Ever wondered how to make a cocktail taste fantastic? Or how to give your home cocktail creations that little extra pizzaz to turn a ho hum cocktail into something amazing? I’ve got you! I was invited to present a cocktail class at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in 2024, and although the class is sold out, you can still benefit from the simple tips and delicious cocktails I created in this post.
You won’t be able to craft your cocktail along with me, but you can make it at home, which is almost as much fun as joining me for a class. And remember, your palate is your own, so craft your cocktail to your liking. No matter what anyone, even me, says.
Here are the slides and recipes, Enjoy!
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There are three main things that affect your enjoyment of a cocktail: how it looks, how it smells and of course, how it tastes. These are affected by things like choosing appropriate glassware, the cocktail ingredients you use, how you garnish the cocktail, how the colors of the garnish, the glass and the cocktail play together, how well the drink fits the glass (size does matter), and more!
Developing a cocktail that tastes great is just the first part. Next you have to think about how you want to present it, how you want to garnish it, how to finish it and of course, what to name it!
There are four kinds of glassware that are very common for whiskey and bourbon drinks, my specialty, and part of your choice when developing, making and serving a cocktail has to do with choosing what kind glassware will work best. Here are some tips for common types of glassware.
No matter what kind of cocktail you make, always consider a garnish. It can be a simple and classic orange peel it can be a skewer or ribbon of fruit, it can even be a few simple sprays of a bitter or an herb/flower. The garnish can tie the cocktail ingredients together, engage the drinker with the glass and have fun, all at the same time!
I have some easy one-step garnishes that I keep on hand. Here are some of my favorites that can be used in versatile and fun ways to complete your cocktail:
Let’s Mix!
Let’s start with a twist on a classic whiskey sour with peach syrup and lavender bitters – two essential flavors and aromas of summer.
Here’s what makes this pop:
Peach simple syrup can be a brilliantly fragrant syrup to use in a cocktail. Pairing this with lavender bitters not only cuts down on the essential sweetness of a great peach syrup, it’s also fragrant in a way that evokes a freshly cut peach – that tangy sweet/sourness of a perfectly ripe peach. By threading together the flavor of the peach with the floral aromatics of the lavender, you get summer in one sniff of the nose.
We make this one pop two ways:
- Use a very aromatic dehydrated citrus wheel as a topper for the cocktail when we garnish.
- Add a spritz of lavender bitters to the top of the cocktail to finish it. This brightens those floral notes and makes them very apparent as you bring the cocktail up to your nose. It is EVERYTHING!
Next up one of my favorite bitter-heavy drinks. The Boulevardier is basically a Negroni with bourbon. The ratios are a little different here to keep the bourbon at the forefront of the drink, but we’ve made it pop by stepping outside of the normal flavor profile of a Boulevardier.
This time, we’re using infusions of the spirits in order to add layers of flavor and complexity to a favorite. Once you infuse Campari with strawberries you will never be the same.
We infuse the Campari with fresh strawberries (I used 1 pint of sliced strawberries per half bottle of Campari, infused the fridge for 4 to 7 days.)
We also infuse the sweet vermouth with raw cacao nibs. (I infused 1 bottle of Cocchi Vermouth di Torino with 1 scant cup of cacao nibs for 4 days.) This add an unsweetened chocolate flavor to the vermouth. Since both Campari and vermouth are sweet, that bitterness counteracts the sweetness in those two ingredients.
But the best part is that by doing these two infusions, we’ve paired strawberries and chocolate in a cocktail that was already complex with bitter flavors, making it seem more familiar and reminding us of the elegance of chocolate-covered strawberries.
And for the final cocktail, I wanted to talk about a lesser known cousin to the Espresso Martini (I have mine made with bourbon instead of vodka when I’m out at a cocktail bar), this one called the Revolver. I wanted a simple classic, one that I could let you all taste and enjoy and talk about how one tweak and a finishing spray can change everything. The classic recipe has a flamed orange peel, but I’m not willing to do that in a class where we’ve already been drinking 2 cocktails.
So this time, we use the orange bitters as needed, but we finish the cocktail with a spritz of either chocolate or peaty scotch to give us that tiny bit of smokiness (or chocolate) to bump up the flavor complexity of the drink.
As you serve your cocktails, think about how you might finish it – whether that’s a a spritz of bitters, tinctures or a liqueur from an atomizer, or a quick dust of sugar, spice, powder or citrus oil to the surface of the drink. Consider if the cocktail needs an aromatic boost with a leaf of an herb or a citrus peel rubbed on the rim.
It’s these tiny finishing techniques that make those first few sips so enticing. That’s what can make it POP!
Considering names is always difficult. But as long as you enjoy the name, and it doesn’t offend the person you’re serving it to, I think you’ve met all the important criteria. Here are a few of my tips. And no, AI is not a good substitute for a room full of fun humans helping you name a new cocktail. Especially after a few sips of said cocktail.
