For Thanksgiving, Drink Whiskey and Apple Cider
Whiskey. Amaro. Cider. Happy Turkey Day.
Links About Drinks
An all-star roster of cocktail writers contributes to this New York Times list of 25 great cocktails in New York.
Does your beer need a tiny umbrella? Guiness thinks it does. This is very much a gimmicky marketing plot. But as gimmicky marketing ploys go, it’s pretty cute.
Sother Teague, the drinks maestro behind the bitters-focused bar Amor y Amargo Dice, rolls dice for randomized Negronis. This is fairly similar to the 21 bottle/343 Negroni system I wrote about earlier this year. One of the most common questions I get, after five years of writing this newsletter, is whether I will ever run out of drinks to write about. And my answer is always no, not remotely, because if nothing else, there are always more Negronis.
Sasha Petraske “hated the state of New York nightlife. He wanted to open the antithesis of what he was seeing in bars, and that was a place that wasn’t jam-packed or with super loud music, terrible iced drinks, women not feeling safe or comfortable, the velvet rope, all of that.” Inside Hook talks to Sam Ross about 134 Eldridge Street, the location that originally housed foundational New York cocktail bar Milk & Honey, and which is now the location for Ross’ legendary bar Attaboy. It’s a fascinating interview all around, but that line about what Petraske was reacting to jumped out at me. He wasn’t just trying to make great drinks. He was, like all good hosts, trying to curate a vibe, a mood, an atmosphere that he believed was missing from New York at the time. I know that dark-and-moody, jazz-and-suspenders, speakeasy-style bars are considered somewhat passe at the moment, and louder, more exuberant, party-style bars are in vogue. But it may be time for a return to Petraske’s vision, at least on the volume front. In the last week, I’ve been to two separate bars that were so loud that not only could I not carry on a conversation, I actually had to step outside because it was physically painful. The pressure levels hurt my ears. Now, possibly I am just becoming a grouchy old man.1 But I like music, and I even like loud music, in the right setting. But if the ambient conversational noise and soundtrack are so loud that you can’t understand someone standing two inches away, it’s probably too loud. This, by the way, is one of the many advantages to having friends over for cocktails at home. You can set your own decibel levels, and curate your own vibe. Home bartending, now, more than ever.
Thank Me Later?
Next week is Thanksgiving. I’m giving thanks for this newsletter and its incredible subscribers. I couldn’t have made it five years without you. Sincere thanks to everyone who weighed in with kind words in the comments on yesterday’s post.
A brief reminder: Although the primary edition of this newsletter usually arrives on Friday, schedules may shift somewhat during upcoming holiday weeks. But rest assured, unless some catastrophe befalls me, you will still receive a newsletter every week.
This time of year, there are a lot of social gatherings. We expect 14 at our dinner table next week. These gatherings require drinks.
The question, as always, is what to make.
In previous years, I have recommended the following:
A Thanksgiving Sour. This one is made by infusing apple, cinnamon, and spice into inexpensive brandy. It takes a couple days to make, but it remains one of my most popular cocktails for a reason. It’s delicious. It’s a crowd-pleaser. It suits the season.
A Pumpkin Spice Old Fashioned. It’s just what it sounds like. The drink is a little bit cloudy, thanks to the gloopy thickness of the custom syrup, but it’s delicious, and it tastes just like what you hope for from a cocktail called a Pumpkin Spice Old Fashioned. I say this as someone who does not, in general, go wild for pumpkin spice everything.
A Cranberry-Maple Sidecar. I keep telling you that the world needs more Sidecar riffs. Here’s one that nods to that great Thanksgiving-table staple, cranberry sauce.
Two different pecan pie cocktails. There’s an eggy flip, and a nutty Old Fashioned. They are slightly fussy to produce, but they make delicious desserts, and they are both underrated. These might be my best food-as-cocktail drinks.
A Martini with green beans. Admittedly a controversial drink, but also a funny one, which counts for something. And perhaps an inevitable one as well. The age of green bean cocktails is upon us. This is the future. Let’s make the best of it.
You may have already grasped my basic approach: Typically, I have recommended, and even invented, drinks that call to mind traditional Thanskgiving foods. This a fun and lighthearted way to think about holiday cocktails, but the drinks themselves are reasonably serious. Each showcases some method for taking an unusual cocktail concept and building it into drinkable reality.
For the most part, that’s accomplished through two broad mechanisms
First, by understanding cocktail structure and how to adapt classic root drinks—the Martini, the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned, the Flip—into more novel concoctions.
Second, by knowing how to incorporate and balance specific flavors within a drink.
Which brings us, rather conveniently, back to last week’s post on apples and apple-ing your cocktails. In that essay, I looked at several methods for introducing apple flavors and appleness into drinks. One of those was apple cider. And we haven’t exactly been inundated with apple cider cocktails.
So this Thanksgiving, let me suggest a delicious whiskey, amaro, and apple cider cocktail. It’s tangy, apple-y, and bittersweet. And while it’s definitely not a tiki drink, if you look closely, you can see that it has a surprising relationship to one of my all-time favorite cocktails, the Jungle Bird. Part of making delicious cocktails is making connections!
