Winter Cocktails for Après Ski or Après Work
No skiing required.
As the song goes, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful.
’Tis the season for winter cocktails. Whether or not you decide to go skiing this season, enjoying your après ski around the condo firepit or après work in front of the fireplace at home might be the most prudent way to partake.
Learn how to make these four classics (two warm, two chilled) from veteran bartender Leandro DiMonriva, aka The Educated Barfly. His high-quality video craft cocktail tutorials are also a fascinating education in cocktail history.
1
Hot Buttered Rum (pictured above)
Adding butter to alcoholic drinks started in the days of Henry VIII when Dr. Andrew Boorde recommended buttered ale as a remedy for a hoarseness. Drink to your health with this cold-weather classic that became a staple in New England in the colonial days.
Ingredients: rum (2 oz), spiced syrup (.5 oz), 1 spoon of spiced butter batch (watch for the recipe), hot water (4-5 oz)
2
Hot Toddy from 1781
The origins of the winter drink are as foggy as a Scottish morn, but one theory is a reference to “Todian Spring,” a water source in Edinburgh, found in a poem published in 1781.
Ingredients: bourbon (1.75 oz), fresh lemon juice (.5 oz), honey (.5 oz), hot water (2 oz), lemon wedge garnish
3
Cosmopolitan 1934
A rosy-colored cocktail conjures the Christmas spirits. Unlike the Cosmopolitan made famous in “Sex and the City,” this is a drier version, made with gin instead of vodka, that dates back to 1934.
Ingredients: gin (2 oz), fresh lemon juice (.75 oz), fresh raspberry syrup (.75 oz)
4
Old-Fashioned
According to most sources, this brown-liquor favorite was invented at the Pendennis Club in Louisville in 1881 when patrons supposedly asked for a cocktail “made the old-fashioned way.”
Ingredients: rye or your preferred whiskey (2 oz), 1 sugar cube, 4 dashes Angostura Bitters, dash soda water, orange and lemon twist, and Luxardo cherry garnish
