Category: cocktails

It’s been above 90 all week and I’m still getting used to it, which means sleeping badly and melting in a million degree car at the end of the work day. What to drink when you get home and still have plants to water and dinner to make and miles to go before you sleep? The kalimotxo (ka-lee-MO-cho), aka equal parts red wine and Coke.

It sounds SUSPICIOUSLY like “redneck sangria” (wine and orange soda or Sprite) but it is apparently Basque, so it’s automatically classy and European. Heck, there’s even a New York Times article about it, so you know it’s legit. Hold your head high and drink up, and then get all your chores done.

Because it’s my Friday, here is short musing on the pleasures of a single drink, from Eqsuire magazine (I know):

The thing about one drink — a glass of liquor we’re talking about, hopefully a stiff pour — is that it doesn’t involve enough alcohol to make anything stop working. Your eyesight, your natural grace, your moral compass — they’re all left intact. Because one drink doesn’t compromise anything. It enhances. You have one drink and your world becomes slightly better. The bar is a slightly better bar. Your dog is a slightly better dog. Your work is slightly more brilliant. And for that, you pay no price. Your outward appearance is unchanged — to your drinking partner, to your boss, to your kid, to a cop. You haven’t wrecked anything. You haven’t said anything stupid. You were a gentleman when you started drinking and you are a gentleman — a slightly more interesting one, which is nice — when you finish drinking. For a good thirty minutes (it doesn’t work if you don’t sip the drink and make it last), everything about the universe is slightly less intolerable. One drink is a free ride.

(The article goes on up to four, but I’m too old for those kind of numbers. And also not a manly male reader of Esquire.)

I know it’s still February, but the evenings are so much lighter that it feels almost like spring. It’s not quite time to call it, Narnia-style, but it’s close. Another sign that spring is coming? I’ve switched to white-wine cocktails. Years ago I liked a vermouth cassis, but now that I’m older I like something less sweet (more bitter, ahem) and I’ve been having a Campari spritz. Not only is it not red wine or whiskey, it’s a fabulous color.

Bonus: It’s light enough you can have one at your desk as you work on projects in the evening and not have your projects go off the rails:

I am looking forward to coming home tonight, sitting on my postage-stamp deck, and having a glass of Lillet, my spring aperitif of choice.
Yes, it’s delicious; but what I think I really love about it is the copy on the bottle:

It can be enjoyed anywhere, on any occasion; however, it is perfect for those special times when day turns to evening and evening turns to night! [emphasis and punctuation theirs]

I may not have special times! like that to celebrate but I like the spirit of it nonetheless.

While I’m not one to get tired of whiskey or scotch or gin (oh my), sometimes it’s nice to break out of the seasonal rut–which for me in winter is whiskey or scotch or a Gibson. I’m slowly stocking up my bar for the 30 Things, so when I was thinking of cocktail options I wasn’t able to make a Sidecar with brandy, but I discovered the Chelsea Sidecar.

Take 2 ounces of gin, half an ounce of Cointreau, and a teaspoon of lemon juice and shake it up. Enjoy the lemony deliciousness and the frosty cold gin. Just enjoy slowly, because this one is strong.

Besides its delicious taste, this one gets extra points because it’s an even lesser-known variation on an old-fashioned cocktail and it has “Chelsea” in the name, which makes you feel all sorts of late 60’s mod and hip. Although that could just be the gin.

I’ve been reading about an elderflower liquer in my magazines for a while now, and it’s finally available in the liquor stores here! (Well, in the new wine store, at least.) I’d been subsituting the non-alcoholic IKEA elderflower concentrate (“Fladersaft”) in the recipes I’d read calling for the liquer, but this

has nothing on this:

Buy it for the bottle alone, and feel like your apartment is really full of French antiques and witty people enjoying a full bar whenever you open the cupboard. The site is nice, too–the St. Germain Cocktail with sparkling wine and soda water is going to be the new fancy drink around here.

The robins hopping around and the bulbs coming up and the seasonal allergies I’ve had all week tell me that spring is coming (tomorrow is the Equinox!), but do you know what really means the end of winter for me?

The return of the gin and tonic! I can only drink them when it’s warm outside and it’s been so nice this week that tonight is the night.
Delicious, delicious beverage of summer, how I’ve missed you….