Limoncello
8 large lemons
1 litre Vodka
600gms sugar
1 litre water
Wash the lemons & dry them with kitchen paper. Do not rub them too much so as not to disperse oils & perfume.
Peel the lemons with a ceramic potato peeler. The ceramic blade will never brown your lemons or alter taste or their scent.
Take care to remove only the zest, leaving the white inner skin as this will produce a bitter taste to the liqueur. If you are not comfortable using a peeler, a microplane is an ideal alternative.
Place the lemon zest in a large airtight glass jar & pour in the vodka to infuse. Leave for 2 weeks in a cool place out of direct sunlight.
Cover the jar with a cloth to be sure that it remains in the dark. During this time, shake daily to mix the ingredients well without ever opening. After the required infusion time, you need to make the syrup. Put the water & sugar in a saucepan &, over low heat, bring to a boil. Stir constantly until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cool.
Filter the liquid through a sieve to remove the lemon zest.
Once the syrup is cold, add it to the infusion of alcohol & lemon zest & mix well. Now pour the Limoncello into glass bottles with hermetic closure or cork stopper. Store the bottles in a cool, dark place for one week.
NOTE: for added safety, you can sterilize the bottles by boiling them in a pot full of water. The boiling should last at least 20 minutes, then drain the bottles upside down.
What Is a White Russian?
Rich & creamy, the White Russian is the Espresso Martini’s delicious older cousin — but unlike the trendy cocktail, the White Russian leans on heavy cream for its iconic milky hue & soft mouthfeel. The cocktail comes together quickly with just a few ingredients: vodka, coffee liqueur, & a splash of heavy cream. Decadent, heavy cream gets poured over cubed ice (yes, the shape matters!), vodka, & coffee liqueur, resulting in a gorgeous gradient of dark coffee liqueur & bright white cream. The White Russian has the perfect balance of bitter coffee notes, sweetness, & unctuous creamy flavour that combines deliciously.
Ingredients:
ice
60mls vodka
30mls coffee liqueur
60mls chilled heavy cream
Method:
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the vodka, coffee liqueur & heavy cream & shake well. Strain the drink into a chilled, ice-filled rocks glass.
Despite its name, the White Russian was not actually invented in Russia, nor does it have anything to do with the country, for that matter. In fact, the inspiration for the drink’s name came from the use of vodka, which, especially in the mid-20th century, was best known for its Russian roots. It first appeared in the late 1940s but quickly popularized in the United States in the 60s, 70s, & 80s when sweeter, more indulgent cocktails were in vogue.
What Is a Black Russian?
The Black Russian is a simple, two-ingredient cocktail that consists of vodka & coffee liqueur. It’s the forebearer to the more popular White Russian, which follows the same base but includes cream.
Despite its name, the Black Russian has no direct ties to the country that shares its name. Rather, the moniker simply comes from its use of vodka, much the same as the Moscow Mule, which was invented in Los Angeles.
The Black Russian’s origins seem to lay with a bartender named Gustave Tops at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, Belgium, sometime around 1949. It’s said that Tops first created the drink for Perle Mesta, a U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, who was a socialite known for hosting lavish parties.
Why the Black Russian Works
Though a seemingly basic, two-part cocktail, the Black Russian still follows a well-established cocktail flavour template: spirit, sweet, & bitters. In the drink, the spirit is of course vodka, while coffee liqueur pulls double duty as both the sweetening & bittering agent, albeit with an emphasis on the former.
While traditionally made with Kahlúa, a range of fantastic coffee liqueurs are now available on the market that allow you to tailor the drink to your specific tastes. A bottle like New Orleans-made St. George’s NOLA Coffee Liqueur will add notes of chicory & a more heavily roasted coffee aroma. If you’re looking for a less sweet option, Fratelli Branca Borghetti emphasizes the coffee’s bitterness & brings more espresso-like flavours. If you looking to mix things up but want to keep it accessible, Australia-based Mr. Black Coffee Liqueur balances both sides, while keeping the caffeine level high (containing up to 40% the amount of caffeine found in a shot of espresso).
All told, the cocktail still works fantastically as an after-dinner option, & its simplicity remains a selling point. When made with high quality vodka & a thoughtful choice of coffee liqueur, the Black Russian is still a masterclass in how complex cocktail flavour can be created with minimal ingredients.
Ingredients:
60mls vodka
30mls Kahlúa
Method:
Add vodka & Kahlúa into a mixing glass with ice & stir until well-chilled.
Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
The Singapore Sling
Ingredients
25mls gin
10mls Benedictine
10mls Grand Marnier
10mls Heering cherry liqueur
30mls pineapple juic
15mls lime juice, freshly squeezed
1 dash Angostura bitters
mineral water, chilled, to top
Garnish: orange slice, cherry
Method
Add the gin, Benedictine, Grand Marnier, Heering cherry liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice & bitters into a shaker with ice & shake until well-chilled.
Strain into a highball glass over fresh ice, & top with the club soda.
Garnish with an orange slice & a cherry.
This version calls for a highball glass. You could also use a footed glass, like a Hurricane glass, as the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel does. This style of glass provides a touch of verve to the cocktail’s presentation.
The Singapore Sling combines gin, Gr& Marnier, cherry liqueur, herbal liqueur (often Benedictine), pineapple, lime, bitters & club soda. It was first created in the early 20th century at Long Bar in the Raffles hotel in Singapore.
The original recipe is attributed to Raffles bartender Ngiam Tong Boon & is a variant on the Gin Sling, a type of single-serving punch. The earliest published version of the recipe appeared in “The Savoy Cocktail Book,” a 1930 classic written by Harry Craddock. Subsequent recipes followed, & by 1948, David A. Embury states in his book “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks” that no two published recipes for the Singapore Sling are the same.
When constructed with precise measurements, the Singapore Sling is tart, refreshing & delicious. But by the 1980s, as with many tropical classics, the drink had been relegated to a sugary mixture of gin, bottled commercial sweet-&-sour mix & grenadine. Some bars served a bright-red mixture from machines, while others quickly shook up low-quality approximations for tourists. Even the famous Long Bar serves two versions: one derived from a premixed batch that tastes like fruit punch, & another that uses fresh juices & is shaken by hand. Cocktails are subjective, but the latter, handmade version is considered a perfect example of a well-balanced cocktail, & masterclass in how to keep a wide variety of ingredients from overwhelming each other.
At its best, the Singapore Sling is nuanced, complex & ingredient-heavy. It’s also ripe for experimentation. As such, most incarnations of the “classic” cocktail are based on general notes & nostalgia. And many more modern versions result in an overly sweet drink that relies more on grenadine & pineapple juice than herbal liqueurs & fresh citrus.
This recipe is as true to the classic as one can get; it’s fruit-forward, herbaceous & strong. Give it a whirl, & then feel free to experiment to create your own version.
Margarita
Ingredients
60mls blanco tequila
15mls orange liqueur
30mls lime juice, freshly squeezed
15mls agave syrup
Garnish: lime wheel
Method:
Add tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice & agave syrup to a cocktail shaker filled with ice, & shake until well-chilled.
Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
Garnish with a lime wheel & kosher salt rim (optional).
The Margarita is one of the most popular cocktails in North America—for good reason. Combining the tang of lime & the sweetness of orange liqueur with tequila’s distinctive flavor profile, the classic Margarita remains one of the most recognizable & timeless examples of the sour category of cocktails (those that balance a spirit with acidic citrus juice & a sweetening element). What’s less certain, however, is the drink’s origin.
Some say the cocktail was invented in 1948 in Acapulco, Mexico, when a Dallas socialite combined blanco tequila with Cointreau & lime juice for her guests. Others say that the Margarita, which translates to daisy flower in Spanish, was an inevitable twist on the earlier Daisy cocktail, another category of drinks that follows a template of spirit, citrus, orange liqueur & soda. Make one with tequila, leave out the soda, & you get a Margarita. But regardless of how or when it was invented, the Margarita has earned its way into drinkers’ hearts.
When choosing your tequila, quality is key. Opt for a blanco made from 100% blue agave. If it doesn’t say this on the label, it’s mixto—a tequila composed of up to 49% mystery sugars. And although many people still reach for premade sour mix, using fresh lime juice will result in a vastly superior drink, & is the only way to make a quality Margarita.
Orange liqueur has long been one of the Margarita’s signature ingredients. However, as variations on the classic formula have gained in popularity, what was once a mandatory ingredient is now considered optional by others. A common substitute for orange liqueur is agave syrup, which forms the basis of the Tommy’s Margarita, an iconic variant created by Julio Bermejo in the early ’90s at Tommy’s Mexican
Restaurant in San Francisco.
When talking Margaritas, it’s easy to get lost in stories about who invented the drink or become mired in debates over salt versus no salt, blended or frozen, triple sec, Cointreau or Grand Marnier, & so on. In our opinion, this version is the tried-&-true recipe for the best Margarita you can make. Memorize it, & you’ll always impress.
Ingredients:
60mls gin
25mls lemon juice, freshly squeezed
15mls maraschino liqueur
10mls crème de violette (violet liqueur)
1 sour cherry, for garnish (optional)
The Aviation is a pre-Prohibition cocktail that consists of gin, lemon juice, maraschino liqueur, & crème de violette. Said to be created by head bartender Hugo Ensslin at the Hotel Wallick in New York City’s Times Square, it was first published in 1916 in Ensslin’s cocktail manual Recipes for Mixed Drinks, & further immortalized when it was featured in Harry Craddock’s seminal 1930 collection Savoy Cocktail Book.
Known for its gorgeous, light-purple hue, the Aviation is a gin cocktail that’s looks as good as it tastes. Though it largely follows the template of a classic gin sour — gin & lemon juice balanced by sugar, the latter in the form of maraschino liqueur — the drink’s signature colour & flavour comes from crème de violette, or violet liqueur. Its name is said to come from the sky-blue shade of the finished drink.
Method:
In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine the gin, lemon juice, maraschino liqueur & crème de violette.
Shake for 15–20 seconds until well chilled.
Double strain through a fine mesh strainer into a chilled coupe glass.
Garnish with a sour cherry or brandied cherry.