Classic Cocktail Recipes

• Our Drinkx Culture Cocktail of the Week™ is the Cherry Berry Lemon Fizz™ - a new summer creation from the talented mixologists at P & P Drinking Company (see the Rangtang™ Sunset). It's a light, thirst-quenching blend of lemon, cherry and cranberry flavors with a vodka base, perfectly suited for sultry summer nights.

 

> Recent cocktails of interest included:

Rangtang™Sunset

Whiskey Smash

Cosmopolitan

Manhattan

Vodka Martini

Acapulco

Mojito

Daiquiri 

Pimm's Cup

 

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Acapulco

 

This delightful summer cocktail originated in the tropical paradise of Acapulco, and delivers a sweet, citrus flavor that refreshes by the beach. Some versions include Tequila or pineapple, but our Acapulco keeps it simple.

 

RECIPE

2 fl oz Mountain Gay®  Rum

1 tablespoon Cointreau® 

1 tablespoon Fee Brothers® Lime Juice

1 tablespoon simple syrup

 

Pour all of the ingredients into a shaker two-thirds full of ice cubes. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass

 

Absinthe Cocktail

 

Adirondack

 

Algonquin

 

Black Russian

This popular cocktail first appeared just after World War II, and is ascribed to a Belgian barman, Gustave Tops. He allegedly created it at the Hotel Metripole in Brussels, in honor of Perle Meste, then U.S. Ambassador to Luxemborg. The cocktail owes its name to the use of vodka, the protoypical Russian spirit, and the darkness of the coffee liqueur.

 

A Black Russian is composed of vodka and coffee liquer. When topped with cola, it is referred to as a Dirty Black Russian. Traditionally, the drink is made by pouring the vodka over ice cubes or cracked ice in an old fashioned glass, followed by the coffee liqueur.

1 jigger shot (1.5 oz) premium vodka 
1/2 shot (.75 oz) Kahlua® or similar coffee liqueur
1/2 cup of ice

Place ice cubes into an old fashioned glass. Pour vodka and coffee liquor over the ice. Stir gently and enjoy.

 

 

Black Velvet

 

RECIPE

5 oz Guiness® or similar stout beer
5 oz champagne or premium sparkling white wine

 

Fill a tall champange flute halfway with chilled stout beer, then float the champagne on top. The differing densities of the liquids cause them to remain largely in separate layers (as in a pousse-cafe). The effect is best achieved by pouring the champagne over a spoon turned upside down over the top of the glass, letting the liquid run gently down the inside.

 

Bloody Mary

 

This popular cocktail contains vodka, tomato juice, and usually other spices or flavorings such as Worcestershire, Nando's Peri-Peri Sauce, Tobasco sauce, beef consomme or bouillon, horseradish, celery, olive,salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, l and celery stalk. It has been called "the world's most complex cocktail".

The Bloody Mary's true origin is unclear. Ferdnand Petiot claimed to have invented the drink in 1921, while working at the New York Bar in Paris, which later became Harry's New York Bar, a frequent hangout for Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates. In 1939, gossip columnist Lucious Beebe printed one of the earliest U.S. references to this drink, along with its recipe: "George Jessel’s newest pick-me-up which is receiving attention from the town’s paragraphers is called a Bloody Mary: half tomato juice, half vodka."

 

RECIPE

 1 shot (1.5 oz) premium vodka,

2 shots (3 oz) tomato juice,

1/3 shot (.5 oz) fresh lemon juice

1 part lemon juice 

2 dashes of worscestshire sauce

A dash of tobasco sauce

1/2 cup ice

Seasoning to taste

 

Add all ingredients, including ice, to a cocktail shaker and mix gently. Then pour into a high ball glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish with celery stalk and lemon wedge.

 

 

Brandy Alexander

 

Capriana

Pronounced [kajpiˈɾiɲɐ]), this popular drink is Brazil's national cocktail, made with cachaça - a sugar cane rum - as well as sugar and lime. Cachaça is Brazil's most common distilled alcoholic beverage. While both rum and cachaça are made from sugarcane-derived products, most rum is made from molasses. Specifically with cachaça, the alcohol results from the fermentation of sugarcane juice that is afterwards distilled.

 

The Capriana is enjoyed in restaurants, bars, and many households throughout Brazil. Once almost unknown in the United States, the drink has become more popular and more widely available in recent years, in large part due to the rising availability of first-rate brands of cachaça outside Brazil. The International Bartenders Association has designated it as one of their Official Cocktails.

 

RECIPE

50 ml (1⅔ fl oz) cachaça
½ Lime cut into 4 wedges (or tahiti lime, but not green lemon)
2 teaspoons crystal or refined sugar

Place lime and sugar into old fashioned glass and muddle - mash the two ingredients together using a muddler or a wooden spoon. Fill the glass with crushed ice and add the Cachaça.

 

Champagne Bowler

 

Cherry Berry Lemon Fizz™

 

The dynamic drinking duo at the P & P Drinking company are it again, bringing us a thirst-quenching summer sensation with the light southern comforts of cherry lemonade and cranberry sunshine - with the deceptively strong kick of Svedka® Vodka.

 

RECIPE

3 oz. Svedka® Cherry Vodka (or similar cherry infused premium vodka)
4 oz. filtered water
2 oz. sparkling cranberry juice (alternatively, 2 splashes of cranberry juice & 2 oz. seltzer)
Juice of 1/4 lemon
1/4 cup of ice

 

Add ice to a high ball glass. Stir vodka, water and juices to a yummy, chilled and candy-flavored goodness.

 

Club Cocktail

 

Colleen Bawn

 

Cosmopolitan

 

According to the International Bartenders Association, the original recipe is based on vodka citron, lemon-flavored vodka. Though often presented far differently, the cosmopolitan also has a similar composition to the kamikaze cocktail.

 

The origins of the cosmopolitan are somewhat disputed. It is likely that the drink was created independently by different bartenders in the 1970s and 1980s. The drink saw an enormous jump in popularity in the 1990s, perhaps hitting an all time high with its coverage on television shows like HBO's Sex and the City. Moving in and out of fashion over the last few decades, the Cosmopolitan remains one of the country's most popular cocktails.

 

RECIPE

3 ounces (2 shots) Finlandia® or other premium vodka
3/4 ounces (1/2 shot) Cointreau® or triple sec
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 ounce cranberry juice
1 twist lime zest, garnish

 

Shake with ice till frothy, then strain into a chilled martini glass and serve.

 

 

Daiquiri

 

The name Daiquirí is also the name of a beach near Santiago, Cuba, as well as an iron mine in that area. It is a word of Taíno origin.  

The cocktail was supposedly invented about 1900 in a bar named Venus in Santiago, about 23 miles east of the mine, by a group of American mining engineers. Among the engineers present were Jennings Cox, General Manager of the Spanish American Iron Co., J. Francis Linthicum, C. Manning Combs, George W. Pfeiffer, De Berneire Whitaker, C. Merritt Holmes and Proctor O. Persing. Although stories persist that Cox invented the drink when he ran out of gin while entertaining American guests, the drink evolved naturally due to the prevalence of lime and sugar.

RECIPE
1 1/2 oz light rum
1 tbsp triple sec
1 banana
1 1/2 oz lime juice
1 tsp sugar
1 cherry

Combine all ingredients (except for the cherry) with 1 cup crushed ice in an electric blender. Blend at a low speed for five seconds, then blend at a high speed until firm. Pour contents into a champagne flute, top with the cherry, and serve.

Gimlet

Gin & Bitters

Gin & Tonic

Gin Fizz

Lemon Drop

 

Long Island Iced Tea

A Long Island Iced Tea is an unusually strong highball made with, among other ingredients, vodka, gin, tequila, and rum. 

 

The Long Island Iced Tea (LIIT) is the basis of many elaborate mixed-drinks. It dates to the 70's, named after the continental USA's largest islandLong Island, in New York. Although it doesn't containtea, it's taste is similar. The drink sits in the top 5 of most popular cocktails and is regularly mentioned or seen served in television and films (worthy mentions are The Simpsons, Sex and the City and Cruel Intentions).

 

RECIPE

1 part vodka
1 part tequila
1 part rum
1 part gin
1 part triple sec
1 1/2 parts sweet and sour mix
1 splash Coca-Cola® or Pepsi®

 

Mix ingredients together over ice in a glass. Pour into a shaker and give one brisk shake. Pour back into the glass and make sure there is a touch of fizz at the top. Garnish with lemon.

 

Manhattan

A popular history suggests that this classic cocktail originated at the Manhattan Club in New York City in the early 1870s, but there's little proof to the story. While it remains unclear whether the Manhattan took its name from a famous drinking establishment or the New York city borough itself, the drink's popularity remains a constant at bars all over the world.

 

Today's Manhattan is a slightly sweet, smooth cocktail made with whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. The cocktail is typically stirred with ice and strained into a cocktail glass, where it is garnished with a maraschino cherry. A Manhattan is also frequently served on the rocks in an Old Fashioned or lowball glass.

 

RECIPE

2 ounces of Jack Daniels® Whiskey 
1/2 ounce of sweet vermouth
1 dash of Fee Brothers® Orange Bitters
1/2 cup of ice

 

Place ice into a shaker, and pour in the whiskey, bitters and vermouth. Mix well. Pour drink into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

 

Margarita

 

Mojito

Old Fashioned

The Old Fashioned is a delicious cocktail made from bourbon whiskey, sugar or simple syrup, bitters and a twist of lemon peel. The name suggests its origin: it is purported to be the first drink to be called a cocktail. It is traditionally served in a short, round, flat bottomed glass - an Old Fashioned glass - named after this classic drink.  It is one of six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.

 

The first alleged use of the name, Old Fashioned, was for a bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s retreat in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City. The Old Fashioned was the favorite cocktail of President Harry S. Truman and his wife Bess.

 

Though the core recipe has become muddled over time - one theory suggests that Prohibition is to blame for the morphing of this classic drink - we stick to a truly classic interpretation. Bourbon, sugar, bitters and an optional lemon peel are all that is required for a true Old Fashioned cocktail.

 

RECIPE

1 shot (1.5 oz) bourbon whiskey
2 dashes Angostura®  or similar bitters
1.5 tsp (.25 oz) simple syrup or 1 sugar cube with water
1 cup ice cubes
1 piece of lemon peel (optional)

 

In a glass, mix bitters, simple syrup. Add bourbon & ice. This true classic is served without any garnishes, except an optional lemon peel.

 

Pimm's Cup

Pimm's was first produced in 1823 by James Pimm, a farmer's son from Kent who became the owner of an oyster bar in the City of London, near the Bank of England.

Pimm offered this tonic (a gin-based drink containing quinine and a secret mixture of herbs) as an aid to digestion, serving it in a small tankard known as a "No. 1 Cup", hence its subsequent name. Pimm's began large-scale production in 1851 to keep up with sales to other bars. The distillery began selling it commercially in 1859 using hawkers on bicycles. Since 1865, the business has been sold repeatedly; yet, Pimm's remains a popular cocktail even today.

RECIPE
Ice cubes
2 ounces Pimm's Number 1 Cup
6 ounces ginger ale
2 ounces lemon lime soda or club soda
1/4 cup cucumber pieces or 1 cucumber spear

Put ice in a highball glass or mug. Add the Pimms and then the ginger ale and soda. Stir and garnish with cucumber. Serve.

 

 

Pink Lady

 

Polar Cocktail

 

Rangtang®  Sunset

This delectable concoction comes to us from an upstart, intellectual drinking duo on the east coast, the P&P Drinking Company. Focusing on obscure, novel approaches to the art of drinking, the PPDC defines their mission as the preservation and promotion of public confidence in alcoholic options and cocktail construction. In the midst of a recent, enthusiastic taste taste of the trendy confection, Three Olives® Rangtang™  Vodka, the duo created a refreshing summer cocktail that takes a gustatory right turn from the course of a classic Cosmo. 

 

RECIPE

4 parts Three Olives® Rangtang™ Orange Flavored Vodka
1 part Cointreau® (Courvoisier® in a pinch)
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs lime juice
1 splash cranberry juice 

 

Shake with ice till frothy, bi-coastal & sunset-ish in color, and strain into a chilled martini glass. Warning: shade may vary with specific time of day, current planetary alignment & prevailing political climate. Absolutely delicious - trust us on this.

 

Rusty Nail

 

Screw Driver

 

Sazerac

 

Singapore Sling

 

Stinger

 

Tom Collins

 

Vodka Martini

 

Some might call this the classic martini with a vodka twist - this version utilizes Finlandia® Vodka. The cocktail is made with vodka and vermouth, and garnished with an olive and and a twist of lemon. Over the years, the martini has become one of the best-known mixed alcoholic beverages. Though the martini was first created with gin as its primary ingredient, the vodka martini has risen in popularity to match or eclipse the original cocktail.

 

RECIPE

2 oz Finlandia® Vodka
1/8 oz or 1 teaspoon Dry Vermouth
1 green olive
A twist of lemon peel
Ice 

 

In a cocktail shaker, pour the vodka and dry vermouth. Add ice and shake well. Strain and pour into a frosted martini glass. Drop the olive into the martini and finish by arranging a twist of lemon peel on the rim of the glass.

 

 

Waldorf

 

Whiskey Smash

 

This delightful cocktail was submitted to Drinkx Culture™ by Brian O'Hara of New Canaan in the summer of 2011, CT. It's a refreshing spin on mint summer refreshment, with Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey serving as the base component. If you've ever enjoyed a Mojito, try this cousin, the Whiskey Smash.

 

RECIPE

1.5 oz Bourbon Whiskey - Brian recommends Knob Creek®, one of the top rated bourbons in the country
3/4 oz Simple Syrup 
11 mint leaves
1/3 lemon, in 3 pieces
Splash of soda water
Crushed ice

 

Muddle lemon, mint and simple syrup. Add bourbon and crushed ice, then shake to mix. Pour into a glass, finish with a splash of soda water.

 

 

Whiskey Sour

 

Zaza