Holiday Cocktails
Dear Wags,
You worked hard all year, and didn’t get enough appreciation. You are badgered and harangued in a dystopia chock full o’ jerks. So, you've earned a good stiff drink. Our cocktail team prescribes these holiday pick-me-ups for end stage ennui. If you happen to be a W.O.T.W (Wag on the Wagon), substitute ginger beer or sarsaparilla for the demon rum. In any case, it’s time to lay down all your bitterness and hurts, see the good in others and embrace the possibility of better tomorrows. Forget your troubles, come on get happy!
Yours Ever,
The Knickerbocker
The ‘Nick is a venerable tipple, going back at least the 1860s. As its name suggests, it's also a very Gotham brew. (Knee pants, or knickerbockers, were worn by early Dutch colonists in New Amsterdam.) In the Thin Man movies, society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles toss back quite a few Knickerbockers. Here’s how to join them:
2 oz golden rum (Wag likes Gosling’s Gold Bermuda rum)
1 1/2 tsp raspberry syrup or Chambord liqueur
1/2 teaspoon orange curaçao
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
Limes
Berries (blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries all work).
Call your valet and:
Combine the rum, raspberry syrup, orange curaçao, and lime juice in a shaker with ice
Shake it, you mad fool!
Plop the squeezed shell of a lime into a highball glass
Pour in your elixir, and use the shaker ice in your drink/s
Garnish with the berries (you will want a spoon for them)
Say wickedly witty things while solving gruesome murders.
The Marlene Dietrich
There are scores of drinks named after Golden Age Hollywood stars — Charlie Chaplin and Shirley Temple among them. The Dietrich is a riff on an Old Fashioned and the Whiskey Sour, and was reputedly invented at Hollywood’s Hi-Ho Club in 1930. Dietrich loved them. She was an original, and her drink makes a lasting impression, too.
2 oz small batch Canadian whiskey, because this drink was invented during Prohibition (you may substitute rye)
1/2 oz orange curaçao
3 sploshes Angostura bitters
1 orange wedge
1 lemon wedge
Before your gig at the Blue Angel:
Combine the whiskey/rye, curaçao, and bitters in a shaker with ice
Jiggle it like the Weimar Republic
Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with fresh ice
Garnish with your wedges of orange and lemon
Speak-sing Falling in Love Again
Mulled Wine
We have a confession to make: We’re over It’s a Wonderful Life. Heresy! We’re not saying that Frank Capra’s 1946 fantasy isn't sweet and wonderful, we're just mildly suggesting there are other movies. Anyhow, if anything has been loved longer than Life, it’s mulled wine, which has been swilled since ancient times. That’s why George Bailey’s dotty guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) orders it in the film’s bar scene: Mulled wine, heavy on the cinnamon and light on the cloves. Off with you me lad, and be lively! Like the film, mulled wine is a homey seasonal classic.
1 bottle Cabernet Sauvignon (traditionalists like pomegranate wine)
4 cups apple cider
1/4 cup honey
2 cinnamon sticks
4 whole cloves
1 orange
3 star anise
Off you with, and be lively:
Zest and juice your orange
Combine your wine, cider, honey, cinnamon, juice, zest, cloves, and star anise into a saucepan
Bring the brew to a boil, and then immediately reduce the temperature to low heat.
Let the concoction simmer for 10 minutes.
Pour your mulled wine into mugs and add an orange peel garnish.
Dance by the light of the moon.
The Fred & Ginger
The Wag team firmly believes that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies can beam light to the darkest corner of your blasted soul. You need that at this time of year. Like Dietrich, Rogers has a cocktail in her honor. This isn’t it, but the seasonal treat usually called the Gin & Ginger. That’s a great pairing, so we renamed it for another dynamic duo.
1 1/2 oz Hendricks London dry gin
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup chilled Bundaberg ginger beer
Crystallized ginger
Strap on your dancing shoes:
Pour your gin, lemon and honey into a shaker and fill with ice
Shake it like a conga player at the Copacabana until the outside of the shaker is frosty (about half a minute)
Strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice.
Top off with ginger beer and garnish with crystallized ginger
Trip the light fantastic
The Stinger
I would sell grandmother for a drink — and you know how I love my grandmother. That’s wisdom from tabloid hack Macaulay O’Connor (Jimmy Stewart) in The Philadelphia Story. Now that’s a movie we never tire of! The Stinger, which has been around since the 1900s, makes a cameo in the picture, which also stars Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn It seemed like a fusty old society cocktail by the late 1960s, but it’s had a revival.
2 oz cognac or brandy
1 oz white crème de menthe (do not use green, ever)
loads of lovely ice
The Main Line way to do it:
Pour your ingredients into an ice-filled shaker. Old school types prefer to stir. We think shaking is fine
Strain into a cocktail glass. Or if you wish, try it over ice in a rocks glass
Bust up a society wedding
Le Soixante-Quinze
Champagne flows this time of year, so the drinks team is sharing their favorite bubbly cocktail recipe again. The French 75 was named for the 75 mm gun used by France in World War I. It’s been around since the 1920s and was popularized by Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book. Its long association with Harry's Bar in Paris helps explain why it pops up in Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca.
1 oz gin (or your favorite spirit)
1/2 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
3 oz Champagne
1 lemon twist for garnish
Play it again, Sam:
Pour the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup into an ice-filled shaker. Shake until chilled
Strain into a Champagne flute
Top off with more Champagne
Swirl in your lemon twist
Remember, We’ll always have Paris
