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 Here’s a recipe I have been meaning to share for quite some time. It’s a highball that was my first cocktail at The Violet Hour in Chicago. That was several years ago now, but it’s one of those memorable concoctions that has often been the subject of google searches and occasional experimentation for me. Eventually, it came up in discussion on the LTHForum where Toby Maloney has shared some of his other recipes, and although we never got the official proportions for the Zarzamora, the discussion did lead to a successful rendition.
Zarzamora is what they call the blackberry in Argentina. That’s significant for a couple of reasons. First, this drink has blackberries, but more importantly, it contains Fernet Branca. If you recall, Fernet is a bitter Italian Amaro, and it’s one of the strongest in terms of bitter herbal complexity. So, what does that have to do with Argentina?
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 About a month ago, the New York Times published an article about summer cocktails. One of these was a highball that included the unlikely combination of St-Germain and Cynar. Leave it to Zachary Gelnaw-Rubin of Dutch Kills, Queens to take an artichoke-flavored amaro and mix it with elderflower liqueur and lemon juice. The simplicity of these three ingredients has a certain elegance to be sure, but it’s an unexpected combination that for me, earns this cocktail more than just a catchy name.
What really drew me in was the fact that there is no base spirit—at least not in the traditional sense. There’s no gin, vodka, whiskey—just the amaro kept company by some liqueur. A seductive and complex category of spirits dominated by dark and brooding herbal characteristics, an amaro is normally used to augment the flavor other ingredients in a recipe. But this drink dives right in with
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There’s more than one recipe for the Mojito. I even posted a different one a while back to accompany a fine article I wrote about simple syrup. It’s a refreshing summer drink and a great way to hide some rum inside a few mint leaves, lime and sugar. So, I figured it was about time I featured it as the Drink of the Week.
It’s not my favorite cocktail, but a lot of people love it, and why wouldn’t they? Rum, sugar, lime, mint—what’s not to love? I suppose you could consider the Mojito a cross between a Julep and a Daiquiri, but by that logic, every cocktail is just a combination of something else. I was going to get into some of the historic details about this Cuban classic, but I decided plenty has been written about that elsewhere. So, I thought I’d focus on the drink’s
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 I have always been a fan of incorporating fresh seasonal ingredients into cocktails whenever possible. Living in Minnesota, there’s nothing I can do about finding locally grown citrus, but I can use basil, mint, berries and plenty of other local produce—and not just for the garnish. Ideas can come from the farmers market or straight from my own garden. However, an often overlooked ingredient that offers a convenient alternative any time of the year is jelly or jam. Fruit preserves represent an opportunity to inject flavor and variety that you might not always consider. A perfect example of this appeared not long ago on the Small Screen Network with Jamie Boudreau using jam for a simple twist on a classic he called the Breakfast Collins.
The idea behind this is simple: you swap out the sweetener in a cocktail (in this case, we replace simple syrup in a Collins)
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 It’s Cinco de Mayo, the holiday that celebrates Mexican heritage and commemorates the battle of Puebla, Mexico in 1862. It’s hard not to think about the Margarita on this day, but since I wrote about it last year, I thought I would feature a different tequila drink I have been enjoying ever since I spotted it in Imbibe Magazine. The drink I am referring to is the Red Pepper Daisy, and it’s wonderful. It was created by John Lermayer from the Florida Room in Miami and it recently made it’s way onto the menu at Forty Four in the Royalton Hotel, New York.
The Daisy is a class of drinks that goes all the way back to the days of Jerry Thomas. Technically speaking, a Daisy is a fizz—or rather, a soda-topped sour—that is sweetened with a bit of orange liqueur or grenadine and often garnished with fruit. This combination
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 Here’s another fantastic ginger cocktail, but not a new one. It’s the Sleepy Head, and it dates back at least as far as 1930 when it appears in Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book. If you are a fan of the Moscow Mule, or if you tried the Mamie Taylor, I think this cocktail has them both beat. However, the early version is a bit simpler than what we have here. The adjustments are subtle, but I think the cocktail is better for it
The first change results in a stronger boost of orange flavor. The basis for this updated comes from Jeff Hollinger of the Absinthe Brasserie in San Francisco. While Craddock’s book calls for just an orange peel, Hollinger keeps the garnish but takes the flavor a step further by adding muddled orange slices. I am a big fan of that idea because you also get more of
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 A Fizz—that sounds interesting, but sloe gin? Isn’t that the sickeningly sweet red stuff from from when you were young and didn’t know any better? Well, yes and no. And, that’s a problem we need to overcome if we are to restore this drink to its rightful place as a refreshing classic. To get there, we need to understand a few things about our base spirit. Sloe gin isn’t actually gin at all, or rather, it isn’t gin anymore.
It’s supposed to start as gin, but during an infusion of sloe berries (from the blackthorn bush, related to the plum), sugar is added and it slowly transforms into a liqueur. That seems straightforward enough. The problem is that American manufacturers have cheapened the process over the years to the point that most of what you find on shelves today isn’t even made with gin. Untold artificial flavors and too
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 Continuing our series of scary Halloween cocktails, we have the Diablo, our Drink of the Week. I am not going to get into a lot of history for this drink, because, frankly, I don’t know much about it. If you do, please post a comment or two.
What I will tell you is that it’s a tequila cocktail that is surprisingly refreshing for its name, and although most recipes call for it to be made with ginger beer (and there’s no reason you can’t still use it), my recipe is going to make use of ginger syrup which I find far more versatile. You want the ginger to stand out, so quality is key here. Lucifer forbid, please don’t use a run-of-the-mill ginger ale in your Diablo!
Diablo 2 oz silver tequila .75 oz lemon juice .75 oz ginger syrup soda water to top 1 barspoon crème de cassis
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 As the summer fades, here’s a wonderful cocktail to help you hang on to just a little more fun in the sun. It’s usually regarded as a Tiki drink which always reminds me of warm tropical places—as it should. However, instead of rum, this one has two base spirits: gin and bourbon. What could be better than that?
I love the name of this drink partly because it’s actually a nickname. Most cocktail gurus agree that this drink was once referred to as “My Suffering Bar Steward” which seems to recall a time before ice machines and soda dispensers. Imagine a poor, suffering assistant scurrying to and fro to keep the ice bin full and to retrieve ingredients for the barman. Plenty of drinks are named for the men behind the stick, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that in a loud, crowded bar, someone might fancy a misheard
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 There’s a good reason I am not referring to the Drink of the Week as a “Dark ‘n Stormy®”—I’m using “and” in my drink name because because the “n” version is a registered trademark owned by Gosling’s Brothers Limited, makers of Gosling’s Black Seal Rum. Gosling’s is made in Bermuda where the this is their official drink, but it’s actually popular throughout the British Commonwealth.
It’s certainly not a complicated drink by any stretch. The official version requires that you add 1.5 ounces of Gosling’s Black Seal rum to a tall glass of ice and top with their brand of ginger beer. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. Nothing wrong at all. In fact, this official recipe is both simple and delicious. Even if you can’t get your hands on Gosling’s brand of ginger beer, Reed’s is always available at Trader Joe’s, and I expect others would
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