trying to eliminate the sale and distribution of alcohol during this time? Perhaps the government’s brazen attempt to limit access caused an increase in demand that further fueled the fires of the decade? Hard to say.

We’d be remiss if we failed to mention the Flappers, those young women—absolute icons of the Roaring Twenties—who cast off the conservative ideals of the day, and chose to wear short skirts, drink, smoke, and dance The Charleston.

Flapper culture helped to popularize idiomatic expressions such as “the cat’s pajamas” and “the bee’s knees,” two terms that mean the best of the best.

It is during this time in American history that we see the rise of a cocktail known as the Bee’s Knees. We here at TRB have never tasted bathtub gin, but we imagine it was best not to notice the flavor of the spirit. It makes sense that citrus and honey would be brought to bear in an effort to hide the flavor of bootlegger gin, crafted in dank basements by low-level members of organized crime mobs.

Thankfully high quality, craft gin is readily available these days and excellent examples of regional honey are available at everyone’s local supermarket.

Let’s whip up a few rounds and see if the Bee’s Knees really is the cat’s pajamas.

Notes on how to make the Bee’s Knees

Our guiding principle here at The Reluctant Bartender is simplicity. Up until now, our recipes have been fairly simple yet classic concoctions with a handful of ingredients that were stirred together (such as the Manhattan or the Martini).

The Bee’s Knees requires us to create a honey syrup ahead of time, but listen—we’re going to make the process super easy. We know that some our readers are reluctant bartenders specifically because of the complexity often required to fashion drinks like you see at your local cocktail bar, so we will always strive to simplify.

Alas, fret not fearless followers!

While the Bee’s Knees requires a touch of prep, you won’t be tied-up in your kitchen making fancy foams, or emulsions, or any such nonsense. All we need to do is have access to some fresh lemons, and take a few minutes to prepare our honey syrup.

Why Syrup?

This is the first cocktail introduced here at TRB that is sweetened using a syrup. The Old Fashioned was sweetened using a muddled sugar cube. The addition of Vermouth brought sweetness and body to the Manhattan. There are several ways to bring a desired level of sweetness to a drink. Simple syrups are one way to sweeten a cocktail, add body, and in some cases bring additional flavors to the party.

We’re big fans of using homemade syrups for cocktails because most of them are easy to prepare, and bring a lot of flavor and texture to the resulting cocktail. In the case of the honey syrup we’re using here, the syrup brings both sweetness and depth-of-flavor with minimal effort on your part—a tradeoff we’re willing to make for exceptional home cocktails.

A regular simple syrup is just equal parts sugar and water. As we progress along our cocktail journey, we’ll run into syrups that are flavored with fruits like blueberries, or spices like cinnamon, but the core recipe remains a 1:1 ratio of water and sugar. These syrups are normally prepared on the stove, but we are going to take a shortcut here to simplify the assembly process.

Honey syrup is similar to standard simple syrup, but instead of sugar it’s made with a 1:1 ratio of honey and water. Because honey is more easily dissolved in water than granulated sugar, we can shorten the prep time by making use of everyone’s favorite kitchen shortcut: the microwave.

This is all part of our progression. Sure, the Bee’s Knees requires slightly more prep but it’s tiny step that yields a significant jump forward in taste complexity.

A little extra effort for a lot more flavor? Yep, let’s do it.

Making Honey Syrup

Let’s whip up a quick batch of honey syrup. The amount we make here will depend on how many Bee’s Knees you’re planning to mix for your and your guests. It’s easy enough to make more as needed, but here’s a good rough starting guide:

2 cocktails = 1/4 cup of honey + 1/4 cup of warm water
4 cocktails = 1/2 cup of honey + 1/2 cup of warm water
8 cocktails = 1 cup honey + 1 cup of water

We used a mug here in the TRB kitchen to warm the water, but you could just as easily use a glass microwave safe measuring cup. Measure your water, and pop your chosen vessel into the microwave for 20-50 seconds, depending on the amount of water. While the water is warming up, measure out the same amount of honey and when the water is warm, add the room temperature honey to water (don’t put the honey in the microwave).

Use your bar spoon to stir the ingredients together and scrape any lingering honey from your measuring cup. The resulting syrup should flow easily, and have a pleasant taste of sweet honey with a gentle viscosity that will help add depth to our cocktail.

What honey should you use? We used Gunter’s Pure Golden Honey for our Bee’s Knees. We suggest trying different honeys available wherever you live. Farmer’s markets, speciality shops, and even the local supermarket all carry local honey with a variety of different flavors. Experiment! Just try to use a good quality honey, and avoid honey that includes the honeycomb (that is, unless you want to strain out the wax—you don’t want that in your cocktail.)

Squeeze Them Lemons!

Grab a lemon from the fridge. Is it an average sized lemon? Or is it a big honking lemon? Take a look at our pic below. We’d call the lemon on the right an average sized lemon, and the one on the left to be a large one.

An average sized lemon is going to yield right around 1.5 ounces of juice. A large lemon will give 2+ ounces. Yeah, we checked it. Take a peek below:

You can see the smaller lemon (upper picture) yielded almost exactly 1.5 ounces. The big guy on the bottom gave up 2+ ounces and you can’t even read the gradations on the jigger. Since our recipe calls for 1/2 ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice per Bee’s Knees, you’ll be able to get enough juice from an average lemon to make about three Bee’s Knees. A larger one will get you closer to four cocktails.

We don’t recommend pre-packaged juices for this. Take a minute and squeeze your own fresh fruit. The flavor of the resulting cocktail is worth the extra couple of minutes!

Shake It Baby

This is our first cocktail where the recommended assembly process is to shake the cocktail instead of stirring. Shaking is a much more vigorous process and has a purpose: to integrate fruit juices and syrups when a recipe calls for one or the other. Since our Bee’s Knees has both, we’re gonna shake.

Grab your shaker, and load it up with ice. Measure the ingredients needed for your cocktail, and pop the top on. Shake for 20-30 seconds. Double-strain* into a cocktail glass, garnish with a twist of lemon, sit back and enjoy the bright lemon and gin flavors, with depth and sweetness from the honey syrup.

This is one cocktail that definitely punches above it’s weight.

*Note: “double-strain” means to use both the Hawthorne strainer and a fine mesh strainer. The purpose is to remove small ice chips and any fresh lemon pulp. Mount the Hawthorne on top of your mixer and pour the cocktail through the mesh strainer into your cocktail glass. For more information on basic gear for The Reluctant Bartender, click here to read our recommended list.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 ounces gin (we used Boodles in our recipe—substitute with your gin of choice)
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
3/4 ounce honey simple syrup

Instructions:

1. Add ice to your cocktail shaker. Prep your cocktail glasses.

2. Add gin, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and honey syrup* to cocktail shaker.

3. Shake for 20-30 seconds until well chilled.

4. Double-strain into cocktail glasses.

5. Garnish with a lemon twist.

*To make honey syrup, combine a 1:1 ratio of warm water and honey and stir until the honey is fully dissolved (heat the water only, not the honey). TRB recommends heating the water separately for 20-50 seconds, and stirring the room temperature honey into the warm water.

Wrap Up

The Bee’s Knees is a classic for reason: tart, sweet, with flowery notes from the gin, and an earthy depth from the honey. Feel free to experiment with the ratio of honey syrup and lemon juice. Want a slightly less sweet and more tart version? Swap the amounts around to 3/4 ounce of lemon juice and just 1/2 ounce of honey syrup.

Want a sweeter Bee’s Knees with a more velvety mouth feel? Increase the amount of honey syrup from the base recipe above to a full ounce.

Finally, for those of you who don’t love gin, try this same recipe with your favorite vodka!

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Greetings Reluctant Bartenders!

Today we're going to talk about one of our favorite drinks, the Press Luxe. The drink is simple and easy to prepare, is nicely bubbly, and goes down on the smooth and easy side of the cocktail ledger.

Difficulty: Super Easy
Ingredients: Rye or bourbon, ginger ale, seltzer, bitters, Luxardo cherries
Gear needed: rocks glass, bar spoon, ice
Countdown to enjoyment: 2 minutes

Ingredients:
1.5 ounces Old Forester bourbon (or bourbon/rye of your choice)
Two dashes of bitters
Ginger ale (use sugar free ginger ale for a low-cal version)
Seltzer
1 Luxardo cherry
1/2 bar spoon of Luxardo cherry syrup

History and Overview

It feels odd to write about the history of the Press Luxe. There isn’t a lot of history to be told. Perhaps that’s exactly why so many of those old cocktails that we explore here don’t have a clear history? Were they inventions born of necessity, or purposeful artistic creation? Both? In some instances we can trace a drink’s origin to a specific bar or mixologist—or at least, to those who claim to have invented it. In many other instances, these drinks manifest seemingly from nowhere, take up residence in a heretofore empty niche along the cocktail continuum, and sink into their surroundings as if they had been there the whole time, and we simply failed to notice.

The Press Luxe evolved in our own kitchen as a sort of cocktail shorthand, one whose existence is owed to the ingredients at hand, the lack of time to make a proper Manhattan or Old Fashioned, and whose guiding principle was first and foremost, expediency.

The Press Luxe is essentially a riff on an old cocktail called the Presbyterian. Cocktail historians assert that the Presbyterian was originally known as the Mamie Taylor, a drink named after the singer who was famous around the turn of the 20th century. The Mamie Taylor remained a popular drink up until Prohibition, and was originally served as a long drink—that is, served in a highball glass. Our version uses a standard rocks glass.

Our research was unable to confirm the assertion that the Presbyterian was, in fact, the same drink as the original Mamie Taylor. It appears the story of these drinks is obscured by time—cocktail histories as long forgotten as Mamie herself.

Sorry, Mames--it happens to the best of us.

While no one is sure where or when the Presbyterian picked up its moniker, cocktail historians do believe it is closely related to the Mule family of drinks—the Moscow Mule, Kentucky Mule, and so on. The Presbyterian included spirit (usually whiskey), citrus, club soda, and ginger ale or ginger beer.

The recipe presented here is one that developed over time in our kitchen in South Boston. We don't claim to have invented anything particularly new—we’re standing on the shoulders of the Presbyterian. Our recipe forgoes the citrus juice and adds a few shakes of bitters to bring spicy interest back into the proceedings. A Luxardo cherry is added for fun, and a half bar spoon of Luxardo cherry syrup rounds things out.

Since the Presbyterian was the inspiration and Luxardo cherry and syrup were added later, we started calling the resultant libation a Press Luxe to honor both the original drink and the garnish that embellishes it.

Making the Press Luxe

Here at The Reluctant Bartender, we are a big fans of cocktails made directly in the glass. This makes the preparation of the cocktail and the resulting clean-up a whole lot easier. Ever have one of those days at work? You know the kind that I'm talking about—the kind of day where the rats win all the rat races? The kind of day when you just want a cocktail, but don't feel like dragging out the jiggers, shakers, strainers, and more? The Press Luxe is perfect tonic for those with the rat-race ailment. Or those of us who simply want a good stiff drink and don’t want to put in a ton of effort.

You probably have all the ingredients on hand already, especially if you've done some shopping from The Reluctant Bartender recommendations lists.

We suggest using a decent bourbon or rye, in this instance Old Forester 86—a classic American bourbon that is both a fine sipper and a great mixer. (Bulleit Rye is also good in a Press Luxe, and if you really want to add some kick consider Wild Turkey 101 or Evan Williams white label, Bottled in Bond 100 proof.)1

Regarding bitters, you have many options. In warmer months, we opt for classic Angostura bitters. When we make this drink in cold months, we prefer to use Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters.2 The barrel aged bitters add a cinnamon spiciness that is perfect for colder weather, especially around the holidays. But there are no rules here! Try the barrel aged bitters in summertime—it may be just the kick you're looking for to beat the heat.

We generally make the Press Luxe with good old off-the-shelf ginger ale, but you can experiment by substituting your favorite brand of ginger beer. Should you go the ginger beer route, make sure the flavor of your bitters and your ginger beer mesh well together—ginger beer is more heavily spiced than ginger ale, and you don't want the two ingredients to clash.

We recommend ginger ale in the 7.5 oz. or 12 oz. cans as opposed to the 2-liter bottles, because they are easier to handle—we're going to be pouring them both at once. Throw a carton of canned seltzer in your cart for use with this recipe and other fizzy drinks we'll explore here at TRB.

One quick note: we often make this drink with sugar-free ginger ale to keep the calories low. It's one of the few cocktails where you can substitute sugar-free ingredients, lower the caloric content, and not miss much in terms of flavor.

Directions:

While we advocate for making good cocktails the proper way, we are not going to treat the Press Luxe as particularly precious. The spirit of the cocktail—and indeed, this very newsletter—is simplicity. Grab a rocks glass and your bar spoon, and let's get started on making your first Press Luxe!

The first time you make this, you may want to use a measuring jigger. Load up your rocks glass with ice, and pour the 1.5 ounces of whiskey over the ice. Make a mental note how far up the side of the glass the whiskey comes to when the glass is filled with ice. From here out, you won’t need a jigger when making the Press Luxe. That is, unless you drink too many and forget, which is a thing that could happen. Not that it’s happened to us! Never. Drink responsibly and all that.

Ingredients:

1.5 ounces Old Forester bourbon (or bourbon/rye of your choice)
Two dashes of bitters
Ginger ale (use sugar free ginger ale for a low-cal version)
Seltzer
1 Luxardo cherry
1/2 bar spoon of Luxardo cherry syrup
Fresh, regular ice

Prep your cocktail:

1. Fetch a rocks glass.

2. Fill your rocks glass with ice.

3. Pour 1.5 oz. of bourbon over the ice and add two shakes of bitters.

4. Crack open a can of your chosen ginger ale, and a can of seltzer.

5. At once, with a can in each hand, pour both ingredients into glass at once, mixing all ingredients together.

6. Garnish with a single Luxardo cherry, and drizzle 1/2 bar spoon of the syrup on top of the drink.

7. Use your barspoon to give the drink a twirl or two.

8. Enjoy!

That’s all there is to it. The Press Luxe: simplicity in a glass. Until next time, enjoy!

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Greetings, Reluctant Bartenders!

Today we want to talk to you about vermouth. There’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what vermouth is, how to use it, how to store it, and even how it’s made.

Let’s dive in and with a little luck, by the end of this column we will have a better understanding of vermouth, and also why it’s introduction to the U.S. market was one the most impactful things—if not the single the most impactful thing—to happen in the history of cocktails in the U.S.

A Drink With a Clear History

One of the things that is interesting about Vermouth compared to many other alcoholic drinks—whiskey, wine, brandy, beer, whatever—is that we can accurately trace its history.

For many spirits like whiskey, trying to trace its origins is a fools errand. The deeper you dig, the more the truth slips through your fingers, lost to time.

Even if you narrow your focus—let’s say instead of trying to understand the entire history of whiskey, we limit the inquiry to just the history of rye whiskey in the United States—it is still impossible to uncover a defining moment when a specific person, or group, did some thing that you could point to and say “this is where it began.”

By contrast, the history of vermouth is fairly well known. We can trace the origins of sweet vermouth back to a town in Italy named Torino (you may remember that Turin, the proper Italian word for Torino, hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics).

Torino is a beautiful city in the North of Italy, west of Milan and about 75 miles from the French border. Torino is the capital city of the Piedmont region of Italy, and Piedmont has a rich history of wine making and grape growing.

The cultural significance of Torino is important, especially in the 18th century. Torino’s proximity to France and Switzerland meant there was a lot of cross-cultural influence on the city, and the Italian port of Genoa just to the southeast was easily accessible, providing access to exotic spices from afar.

These cross cultural influences, combined with a rich history of wine making, and a culturally important, wealthy city with miles of walkable—often covered—streets led to the creation of the apertivo. Think of an aperitivo as a drink you would have in the late afternoon, before dinner, but apertivo is more than just a type of drink. Socially, it became an event across the city, a time each day when when people would gather and discuss the day’s events one of the many sidewalk cafes throughout the city.

The Italian version of England’s “afternoon tea,” if you will.

It is here in Torino in the 1780’s that a local wine shop, owned by a man named Señor Marendazzo, was in need of some help. Marendazzo hired a young shop assistant named Antonio Benedetto Carpano. Remember that name.

Our readers familiar with vermouth, or perhaps the recipe we shared here for The Manhattan will recognize that last name as belonging to one of our recommended vermouths.

In 1786, the young Carpano created a wine based on a long-held family recipe, using wormwood as a battering agent, and combined with newfound spices imported to Torino from the port of Genoa. Carpano called his new formulation vermut, the German word for wormwood. His boss, Señor Marendazzo was so impressed, he allowed his assistant to sell the drink in his shop.

Importantly, the drink caught the attention of Duke Vittorio Amedeo III. The Duke gave it two Italian thumbs up, and insisted on more. Now that Carpano’s vermut was both commercially available via the wine shop and had a royal endorsement, the popularity of the drink skyrocketed. Carpano eventually purchased the wine shop from his boss, while across the city and the region many new formulations of vermut sprang up to quench local demand for the drink as an aperitivo.

If you’re curious about the history of aromatized wines from which vermouth sprung, here’s a very good article at Spirits Beacon that will lead you far down the rabbit hole.

Cool History—But What is Vermouth?

Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter. Vermouth is basically a wine—an aromatized and fortified wine. But still, a wine.

Aromatized means that the wine has had aromatics—herbs, spices, botanicals, and more—added to increase flavor complexity.

Fortified means that spirits such as brandy have been added to the wine to increase the alcohol percentage, helping to stabilize the wine and in some instances to add flavor.

This is an important distinction—remember, vermouth is a wine not a liquor. As such it has a much shorter shelf life once opened than a distilled liquor like brandy or whiskey.

Whereas regular wine, once opened, has a shelf life of a few days a vermouth can last approximately 2-4 weeks if kept in the refrigerator. Of course, that bottle of bourbon on your shelf can last years and years after being opened.

This isn’t a weakness of Vermouth, as some have claimed. Indeed, how many drinks in your home are good for a month after opening? Wine certainly isn’t. Fruit juice will go bad long before a month is up, and I know you aren’t chugging a bottle of cola or other soft drink a month after you’ve broken the seal.

It’s only against liquor where vermouth is perceived to have a “short shelf life,” but that’s no more a fair comparison than it would be for apple juice.

Oxidation is the reason for all of this. Oxygen is notoriously reactive with many things. Think about all the rust on your uncle’s 1977 pickup truck. Some wines are purposefully oxidized. For instance, some dessert wines are aged in barrels for 10-15 years, giving them a massive amount of exposure to oxygen.

Other wines are made with much tighter controls, limiting the amount of oxygen exposure until you pop the cork and pour it in your glass.

Vermouth falls somewhere in the middle. The presence of those extra herbs, and the somewhat higher alcohol content provides more backbone that enables vermouth to last longer than your average Chardonnay or Pinot Noir.

A good vermouth should last, refrigerated, for about 2-4 weeks. After that it begins tasting metallic, and its natural flavor is blunted considerably.

Why is Vermouth So Important to Cocktail History?

In the late 1800’s, sometime around 1880, a new variety of cocktails was being created all around the United States, driven by the importation of a new, toney drink from Italy—you guessed it, vermouth.

Up until this point, “cocktails” as they were known were mostly just variations on the whiskey cocktail, known today as The Old Fashioned. Oh sure, there were slings, and fizzes, and punches—interesting things that we’ll cover here at The Reluctant Bartender—but the word cocktail back then had a very specific definition. Today we use the term to reference any mixed drink containing alcohol.

The very reason that The Old Fashioned was given this name was to convey to bartenders that the drinker was ordering a cocktail made in the “old fashioned style” as a way to separate it from the newer creations of the time.

Remember the recipe for The Old Fashioned, and how it’s a simple mixture of spirit and bitters, with sugar acting as a sweetener? Well, imagine removing the sugar and instead substituting sweet red vermouth as the sweetening agent. Since vermouth doesn’t have the compact sweetness of a sugar cube we have to use a bit more volume to achieve the balance we are targeting, so we land on our familiar 2:1 spirit-to-vermouth ratio.

Bingo—there’s our Manhattan, arising from the whiskey cocktail and the addition of vermouth.

Take that same ratio, but swap out the whiskey for gin and use a dry vermouth. Boom—there’s the Martini.

This was the beginning of what could very well be called The First Cocktail Revolution. A large number of the drinks we consume today can trace their origins back to the this event—the introduction of vermouth to the American cocktail market.

Don’t just think of vermouth as a sweetener. Vermouth brings many additional flavors to the party. Many of these recipes—closely guarded secrets—include 20-30 different spices, botanicals, herbs, and more to add interesest to the base flavor and to differentiate from the competition. Vermouth also brings a little bitterness to the proceedings, bringing balance and interesting flavors to our cocktails.

Vermouth also helps to dilute the overall alcohol content of the drink, enabling us to drink more of them before falling off our barstools.

The importation of vermouth to America in the late 1800’s was a critical tipping point in cocktail history. It’s hard to image the landscape of mixed drinks without the introduction of vermouth and the resulting hierarchy of drinks we still enjoy today, many of which trace their origins back to the Manhattan and/or Martini.

It’s amazing how much impact this little Italian aperitivo has had on how we enjoy cocktails, 150 years later.

Styles

There are three main styles of vermouth: sweet, dry, and Blanc (or Bianco).

Sweet red vermouth—sometimes referred to as Rosso—is the sweetest of the vermouth styles, and made from a foundation of red wine. Some vermouth makers will mix in white wine as well and then use other processes to achieve the red color, but a good rule of thumb for us beginners here at The Reluctant Bartender is to remember: sweet vermouth is generally red, and made from a base of red wine.

Dry white vermouth is also known as French Vermouth, and is mostly made from white wine. White vermouths tend to be much drier tasting, with lower sugar levels than their red cousins. The botanicals used in white vermouth nudge its flavor more towards the citrus end of the spectrum, which explains why dry white vermouth pairs so well with gin in a martini—gin itself often has similar flavor characteristics.

Blanc or Bianco vermouths sit somewhere in the middle of sweet and dry. They aren’t quite as lean as a dry vermouth, but nowhere near as rich and full-bodied as most red vermouths.

These are good guard rails, generalities for the home bartender. Remember though that there are exceptions to every rule, so read the label and if it’s not clear what you’re holding, whip out the cell phone and do a quick Google search. Some reds are actually drier and more bitter (for example, Punt e Mes.)

Some Recommendations

We here at The Reluctant Bartender like to sip on vermouth over ice, and we encourage you to think of it as more than just a mixer. After all, that’s exactly why it was created in the first place, as a sippable, delicious pre-dinner beverage!

When it comes to food and drink, defer to the Italians, and follow their lead.

For sipping, we recommend red/Rosso vermouth, and get yourself a good one—they aren’t expensive. While you can shell out quite a few doubloons for rarefied, high-end examples, this is not a requirement for enjoyment.

Two of our favorite reds vermouths are Carpano Antica Formula (remember Carpano is the original vermouth maker) and a French vermouth named Dolin. We generally reserve the Carpano for special occasions, or when we know we can get through a bottle without wasting it in the refrigerator. At around $30 a bottle, it’s not going to break the bank, but we loathe having to pour the remainder away because we didn’t get to it in time.

If we were to sip one, it would be the Carpano. It’s rich, bursting with flavor, sweet, and slightly bitter. It has a full body and a depth of flavor that is worth exploring, and seems to be better suited for cooler weather. That said, with a splash of bubbly Prosecco (the Italian cousin to Champagne) it makes a wonderful light drink for sipping in the sun. Toss in a little lemon peel, pour over ice and enjoy.

Dolin red vermouth is a little leaner, more herbaceous and fresh compared to the deeper, darker flavor of the Carpano. Dolin is our recommended go-to for drinks calling for red vermouth in their recipes, and is considerably less expensive. Dolin is a French Vermouth, produced under a controlled and regulated methodology to ensure quality.

Both can be found in 750ml bottles, but we prefer to purchase in the smaller 375ml sizes if your retailer carries them.

One quick note: some package stores only carry low-end vermouths from bulk manufacturers. They’re…okay. One way to judge a really good liquor store is by the number of vermouths they carry. If you’re only finding dusty bottles of Martini and Rossi tucked away on a bottom shelf, you’re probably not purchasing from a place that cares about such things. We certainly hope you’re not buying good wine from this kind of store.

We aren’t throwing shade on the package store here—on the contrary, they serve an important purpose. That said, we suggest a slightly better store for exploring your new vermouth habit.

On the white vermouth side of the ledger, both Dolin and Carpano offer exceptional versions of dry and Blanc/Bianco vermouth for use in the recipes which call for them. We don’t find these to be the kinds of vermouth to sip, though some folks are fine sipping on a Blanc vermouth—again, it’s slightly sweet, but not as sweet as the red. Generally white vermouth is used as a mixer.

Have Fun With a Flight!

If you’re not familiar with vermouth, don’t worry. That’s why we’re here, to set you off on the right path. Here’s a suggestion: the next time you’re at a good bar, strike up a conversation with the bartender and see what different kinds of vermouths they offer. Ask if you can do a tasting flight. Most bartenders love this kind of thing, because they know the different flavors available, and they love sharing their knowledge. Most good bars will at least have both Dolin and Carpano on hand—that’s a great place to start your comparisons. And if they have a few more, try them too!

Last time we were in Rome, we did a tasting of four different Italian vermouths in the picture below. The bartender was happy to let us try them and talk about them. Sometimes bartenders enjoy this so much—instead of just whipping up another Sex on the Beach for the woo-girls—that they won’t even charge you for the tasting.

Have fun, give it a try. Explore.

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Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients: Gin, Campari, vermouth
Gear: mixing glass, strainer, bar spoon, rocks glasses, Big Ice
Flavor Profile: Sweet, complex, bitter
Countdown to Enjoyment: 6 minutes

Recipe:
1 part gin
1 part Campari
1 part sweet red vermouth
Orange to garnish

Introducing the Negroni

The Negroni revival of the past decade has been something to behold. If we had started a cocktail newsletter a decade ago, I doubt the Negroni would have been the fourth drink covered. I doubt that the Negroni would have cracked the top 25!

Fast forward to today and here we are shining The Reluctant Bartender’s spotlight on the Negroni so soon after introducing the preeminent trifecta of the Manhattan, Martini, and Old Fashioned. Wow—times have changed.

Is it safe to admit that ten short years ago, we didn't even like Negronis?

Time seems to be flying by at Kessel run speeds, and ten years ago things actually were quite different, especially in the cocktail world. The writers here at TRB were definitely at a different mile marker along the highway to cocktail enlightenment.

Heck, ten years ago we were still trying to…ahem…naively perfect the Manhattan. Our efforts were, of course, fruitless. There is good reason why the Manhattan recipe hasn't budged an inch since the 1880's. So yeah, we weren’t really in a place to appreciate the Negroni ten years ago.

A decade ago, bitter was not a quality we were chasing in our libations. In the intervening years, America has witnessed an explosion in the popularity of bitter drinks. Strong, bitter coffee from Starbucks led the way. Espresso is now available everywhere, not just fancy Seattle coffee shops.

On the alcohol side of the drink ledger, bitter IPA's have commanded the attention of beer lovers and dominated the market to the extent that it's often a chore to find a humble porter or brown ale at the local pub.

Remember when “bitter beer face” was a bad thing?

Aperol Spritzes and their bitter bubbly-ness are the sheik and fashionable drink these days.

Cocktail bars are experimenting with all manner of bitter Italian amaros (literally translated as "bitter") such as Cynar, Amaro Averna, Fernet, Amer Picon, and even Jagermeister, to name a few. Customers order these bitter drinks faster than bartenders can stir new batches.

Bitters themselves have seen a dramatic rise in popularity, choice, and availability. It wasn't long ago that your average bar had a single old, crinkly, stained bottle of Angostura tucked away in the well.

Contrast that with today. Many bars are crafting their own bitters for use in their cocktail programs. Those that aren’t making their own bitters are embracing Angostura of course, but also Peychaud’s, Fee Brothers, Bittermens, and many more. Local, independent companies offer hand-crafted bitters made in small batches by cocktail obsessives.

Twenty years ago, bitters were one of those strange things you found in Grandmom’s liquor cabinet, a curious anachronism from times gone by with a purpose lost to cocktail history. Today, bitters sampler sets make great stocking stuffers! (True story! BTW, the preceeding link is #AmazonAd.)

All of which brings us to the Negroni, another bitter concoction that has seen its popularity skyrocket over the past decade. It has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Of course, the Negroni has always been popular in Italy. Yet again, we're playing culinary catch-up to the Italians.

Italians have long embraced the bitter side of the palate. They have touted the post-dinner benefits of amaros like Campari, when they aren't busy touting the pre-dinner benefits. Many folks believe amaros help with health and digestion. We will side-step that conversation for now, and instead focus on our Negroni recipes.

The Negroni carries the standard for bitter cocktails, but let's not forget the other flavors the Negroni brings to the party. Sweetly laced with orange, citrus, bright herbs, flowers, and medicinal notes, delicately balanced with depth from the vermouth and punch from the gin, the Negroni's complex flavors are derived from a simple list of common ingredients.

Gin, Campari, vermouth, ice, garnish. The kind of simple that we embrace here at The Reluctant Bartender.

What about all those variations?

There are many variations on the Negroni. The base recipe is flexible, and supports a number of substitutions. A quick Google search for Negroni variations will have a reluctant bartender's head spinning. For the sake of simplicity, we will start here with the classic version, and talk briefly about two variations that you can easily try at home.

The Negroni is great in warm weather or cold weather, backyard parties, and holiday celebrations. Let’s jump in and see what this versatile classic cocktail has to offer.

Notes on how to make the Negroni

Recipe notes

While most experts agree that the Negroni is a direct descendant of the Martini—itself a descendant of the Manhattan—the recipe is not based on the 2:1 ratio of the Martini. The addition of a third equal ingredient brings our ratio to 1:1:1. Easy!

The Negroni is stirred—never shaken. Readers of TRB know this already, but our new readers may be seeing this for the first time. Drinks that are made primarily of spirit should always be stirred. Drinks that include fruit juice, syrup, dairy, egg whites, sugar or other such ingredients need to be shaken to fully incorporate them into the drink. The Negroni is all delicate spirit, so we will stir. Stirring will give us a smooth, clear drink to enjoy.

Remember: 100 stirs! You're targeting a total mix time of around 45 seconds in order to adequately chill the drink while also incorporating a slight bit of water to meld our ingredients together into a nicely balanced cocktail.

Which vermouth?

As we said, the Negroni holds up as a cold weather or warm weather cocktail. Swapping out the vermouth can help tailor the structure appropriately. We recommend a lighter vermouth like Dolin in warmer months, and a richer, more rustic vermouth like Antica Carpano in cooler weather. The same recommendations stand for the two variations we discuss below.

Negroni Recipe and Instructions

Ingredients

1 part gin
1 part Campari
1 part sweet red vermouth
Orange peel twist (or better yet, an orange wheel)

Prep Your Glasses

Before you reach for anything else, grab your rocks glasses and stick them in the freezer. The brief amount of time it takes for you to fetch your ingredients and tools is going to chill them down nicely. You don't need long, just a few minutes.

Prep Your Cocktail

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass. You should be aiming for around 3-4 ounces of liquid in the finished cocktail, so use a 1 ounce pour of Campari, gin, and vermouth for each drink that you’re making.

Add enough ice to cover the liquid in the glass and stir for 100 rotations (40-45 seconds).

Strain into a chilled rocks glass, add Big Ice, and garnish with an orange twist. We Reluctant Bartenders actually prefer half an orange wheel, but try both and see which one you like better.

Variations!

The Americano

Ingredients:
Campari
Sweet red vermouth
Club soda
Orange peel twist (or orange wheel)

This is a lighter alcohol version of the Negroni, popularized by Americans traveling abroad. This version swaps out the gin for soda water which adds a light, fizzy touch, and lowers the alcohol content. It's refreshing, bubbly, and lighter than the original in a "give me another" kind of way.

To make the Americano, add one part Campari and one part sweet red vermouth to a mixing glass (remember, no gin). We're aiming for around 3-4 ounces of liquid in our finished cocktail, so start with 1 ounce each of the Campari and vermouth, and we'll add the club soda later.

Add enough ice to your mixing glass to cover the liquid, and stir for 100 rotations (40-45 seconds).

Strain into your chilled rocks glass, and add approximately 1.5 ounces of club soda to each Americano cocktail.

Add Big Ice, and garnish with an orange twist or half-wheel.

The Negroni Sbagliato

Ingredients:
Campari
Sweet red vermouth
Prosecco
Orange twist (or wheel)

The Negroni Sbagliato swaps out the gin for an Italian bubbly wine called Prosecco (pro-SAY-koh). Prosecco is a cousin to champagne, but made in a different way.

Sbagliato translates roughly to "incorrect".  We're not certain, but we sense some judgement there! That said, TRB judges this cocktail delicious. The Prosecco brings depth and fizz to the proceedings, while also providing structure and balance.

To make the Negroni Sbagliato, add one part Campari and one part vermouth to a mixing glass (no Prosecco yet). We're aiming for around 3-4 ounces of liquid in our finished cocktail, so start with 1 ounce each of the Campari and vermouth. Don’t add the Prosecco yet until we’ve stirred the vermouth and Campari together, and added the mixture to your rocks glass.

Add enough ice to your mixing glass to cover the liquid and stir for 100 rotations (40-45 seconds).

Strain into a chilled rocks glass, and add approximately 1-1.5 ounces of Prosecco to each cocktail.

Add Big Ice, and garnish with an orange twist or half-wheel.

Wrap Up

The Negroni is nearly as versatile as it delicious. The balance of sweet, bitter, and citrus makes an enticing libation worth visiting and revisiting in its various forms. We’ll tackle more variations of the Negroni here in the coming months. For now, give these three a try and report back in the comments below.

Editor’s Note

We’ve been getting more and more subscribers and feedback. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we thank you all for taking the time and reaching out. If you have ideas about drinks you’d like us to cover, ideas to make the newsletter better, or just a small bit of feedback please feel free to leave a note in the comments below. We make an effort to keep the comments section open for discussion and questions, and we always will.

To those of you who have embarked upon this journey with us, we thank you.

See you next time!

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Let’s Talk Gear

Gear is fun! Knowing what gear to have on hand can be confusing, so we are aiming to clear up a few things in this post, and get you pointed in the right direction.

Knowing the ingredients and how to put them together is just one step in the creation of great cocktails at home. Equally important is to have the correct tools on hand. A bar spoon is great for stirring your craft cocktails, but it's also a great multitasker as Alton Brown would say, useful for fetching cherries and olives out of a jar, breaking up ice, measuring small amounts of ingredients, and muddling sugar cubes.

We've assembled a list of tools we think every home bartender should have in their arsenal. Do you need every one of these things? Probably not on day one, but we submit that these are the bare bones tools that an aspiring home mixologist needs as a starting point.

Wait! Where’s the glassware?

Look: glassware is problematic for us here at The Reluctant Bartender. We tend to…uh…purchase waaaay too much glassware. We have glassware in five different cabinets. We have glasses for red wine, white wine, and dessert wine. We have have coupes, Martini glasses, Nick and Nora glasses, tulips, rocks glasses, highballs, and whiskey sipping glasses. We have glassware in storage—on both coasts.

This is not a humble brag—it’s the acknowledgement of a serious problem.

That said, our obsession with glassware makes sense because we are cocktail (and wine) fans! The glass in which a drink is served matters. A perfectly created Manhattan served in a red solo cup is not the same experience as one served in a coupe.

Since this is such a varied topic, with lots to cover, we are going to roll a separate post entirely focused on glassware.

Can I just buy a cocktail essentials tool kit?

Of course you can! Personally, we find the sets are usually a compromise of some sort. There’s always something not quite the right size, or the right material, cheaply made, or otherwise not needed. And they always come with those fancy wooden holders that attempt to help with storing and organizing your kit, but usually provide questionable functionality and take up a lot of counter space. We prefer to keep our bartending tools tucked away, but easily at hand.

We also try to recommend tools and products that will be in your possession for years to come, as opposed to cheaply made items that were included as part of a gimmicky kit or set.

Not all sets are gimmicks, and we aren't saying there isn't a place for them. We just like to curate the experience to a finer degree, providing our Reluctant Bartenders at home with exactly what they need to get the job done correctly, today, and for years to come.

For those of you who really really want a set, we'll make a recommendation below, but it will not have everything you need so just take note, okay?

Below are Amazon affiliate links that will take you directly to the product page. We also suggest an alternate version for most items below in case your taste differs, or are looking for something slightly different.

Start Here

There are seven essential tools that we feel you need at home as a starting point. A mixing glass, Boston Shaker, muddler, bar spoon, jigger(s), strainers, and proper ice cube molds. Let’s start with the mixing glass.

Our Favorite Mixing Glass

A mixing glass is an essential tool for crafting drinks that are all spirit—think Manhattan, Martini, Negroni, et al. What you’ll want in a good mixing glass is a nice hefty bottom, and an overall size that allows you to create more than one drink at a time while also holding the appropriate amount of ice.

You should aim for a cocktail mixing glass in the 24 ounce range (roughly 700ml if advertised in metric). This will give you enough room to craft several drinks at once, while also having enough room for ice to properly chill the drink while controlling dilution. Larger is better.

We find that when using a smaller mixing glass folks tend to skimp on on the amount of ice, which in turns causes the drink to get watered down before it’s properly chilled.

We here at The Reluctant Bartender really like the Hiware 24 Oz. Cocktail Mixing Glass linked below. It has a nice thick bottom and no seams. Plus it looks great. We like it so much, in fact, that we just took delivery of a second one since someone dropped our original beloved mixing glass on the floor.

(Editor’s note: that was you who dropped the glass, dummy.)

Ah. Yes. Well, on to the links.

Link: Hiware 24 Oz. Cocktail Mixing Glass

Alternate version for those looking for a slightly more premium option, this is a nice mixing glass as well: Mofado Crystal Cocktail Mixing Glass

Boston Shaker

You’ve probably seen the Boston Shaker—two metal cups, one smaller than the other. You'r bartender pours the ingredients and ice into the shaker base, slaps the top on, and gives a performative shake.

Many of the drinks we will explore here at TRB include simple syrup, fruit juices, cream, sugar, egg white, various liqueurs, and more. Drinks that are more than just spirit need to be shaken in order to ensure complete integration of the ingredients.

We like the style with two metal shakers, as opposed to the single metal vessel and pint glass. We find it easier to separate the metal version, and there’s no risk of spraying shattered glass all over the floor if your shaking technique isn’t perfect. We also recommend getting stainless steel—it’s durable and can be tossed into the dish washer for easily clean-up.

The Boston Shaker linked below is well balanced, has nice weight, and is a good functional version for not much dough. You can get a fancy Boston Shaker if you like, but for now start with the simple one below (or the suggested alternate).

Oh! And before we forget: make sure you’re buying a set. There should be two metal containers. Sometimes they’re sold as a single unit, and that’s not particularly helpful if you’re looking to get some shakin’ done.

Link: Boston Shaker, A Bar Above, Stainless Steel

Alternate version for those who want a special color: Barfly Shaker Set

Muddler

A muddler is an essential tool for crafting cocktails. It’s nice to have a good hefty wooden muddler for muddling sugar cubes, various fruit, mint, basil, and more. Muddlers can come in metal, plastic, or wood. The metal versions tend to have plastic ends to keep users from breaking whatever glass they’re using (grinding metal against glass is a sure way to manufacture broken glass at home.)

We recommend a wooden muddler with a flat muddle end, as opposed with one with a pattern of grooves. This gives a better result, and little bits of sugar or whatever you are muddling won’t get stuck in the grooves.

Link: Barfly Muddler

Alternate: Twine Acacia Wood Muddler

Bar Spoon

The bar spoon is a useful tool, and one of the favorite tools here at TRB. You want one with a some weight so you can use it to break up ice as needed. Get one with a twisted handle. That’s not just for looks. The twist makes it easier to stir, helping you to achieve a smoother and more natural motion with less splashing. The spoons below are functional, not fancy, and our primary recommendation comes in a set of two. As of the date of publication they were less than $10 for both. Solid deal, jump on it.

Link: Hiware 12” Bar Spoons

Alternate: Briout 12” Bar Spoons

Jigger

The jigger is the essential and indispensable measuring device. If you’re only going to buy one piece of gear, this is the place to start.

Make sure the jigger you choose has a 2:1 ratio between the larger and smaller bowls that make up the jigger. We prefer to use a jigger that is 2 ounces on the large end, and 1 ounce on the small end. Most jiggers have markings for smaller volumetric readings, usually marked on the side of the jigger, or inside the bowl.

Remember that 2:1 ratio we’ve talked about in several of our recipes? Well, isn’t it handy that a good jigger places that very 2:1 ratio right in your hands!

Some folks prefer the Japanese style, which is longer/taller. Others prefer a slightly more squat version. We’ll link both below. If you choose to venture off-menu and get a different version, just verify the ratio is 2:1. We have encountered jiggers that were not set up this way, and frankly we’ve found it frustrating and not particularly useful for what we’re attempting to do here.

How many jiggers do you need? For the vast majority of what we do here, a simple 2 ounce/1 ounce jigger will do the job nicely. For larger concoctions like punch, we’ll engage larger measuring devices that you probably already have in the home. If you want to splurge and get a second smaller jigger (such as a 1 ounce/ 0.5 ounce version) go for it! It’s good to have several handy. Just be sure of that 2:1 ratio.

Link: Barfly Superfly Jigger, (2 oz. / 1 oz.)

Alternate: Briout Japanese Style Double Jigger (2 oz. / 1 oz.)

Smaller jigger for those who want a smaller one too: American Metalcraft Japanese Style Jigger (1 oz. / 0.5 oz.)

Strainer

We are recommending two different strainers here, but you should purchase both styles. The Hawthorne strainer is the most commonly used, and helpful for straining drinks out of both mixing glasses and Boston Shakers.

The conical fine mesh strainer is a key tool as well, helping to remove small bits of fruit, other solids, and ice chips that would otherwise make for an unpleasant cocktail experience. We generally use the fine mesh strainer in conjunction with the Hawthorne strainer in a process we call double-straining. Get both.

Link: Oxo Hawthorne Strainer

Link: Conical Fine Mesh Strainer

Ice Cube Molds

Don’t skip the ice molds!

Proper ice is important when making craft cocktails at home.

Using the little ice from your ice maker is fine for mixing since you can control the exposure and hence control the dilution. But when you’re serving a drink like the Old Fashioned, or the Negroni, you’re going to want a single large ice cube to chill the drink when it’s served in the glass. This keeps the ice from melting so fast, and the smaller surface area of the large cube keeps the drink from getting watered down too quickly.

There are many options for ice cube molds. We are recommending as a starting point the blocky rectangular version, but if you want to go crazy and get a few more fun shapes/styles, go for it. The rectangular versions tend to work better than the spherical versions, as the sphere molds tend to be a little fussier.

Link: Silicone Ice Cube Tray, Rectangular, Large, pack of 2

Alternate link (for those looking for large round ice cubes): TINANA Round Ice Sphere Tray

Other Useful Tools

The section below includes recommendations that the home bartender may find useful. We here at TRB have all of these toys, and use them often. There is nothing extraneous here. While these are not necessarily essential to making great cocktails at home, they are certainly helpful.

Citrus Squeezer

Many of the recipes we explore here at The Reluctant Bartender call for freshly squeezed citrus juices. While there are many different kinds of juicers, ranging from simple to complex, and cheap to expensive, we find the standard $15 hand juicer to be a good starting point. Plus, this tool is useful for lemonade, salad dressings, and other recipes where freshly squeezed juice is required to elevate the experience.

Link: Zulay Metal Lemon Lime Juicer

Alternate link: Chef’n FreshForce Citrus Juicer

Cocktail Picks

Reusable metal cocktail picks not only add a touch of class when compared to wooden ones, they’re also usable for other things besides mixed drinks: shrimp cocktail, appetizers, cheese trays, garnishes, and more.

We’ll use these to elevate the experience of home mixology, and your guests will be impressed with your kit and preparation.

Link: A Bar Above Cocktail Picks, Stainless, 12 count

Alternate Link (for those who like their picks in gold): PutTwo Stainless Metal Cocktail Picks, Gold, 8 count

Angled Steel Measuring Jigger

If you’re looking for an alternative to the standard double-bell jigger, here’s an option that you may find intriguing. What I like about this jigger is that it’s made to be sat directly on the bar while you pour, eyeing up the measurement lines from above. It’s an easier way to measure out those in-between quantities that can sometimes be harder to nail precisely when using a standard jigger. The one linked below includes standard measurement in ounces, as well as tablespoons for those times when tbsp. measurements are referenced.

Link: OXO Steel Angled Measuring Jigger

Julep Strainer

The Julep strainer is often a helpful tool to have at your disposal when making cocktails at home. It’s self explanatory, but takes a little more technique to use than a Hawthorne strainer.

Link: Julep Strainer

Channel Knife

A channel knife is a super-helpful tool for making garnishes from lemons, limes, and oranges. The channel knife gives us a carving tool meant to create garnishes for cocktails and desserts.

Link: Triangle V-Shape Channel Knife

Alternate link (includes zester and channel knife, though this one cuts from the side): OXO Good Grips Citrus Zester with Channel Knife

Funnels

Every kitchen or bar needs an assortment of funnels, and they’re never around when you need them. Don’t rush out to the garage and contemplate using the one you use for motor oil. Just get these. We’re going to need them for bottling cocktails in future episodes of TRB.

Link: Norpro Plastic Funnel, Set of 3

Bar Mat

Do yourself a favor—get some bar mats for home use. It will help with clean up.

Link: Bar Mat for Countertop

Plastic Squeeze Bottles

These are perfect for holding and dispensing ingredients like simple syrup, fruit syrups, egg whites, juices, and more.

Link: OXO Good Grips Squeeze Bottle Set

Knife and Cutting Board

We assume that most folks have a knife and cutting board at home, but you may want to invest in a smaller, separate set for your cocktail-ing activities. A pairing knife is good for cutting up smaller fruits, and also some garnish work.

Cutting board link: OXO Good Grips Plastic Cutting Board

Pairing knife link: Aroma House 4” Pairing Knife

Alternate pairing knife link: Tuo Pairing Knife, 3.5”

Cocktail Essentials Kit/Set

For those who want the convenience of buying several of the essentials in a single purchase, we have included the following kit. Some worthwhile notes:

1. This kit doesn’t include everything you need, so take inventory of what you have in your cart and what you’ll need moving forward.

2. The mixing glass included here is a nice one, but a little on the small side. You probably won't be mixing more than two drinks at a time in this size mixing glass. That’s not a huge problem, as long as you know ahead of time that if you’re making a batch of cocktails for a bunch of folks, you may have to mix up several batches to meet the demand for your amazing libations.

Link: Cocktail Kingdom Essential Cocktail Set

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Hello TRB Subscribers!

It’s been a few weeks since our last publication here—which was decidedly not intentional—and I just wanted to give you all a quick update. The Thanksgiving Holiday combined with travel for my day job have kept me from dedicating the time needed to get new entries written, edited, and published.

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The good news is that I should be able to get some new entries written and added in the coming days! Lots of things are in the works, especially now that the Holidays are in full swing.

A sneak peak at some upcoming newsletter entries:

• A completed list of essential gear for the home bartender

• A holiday gift guide for those reluctant bartenders on your shopping list

• Several holiday drink recipes

• More classic cocktail recipes

• A Christmas wine guide

This project has been great fun so far, and I want to take the time to thank those who have dedicated their time to read these newsletters and to try the recipes at home.

I’ve received a lot of unsolicited feedback from you lovely folks, and that feedback has been very positive, which is exciting. I appreciate you all coming along for this ride.

Give me a shout in the comments below if you have any ideas for topics you’d like to see covered here at The Reluctant Bartender.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for upcoming newsletters, and remember…100 stirs!

/Ferg

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Overview

Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients: Gin or vodka, dry vermouth, orange bitters
Garnish: lemon twist or olive(s)
Gear: mixing glass, strainer, bar spoon, Nick and Nora glasses, ice
Flavor Profile: Spirit forward, herbaceous, complex
Countdown to Enjoyment: 5 minutes

Base Recipe*:
2 parts gin
1 part dry vermouth
1 dashes orange bitters

*Fear not vodka lovers. We explore this base recipe and variations including vodka below.

Introducing the Martini

 (Click here to go directly to the recipe and instructions.)

Hello everyone, and a special hello to our new readers! Welcome to The Reluctant Bartender. Around these parts of the interwebs, we're focused on helping all you Reluctant Bartenders make craft cocktails at home, with minimal effort, stress, expense, and worry.

Today, we're examining The Martini, one of the oldest and most important cocktails in the history of mixology. Exciting times!

We knew that these first three entries—The Manhattan, The Old Fashioned, and The Martini—were always going to be a labor of love to tackle. These three drinks are arguably the most important cocktails in the history of mixology. Some may argue for the inclusion of the Highball, or maybe the Flip, but it's nigh impossible to exclude the Manhattan, Old Fashioned, or Martini from their well deserved places on the Mount Rushmore of cocktails.

The Martini in particular has sprouted an entire family of drinks that are closely related. The core recipe lends itself to experimentation—trying different ratios and swapping ingredients.

The Martini name has also been slapped on many other drinks that are not in fact related by recipe or ingredients. This is due to the confusion between the drink itself, and the glass that bears its name. These days, any drink found sloshing around a Martini glass is called a “Martini” of some sort.

The Cosmopolitan is not a Martini. Neither is the Apple-Tini or Choco-Tini, or any of those neon-colored, sweet concoctions that are pressed into the hands of over-sugared drinkers around the world.

The Martini is made with gin or vodka, dry vermouth, and little else. There are variations we'll explore here at The Reluctant Bartender such as the Fifty-Fifty, or the Vesper, but for now we're going to embrace simplicity and keep our focus on the core ingredients and how you can manipulate them.

The Manhattan has been around longer, but the Martini is the more flexible platform, due to its subtlety. Swapping one gin for another, or grabbing a different brand of vermouth can lead to a different experience. We're going to examine some variables within the context of the base ingredients, adjusting the relative levels of gin and vermouth. In contrast, this is decidedly not so with the Manhattan, where we hold tightly to that 2:1 ratio of whiskey to vermouth, and for good reason*.

(*We here at The Reluctant Bartender spent years trying to improve upon the 2:1 ratio in the Manhattan, experimenting with all sorts of nonsense. 11:2 ratios, 9:2, 5:4, etc. And you know what? There's a reason the original 2:1 ratio has remained the go-to for over 140 years. But enough of that--we're here to discuss the Martini.)

You remember that 2:1 ratio for the Manhattan recipe, right? Well, that 2:1 ratio will come in handy for learning the Martini too. Our base Martini recipe uses the very same 2:1 ratio. This gives us a great starting point, and one that is easily remembered by all you home mixologists.

Modifying the ratio will allow us to adjust the drink to suit your tastes, and those of your guests. Want a drier Martini? Move the ratio towards more spirit. Prefer a wetter Martini with lots of notes from the vermouth? Move the ratio the other way. Bingo.

Just remember that 2:1 starting point! We're going to lean on that magic ratio more and more as we introduce additional cocktails over time.

Notes on how to make the Martini

Gin or Vodka?

The original Martini recipe called for gin, but over the years vodka has made an appearance, driven by pop culture icon James Bond. Americans loved watching the dapper Bond order vodka Martinis shaken, not stirred.

For our purposes here, and the sake of simplicity that drives us, we're going to avoid wading into the murky waters of which spirit is the correct one, and acknowledge that plenty of folks like vodka in their Martinis, and others love gin. With that in mind, come along with us and we’ll show you some easy recipes for both the gin and the vodka lovers.

Shaken or stirred?

Our recommendation falls in line with the common wisdom of professional bartenders: drinks containing only spirit should be stirred. Drinks containing fruit juices, egg whites, and other ingredients that may be more difficult to integrate should be shaken. Since our Martini, whether gin or vodka, only contains spirit and vermouth, we are going to stir.

How much to stir?

You've probably never really thought about it, but the amount of time you spend stirring your cocktail matters.  It's super important for the Martini, so pay attention here.

Part of what happens when we're stirring a cocktail is that the ice starts to melt, and that water is added to the formulation of the cocktail.

Let me tell you: this writer used to think this dilution talk was all nonsense. It wasn't until I tried testing how stirring affected the taste of a drink that I was convinced. Put simply, if you stir too little the drink will not absorb enough water and the resulting balance will be slightly off. This effect is very pronounced in the Martini, where the base ingredients are much more subtle and less assertive compared to those in other drinks. 

If you're using "normal" sized ice, such as those cubes from the ice maker in the 'fridge, we suggest stirring for approximately 100 rotations of your bar spoon.

Don't worry! It's not an exact prescription. Stir for about 45 seconds. Have fun with it; make it a thing. Talk to your guests, those folks for whom you're making the drink. Tell them why you're stirring—they'll be impressed by your mixology knowledge, and they’ll notice the care you’re putting into their cocktail.

What gin or vodka should you use?

When it comes to gin, we're going to make three simple recommendations: Beefeater, Boodles, and Plymouth. The links below take you to the Total Wine website. We are not affiliated with Total Wine in any way, just using their great site as a reference. Plus, depending on where you live they may offer delivery directly to your door.

Beefeater is the classic choice for a gin Martini. Beefeater has character, and you can't go wrong walking out of your local liquor mart with a bottle in hand. It's fairly inexpensive and readily available.

Boodles is a favorite here at The Reluctant Bartender.  The gin has engendered a bit of a fan club recently—it seems to be, literally, on the lips of drinkers in-the-know. We find it smooth and almost slightly sweet, with a velvety mouth feel. Did you know that most gin formulations these days were intended for mixing? While that's true, we find Boodles to be fairly approachable, and yes, we've even sipped it from time to time. That said, it shines in cocktails and we're recommending that's how you deploy it here.

Plymouth is another classic choice in the gin arena. Plymouth is little milder than the other two, slightly soft and smooth, with more citrus notes. A good choice for those who don't love gin but are curious about a good gin Martini.

If you can't find one of these, ask the salesperson at your local liquor store for a London dry gin. All three of the recommendations here are London dry gins. There are other types of gin: “Old Tom” style gins, and new modern formulations to explore. We'll get there. For now, make things easy on yourself, choose a London dry gin—somewhere in the $15-30 range—and you should be good to go.

Dry vermouth, not sweet

This recipe calls for dry vermouth, as opposed to sweet vermouth. We recommend Dolin Dry Vermouth because it’s good, readily available, and inexpensive. Plus, it goes well with the gin we have recommended above.

Don’t use the same vermouth that you use for your Manhattan. That’s a sweet, red vermouth. We need a dry white vermouth for the Martinis we’re making here.

Notes on glassware

Since we are making Martinis, you may be tempted to run out and buy some super awesome, 12-ounce Martini glasses for use with your new-found Martini skills.

Look, Martini glasses are sexy, cool, and fun. They’re truly iconic—we get it. The Martini glass is even a part of our logo! So yes, we love that iconic shape.

We’re not going to tell you not to buy Martini glasses. Go ahead, have a blast.

But we are going to tell you that those v-shaped glasses are cumbersome and often too dang large for a standard cocktail, which has somewhere between 3-5 ounces of liquid. Martini glasses take up a lot of space, are not practical for daily use, and you wind up sloshing your drink around like it's a swimming pool. Since it's awkward to handle such a wide glass—especially when full—people tend to hold the glass from underneath the bowl, instead of by the stem. Doing so warms the drink faster than if the glass is held by the stem, which is the whole point of having a long stem in the first place.

If you do opt for Martini glasses, go with something in the 6 ounce range. They'll be easier to store, less prone to breakage, and will be more appropriately sized for the average cocktail.

Our recommendation is to use a Nick and Nora glass. Look, there's no time to get into the naming details—that's what it's called. If you want to learn more about how the glass was named, here’s a link to vinepair.com where the author Robert Simonson investigates the origins of the name. The Nick and Nora is the perfect size and shape for the cocktail we are deploying here.

Recipes and Instructions

Let’s get to the fun part! We have several recipes to share, because we have two different base spirits—gin and vodka. Also, smart adjustment of that base 2:1 ratio will help you tweak the drink to fit your taste, and the tastes of your guests.

With that in mind, we're going to start with what we'll call the Standard Gin Martini.

Standard Gin Martini

Ingredients
2 ounces gin (see recommendations above)
1 ounce dry vermouth (TRB recommends Dolin)
1 dash orange bitters
Garnish: lemon twist, or olive(s)

Measure and pour all ingredients to a mixing glass. Add ice well over the liquid level. Stir 100 rotations (40-45 seconds) and strain into a Nick and Nora glass, garnish with a lemon or an olive.

Remember the ratio--2:1. This will come in handy as we learn how to exploit that ratio to derive more drinks, and perhaps even invent one of your own. Use your jigger for easy measuring—use the big well for the gin, the small well for the vermouth. Unless you've bought some odd off-brand jigger, the ratio between the big well and the small one should be 2:1.

The Standard Gin Martini is a delicate balance of gin and vermouth. The herbaceous notes of the gin mingling with the aromatized wine bring a nuanced complexity to the proceedings. This 2:1 version is generally considered by most Martini drinkers to be a wet Martini. You may also find references to a 1:1 ratio for wet Martinis. We suggest starting with the 2:1 first, then move to the dry version for comparison.

The Dry Gin Martini

For the "dry" version, we recommend a 5:1 ratio. In this case, 2.5 ounces of gin, to 1/2 ounce of vermouth. (Yep, that's a 5:1 ratio—multiply both amounts by a factor of 2 and you get 5 ounces of gin, 1 ounce of vermouth. 5:1.)

Ingredients
2.5 ounces gin
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters
Garnish: lemon twist, or olive(s)

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass, add ice above the liquid level, and give it those 100-ish revolutions as we discussed above. Strain into a Nick and Nora glass, garnish with a lemon twist or olive.

Definitely try the Dry Gin Martini. It's a particular favorite here at TRB, and a go-to when making Martinis.

The Vodka Martini

For those of you who like vodka instead of gin, here's a version for you! Vodka has a lighter flavor profile than gin, so we're sticking with the 5:1 ratio that we used above to create the proper balance with the dry vermouth.

Ingredients:
2.5 ounces vodka*
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters (optional)

Same preparation as described above. Don't skimp on the stirring!

*Regarding the vodka. Since this drink is dominated by vodka with little else to add flavor, we’re counting on you getting a good vodka for this preparation. Don’t reach for the plastic jug on the bottom shelf at $9.99. That may be fine for mixing, but in a cocktail as delicate as the one we’re making here, we’re recommending you move up a shelf. Grey Goose, Absolut, Ketel One, Belvedere—all are good choices, and easily found at your local liquor mart.

Wrap Up and Miscellaneous Notes

• For those of you who like a super dry vodka Martini--that is, without any vermouth at all--we say go ahead and chill your vodka over ice and serve it straight up. We wouldn't call this a Martini—it isn’t—but plenty of folks enjoy vodka this way, especially with some salty olives added to the party.
  
  For the vodka-only version, heck, you could forgo the stirring, and shake it if you prefer! *gasp*
  
  Since it's just the single ingredient—vodka—and it because vodka does tend to play better when bracingly cold, go for it. Just remember to double strain in order to remove stray ice from the shaking process. Ice chips floating on top of a cocktail is never a good look, and feels wrong on the lips. We don't recommend shaking any of the other versions with vermouth in the mix, as the resulting drink will be cloudy and not as smooth as a great Martini should be.
  

• For garnish choices, we here at TRB tend to like a lemon twist with our gin Martinis, while preferring olives for the vodka version. The fragrant oils from the lemon go well with gin because many gins have citrus included in their base recipe. The Earthy saltiness of olives brings character to a vodka Martini.
   

• When using olives as a garnish, it's common to see either a single olive, or three olives. Somewhere along the line, someone got the idea that two olives was somehow bad luck. We shall leave you to decide about the impact of luck, but here's some simple math that may help with your olive decision: three olives is way better than two olives, and two olives is twice as good as just one. Need we say more?
  
  Oh, and get yourself some of these—they’ll help with your olive deployment, and they look classy too.
   

• We'll tackle dirty Martinis, Gibsons, and some other variations in future articles. For now if you want a dirty Martini, we recommend starting with the vodka version and adding a 1/2 ounce splash of olive brine to the mix. Adjust up/down according to how salty and briny you like it.

What did we cover here today? We learned that both gin and vodka can be used as base spirits for a Martini, but the classic and original version contains gin and dry vermouth. We started with the Standard Gin Martini using that special 2:1 ratio, and moved to the dry version at 5:1. We then swapped out the gin for a good quality vodka, and kept the ratio at 5:1.

Boom! That’s three more recipes added to your cocktail toolkit, and you can easily derive them all from the 2:1 starting point.

That's all for now. Stir up some Martinis at home and have fun experimenting! There's a wide array of flavors to explore when it comes to the Martini. Happy Tippling!

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Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients: Rye or bourbon, bitters, twist
Gear: rocks glass, muddler, bar spoon, big ice
Flavor Profile: Spirit forward, complex
Countdown to Enjoyment: 4-6 minutes

Recipe:
2 ounces rye or bourbon
1 sugar cube
Two dashes Angostura bitters
Water

Introducing the Old Fashioned

(Click here to go directly to the recipe and instructions.)

What's in a name?

The Old Fashioned lays claim to being the very first cocktail. Its original name was simply, "whiskey cocktail" and was often recommended as a bracing and stimulating morning wake-up. No one is entirely sure of the origins of the drink.

Indeed, no one is entirely sure of the origins of the word cocktail.

The earliest known reference to the cocktail being associated with a specific drink can be traded back to May 13, 1806. An upstate New York newspaper, The Balance and Columbian Repository, published the following in an attempt to define for readers the meaning of the compound word “cock-tail”:

"Cock-tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters…"

That’s it right there, the very ingredients of an Old Fashioned: spirit, sugar, water, bitters.

Interesting that this earliest known reference to the concoction did not specify a type of liquor. It is likely that this new drink, the cock-tail, was made with bourbon, rye, brandy, or gin. Also interesting is that the concoction carried with it the rather generic name of whiskey cocktail, brandy cocktail, etc. and would carry those monikers for many more decades. It wasn't until the late 1880s that the name Old Fashioned was given to the version of the drink that featured whiskey in the mix to the recipe

It was at this time in the late 19th century that the world was undergoing a mixology revolution of sorts. Bartenders, in an attempt to fortify their personal brands, were adding any number of new and different ingredients to the recipes of the day, including absinthe, Chartreuse, curacao, vermouth and more. Some of these inclusions resulted in drinks that were more successful than others. These new formulations were known as "improved" cocktails, yet there was little agreement on whether these new drinks were actual improvements on the old recipes.

Some of the improved drinks survived. (The Manhattan is a shining example of a new drink that stood above the rest in this era.)

What about the other supposedly improved drinks? Many customers felt they were gimmicky, overwrought, and just plain bad. Bar patrons started asking their bartenders for "old fashioned whiskey cocktails".

Shorten that a bit, and the generic whiskey cocktail becomes the Old Fashioned, distinguishing the recipe from the modern, improved drinks being promoted at the time.

Yeah, but what's in the drink?

We've answered what's in the name, now let's explore what's in the drink! There is a bit of controversy regarding the ingredients among fans of the cocktail. Some insist the drink shines with muddled fruit. Others want it topped off with 7-Up, and the purists rage against all of it.

The source of the controversy stems from the sheer length of time the drink has been around, and the various things bartenders have tried in an effort to improve upon the original, rustic formula. The Old Fashioned has been sliding across bar tops for over 200 years, and along the way the drink picked up a number of bad habits.

Let's see what Robert Simonson in his excellent book, The Old Fashioned: The Story of the World's First Classic Cocktail, has to say on the subject:

"No cocktail has endured the same roller-coaster ride of reputation. It has had every sling and arrow of barroom fashion thrown at it. That will happen when a drink—nearly alone among its brothers—sticks around for two centuries, never having completely fallen out of favor, and having avoided being crushed under the wheel of progress called Prohibition.

Once a simple assemblage of whiskey, sugar, and bitters, restless bartenders have dashed into it absinthe, curaçao, maraschino liqueur--all fancy liqueurs that found their place on the backbar in the mid-nineteenth century.

[Along the way] it's been a fruit salad, with lemon, orange, cherry, and pineapple piled high atop its rim to delight the eye of the decadent Gilded Age tipplers. Later, sometime after Prohibition, the fruit sunk to the bottom in a muddled mess. It's been shellacked with seltzer, sour mix, and lemon-lime soda, and made with rye, bourbon, and brandy."

In the spirit of simplicity that drives us here at The Reluctant Bartender, the Old Fashioned recipe put forth below will hue closer to its rustic origins as the whiskey cocktail, forgoing the fancy additions, fruit muddling, etc.

This is not to say that you wouldn’t enjoy an Old Fashioned with muddled fruit. Give it a try, Reluctant reader! For our purposes here, we’ll keep it simple.

Whiskey, sugar, bitters, and water is all we need. We'll push the boundaries of simple with the addition of citrus twist, but that will remain optional.

Notes on how to make the Old Fashioned

Get yourself a glass

The Old Fashioned is a category of drink that is made in the same glass in which it is served. Your glass of choice should be a rocks glass. This makes the Old Fashioned super simple, in that it requires little other than the base ingredients, and the glass to hold it. Oh, and a muddler.

Big Ice needed

We here at The Reluctant Bartender want to make things as simple as possible for you, dear reader. There are certain niceties that are, in our opinion, unavoidable. For the Old Fashioned, you're going to want to use Big Ice. Not the little cubes from your ‘fridge. You want a single, large ice cube.

In our entry on gear, we'll talk in more detail, but for now get yourself one of these.

Why? Because Big Ice cools the drink without watering it down. The relatively smaller surface area of the single large block of ice, compared to many smaller pieces of ice, causes it to melt much more slowly and in a way that is quite pleasurable. The drink will slowly evolve, and you'll notice this as you sip.

Now listen: if you use a bunch of little ice from the 'fridge, the cocktail police will not break down your door shouting freeze! Just know that if you're using little ice cubes, the drink will get noticeably watered down and this will happen quickly. You may be fine with that, but when serving guests Big Ice is welcome. It's also an impressive touch to an otherwise simple libation.

#BigIce

Bourbon or Rye?

We here at The Reluctant Bartender understand that there are a TON of options for whiskey in your Old Fashioned. In keeping with our philosophy of simple, we will make some basic recommendations. You will find as you learn more about the various spirits available that you're leaning towards one or the other.

For now, some gentle guidance.

To put it simply: rye will be spicier, bolder; bourbon will be softer and have a rounder mouth feel.

If you're new to cocktails or new to American whiskey, use bourbon. If you're a little more adventurous, try the rye.

We'll make three specific recommendations:

Old Forrester 86 Bourbon: this will make a classic, balanced cocktail. The slight sweetness of the bourbon will add a velvety mouth feel to your Old Fashioned.

Evan Williams 100: this will make a stronger cocktail with more punch on the palate. The higher proof spirit will make a hotter cocktail with more kick, but will still have good flavor.

Bulleit Rye: this will make an Old Fashioned with more spice, but also more character. The rye will be more rustic. Best for folks who like more complexity to their flavor profiles.

Regardless of which spirit you choose, you're going to have an excellent cocktail to share, so don't stress. Enjoy the drink for what it is! Compare the various flavors. Have fun.

Sugar or simple syrup?

The Reluctant Bartender recommends using a muddled sugar cube, but there's nothing wrong with using simple syrup if you adjust for the water, accordingly.

Simple syrup is just sugar dissolved in water. There are different ratios of sugar to water, but the most common ratio is 1:1. Dissolve one cup of sugar in one cup of water, and you have simple syrup.

You can save some drink prep time by making simple syrup ahead of time, though to be honest, muddling a sugar cube doesn't take so much time that it will make a difference--that is, unless you're making a lot of Olds Fashioned.

What bitters?

We recommend the classic Angostura bitters for this recipe. That said, as your confidence grows, you should experiment with other classic bitters—Peychaud's, Fee Brothers—as well as new and interesting bitters that you discover

Recipe and Step-by-Step Instructions

Ingredients:

2 1/2 ounces of Rye or Bourbon
1 sugar cube
2-3 dashes of Angostura bitters
1 barspoon of warm water
1 hunk of Big Ice
Orange twist

Prep your cocktail:

1. Add one sugar cube to a rocks glass.

2. Wet the sugar cube with two or three dashes of bitters, and one bar spoon of warm water.

3. Using a muddler, muddle the sugar, bitters, and water into a slurry.

4. Add Big Ice.

5. Pour your whiskey of choice over the ice cube, into your rocks glass.

6. Garnish with a twist of orange (optional).

7. Serve, and enjoy.

There, that was easy wasn’t it? You now have in your hands the very first American Cocktail. 200 years of history make for an interesting story, and a handful of simple ingredients make for one fantastic drink. Enjoy!

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Difficulty: Easy (Super Easy, actually!)
Ingredients: Rye or bourbon, vermouth, bitters, Luxardo cherry
Gear: mixing glass, strainer, bar spoon, cocktail glasses, ice
Flavor Profile: Spirit forward, complex
Countdown to Enjoyment: 5 minutes

Recipe:
2 parts rye (or bourbon)
1 part vermouth
Two dashes Angostura bitters
1 cherry

Introducing the Manhattan

(Click here to go directly to the recipe and instructions.)

Let's have a talk. Slide up to the bar here at The Reluctant Bartender, and let us more pour you a Manhattan. Do you taste that? That right there is American Cocktail History on your palate. A combination of whiskey, vermouth, and bitters, stirred gently over ice, and garnished with a proper cherry.

The flavor is complex and luscious, the bite of the whiskey offset by the slight sweetness of the vermouth and it's aromatized notes. Bitters add what I think of as height to the base proceedings, an ornamental element added to the classic underlying spirit architecture. It's a luxuriant drink with many dimensions. A drink with character.

Now listen: I debated where to start. The Manhattan? Or The Old Fashioned?

The Old Fashioned has a legitimate claim to the title of most important cocktail, since it was the first cocktail. The Old Fashioned began life as the whiskey cocktail, documented as early as 1806. The recipe called for whiskey, sugar, bitters, and water. This drink marched along for decades but the recipe didn't change much, if at all. Modifications of the base recipe included using gin or brandy as the base spirit, but the concoction and its variations were not significant enough to even warrant a name change. 

It wasn't until the Manhattan arrived sometime after the Civil War that the history of cocktails was fundamentally changed, forever. While the Old Fashioned wears the badge of first, the Manhattan wears the badge of most important. The addition of vermouth—an aromatized, fortified wine from Italy—has been called a watershed moment by many, including author Philip Greene in his work The Manhattan: The Story of the First Modern Cocktail.

"No other drink can match the historical and cultural significance of the classic cocktail, the Manhattan. Its advent represents a watershed moment in cocktail history.  For the first time, an imported, fortified, aromatized wine known as vermouth modified the structure of the cocktail, adding balance, nuance, sophistication and sweetness to the base spirit. It completed the revolution and launched a new epoch. The Manhattan so changed the drinking landscape that the original [the whiskey cocktail] became old hat, old school…the Old-Fashioned."

Think about that: it wasn't until the arrival of the Manhattan, a disruptive force in this new world of drinks, that the Old Fashioned even received a proper name.

That's a powerful history, one that you can hold in your hand today, and enjoy in much the same way it was over 150 years ago.

Was the Manhattan really created in Manhattan? Well, that's up for some debate. Some stories have the drink created in Maryland, which would make a little sense given that the original recipe called for rye whiskey as the base spirit, and Maryland was known for distilling rye. Other stories say the drink originated at the Manhattan Club in New York City, in the 1880's.

Regardless of where it was created, or who was involved, there's a reason that the Manhattan has been the drink of choice for discriminating cocktail lovers for well over a century.

Let's dig in.

Notes on how to make a Manhattan

Regardless of the complex history of the Manhattan, the drink is easy to make! Don't let cocktail snobs confuse you by telling you it's "deceptively complex"--it is not. The resulting flavors have a depth of complexity, but when you pull back the covers it's essentially a two-ingredient cocktail, with a couple dashes of bitters. Some consider the bitters to be an ingredient, others consider it more of a garnish. I do not view bitters as a garnish. Leave out the bitters and what we're left with is a slightly flat drink, lacking height.

For the sake of simplicity here at The Reluctant Bartender, we'll consider the Manhattan a two-ingredient cocktail—but don't forget those bitters!

There's beauty in the simplicity here, and this ratio is going to be something we refer back to many times as we learn more cocktail recipes. The ratio to remember is 2:1 -- two parts of spirit to one part vermouth. Couldn't be easier.

The spirit and vermouth are measured and poured into a mixing glass, bitters are added, and the ingredients are stirred over ice, strained, and poured into a cocktail glass.

Rye or Bourbon?

The big debate among fans of the cocktail centers around the use of rye or bourbon. I used to feel that the only way to make a Proper Manhattan was to use rye whiskey. To this day, it's still my preferred base spirit for a Manhattan. Rye brings a spiciness to the proceedings that I enjoy. I want the base spirit to have a little bit of attitude because we're going to be adding other flavors from the vermouth and the bitters, and I don't want the spirit to get lost.

Over the years, I've softened my fundamentalist stance. After all, why should the door to other flavors be closed? There's no reason to exclude those who may prefer the flavor of a different spirit. These days, I enjoy a bourbon Manhattan too.

Here's what I'll say about the difference between using rye vs. bourbon. The rye version will have a spicier kick on the palate, whereas the bourbon version will be more mellow, with a rounder mouth feel. I suggest you try both, and I've included some recommendations below.Never shake a Manhattan!

We'll talk about this more in other entries, but there's an easy way to remember whether to stir or shake a cocktail: drinks that contain all spirit should be stirred. Recipes that include ingredients other than spirit—orange juice, for example—should be shaken to fully incorporate.

Shaking a drink like a Manhattan will result in a cloudy drink, with ice chips floating on top, and a slightly-off mouth feel.

A properly stirred Manhattan will remain clear and beautiful, there will be no ice chips knocking against your pearly whites, and the drink will be velvet smooth.

What's up with the Luxardo cherry?

Well, to be quite frank, they are the best dang cherries for this application. Yes, you can make your own brandied cherries. I find dried cherries that have been soaked and refortified can be a little too soft and mushy. Luxardos have a snap! when you bite into them. They're dark, sweet, every so slightly tart, and the perfect ending to a classic Manhattan.

What bitters?

I recommend that you Reluctant Bartenders start with the classic Angostura bitters. They bring additional spiciness to the fore, with notes of clove and cinnamon. It's hard to go wrong with Angostura. They're a bartenders staple for good reason.

Other bitters bring different taste dimensions to our Manhattans. I suggest giving them a try! Peychaud's bitters are a popular choice, and I've found that I like the cinnamon-forward flavor of Fee Brothers Barrel-Aged Bitters.

We will be adding an entry devoted entirely to bitters in the coming weeks. For now, start with Angostura and together we'll expand out bitters collection and try new ones together as we progress deeper into the recipe book of The Reluctant Bartender.

What whiskey?

I spent many years making Manhattans with Bulleit Rye. Bulliet has more rustic flavor with a certain spicy peaks that fit well when mixed into a Manhattan. You want to taste the spirit in a spirit-forward cocktail such as the Manhattan, and you need something with character to hold up to the character of the vermouth. Bulleit Rye is readily available and is fairly priced in my experience. There are cheaper ryes out there, but when I'm making what may very well be the King of Cocktails, I'm not looking for a discounted experience.

My all-time favorite spirit for a Manhattan is Pikesville Rye, hands down.  Pikesville is a rye whiskey that comes in at 110 proof--it packs a punch! But that punch doesn't come at the expense of taste or complexity. Pikesville is slightly more expensive than Bulleit, but totally worth it if you ask me.

As for bourbon, I've found that I like to use Old Forrester 86 bourbon, the standard 86 proof version. Old Forrester 86 brings character and a nice round mouth feel to the proceedings. Old Forrester is readily available, fairly inexpensive, has a great history, and does a good job of making a respectable and tasty Manhattan. Old Forrester 86 is one of those base sprits that I like to have around for use in many different cocktails.

What vermouth?

For the classic Manhattan, The Reluctant Bartender recommends either Dolin Vermouth or Carpano Antica Formula. Both of these should be readily available in a good liquor store. Yes, I’m making a judgement here. I’ve been in certain liquor stores in Harford County, MD, where not only did they not have any vermouth, the owner didn’t even know what vermouth was.

It’s totally understandable if you, The Reluctant Bartender, don’t know what vermouth is, or where to find good vermouth. It’s another story entirely when the proprietor of a fully-stocked liquor store has never even heard of a staple ingredient for many, many cocktails.

Guys, I can help you craft cocktails at home, but I can’t find you a good local liquor store. You’re gonna have to find that on your own. A good liquor store will not only have vermouth in stock, but the proprietor should be able to guide you to a section that has multiple different options, including different vermouth styles and makers. For the Manhattan recipe here, you want a sweet red vermouth.

Seek out the options mentioned above, and you literally cannot go wrong.

Which vermouth to choose? Well, we here at The Reluctant Bartender really enjoy Dolin’s. It’s good, easy to find, reasonably priced, and works great in a Manhattan, or on it’s own over ice. Carpano Antica is delicious. But it’s also a little more pricey than Dolin’s. Carpano adds a rustic winter-weather weight to the drink that works great in cold weather, but is a little much for warmer temps. Carpano is also great over ice.

For holiday season, go with Carpano. Otherwise, if you want to spend a little less, and get a little lighter vermouth that is both full of flavor and works great in a Manhattan, reach for Dolin’s.

Recipe and Step-by-Step Instructions

Ingredients:

2 ounces of Rye or Bourbon
1 ounce of vermouth
2 dashes of bitters (Angostura)
1 Luxardo cherry

Prep your glasses:

1. Grab your cocktail glass(es) and bar spoon.

2. Drizzle a 1/2 bar spoon of Luxardo cherry syrup artfully around the inside of the glass.

3. Add a single cherry to the bottom.

Prep your Cocktail:

1. Pour 2 ounces of your chosen whiskey into a mixing glass.

2. Add 1 ounce of vermouth

3. Add two dashes of bitters

4. Using a cocktail spoon, stir for 50 rotations (about 30 seconds)

5. Strain equal portions into your cocktail glasses.

6. Enjoy!

That's it.. I told you, this was going to be easy.

You've made one of the most important drinks in the history of cocktails. Hold that glass up to the light and enjoy the red and chestnut brown highlights shining clearly through your mix. Bring it to your lips and let the Manhattan dance over your tongue, smooth, cold, slightly spicy, sweet, and just a touch bitter. Don't wait to enjoy that cherry until the drink is completely gone. I like to enjoy that cherry with the very last mouthful, the tartness of the cherry mixing with the last of the cocktail, and readying my palate for round two.

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This is The Reluctant Bartender, a newsletter for beginning cocktail afficionados! Our goal here at The Reluctant Bartender is to provide the burgeoning—but reluctant—home bartender with the resources and skills to make great mixed drinks at home with minimal fuss, stress, and effort. With our help, you won’t spend hours searching the internet for recipes, trying to locate rare ingredients, worrying if your friends and family will like your drinks, and then fumbling through complex assembly techniques without the skills or tools that you need.

Let us introduce you to the ingredients, basic tools, and basic skills needed to make great cocktails at home without investing a fortune in rare liquor and gimmicky tools, or wasting precious hours of your time trying to cobble together information from multiple different sources with their own agendas.

We will help you remove the doubt, worry, and stress and instead focus on a methodology that is simple and fun!

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Have you ever had that perfect mixed drink? The one that hits your lips, makes you sigh, and contemplate the wonders of a properly concocted cocktail?

Have you ever wanted to walk up to a collection of various ingredients at a family event or friend’s house, and confidently create a drink that even casual cocktail fans will admire?

Chances are, it’s a lot easier than you think!

Here at The Reluctant Bartender, we’ll be focusing on the gear needed to get started, some basic techniques, and recommending simple and great-tasting recipes that can be made with ease right at home.

As we progress, The Reluctant Bartender will tackle more sticky subjects that make the home bartender worry, such as how to remember cocktail recipes, how to select wine, wine pairing, bubbly, vermouths, bitters, garnishes and more!

We’ll show you easy two- and three-ingredient cocktails that can be made in a flash. We’ll then take those fantastic initial recipes and show you how to build on them as your skills increase.

We’re going to talk about the gear to have on hand for making cocktails at home, and provide an exact list and where to find these important, yet inexpensive tools.

Our first series will address simple cocktails that you can make for the upcoming holiday season. Instead of handing your grumpy uncle a light beer for the pre-dinner festivities, why not a classic Manhattan, or a Fifty-Fifty? Or how about some easy champagne cocktails for Thanksgiving morning? What about an easy port pairing to go alongside that pumpkin pie?

As we get deeper into the Holiday Season, we’ll give you some ideas for easy holiday-inspired cocktails, batch cocktails, and more.

Sign up and come along for the ride!

Your guests will wonder how you had time become a cocktail expert, and you will be freed up to enjoy your holiday with friends and family. You’ll no longer have to spend hours seeking out hard-to-find ingredients, wondering which drinks to make, and worrying over how to make them.

Our first entries will hit Substack as soon as November 14, 2022 so sign up today and start making the move from Reluctant Bartender to Home Mixologist Expert!

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