For this month’s Mixology Monday, I decided to highlight a cocktail called the Diamondback, which I first saw in the September/October 2007 issue of Imbibe magazine.

Our taskmaster, Rick, demands we tax our livers with drinks that “contain at least 3oz of 80-proof spirit or have less than 1/2oz of non-spiritness.” No Rick! Don’t throw me [...]

Rye whiskey, port, lemon juice, simple syrup, and an egg white–from a small piece on egg-white drinks, by David Wondrich, in the April 2008 issue of Esquire. If you want the proportions, you’ll have to consult the mag, I’m afraid. (Photograph by Jennifer Hess.)

From the why-hasn’t-anyone-thought-of-this-before department, Reuters ran a story last week about an American ex-pat entrepreneur in Casablanca who’s opened a new cafe…named Rick’s, after the gin joint in one of my favorite films, Casablanca.

I don’t know whether I’ll be in Morocco any time soon, but somewhat closer to home, anyway, is the Cocktail Film Fest [...]

Mrs. Bitters and I had dinner last night at Hearth, in the East Village, and as we normally do, we started with cocktails. I got the Jim Hogg, named after an old-time Texas governor. Delicious, well-balanced drink. I don’t have proportions, but the ingredients are pecan-infused rye, sweet vermouth, and maple syrup. The spicy rye [...]

I thought I’d fix up a couple of Prince of Wales cocktails tonight, a fizzy drink for a fizzy evening. I followed Wondrich’s recipe to the letter, using bonded Rittenhouse for the rye. My pineapple was a couple squares of thawed frozen pineapple from Whole Foods. Maybe it’s the pineapple, but…

I don’t get it. This [...]

On Sunday, I wrote up my agua fresca recipe while it was still fresh. My other big hits were my bottled cocktails and rum punch. I’ll get to the rum punch in my next post, but for now I want to concentrate on bottled cocktails.

Last year, when Jen and I hosted a party, I made [...]

Apologies for posting on the quick this time–the day job’s crunch period is whipping my ass, and on top of that, Jen and I are prepping for a cocktail party (more on that, I hope, next week, if I live through it). This month’s theme is fizzy drinks, hosted by Cocktailnerd.

This is based on [...]

Here’s another great tall drink for a hot, hot day. We enjoyed this one on a day when Hermes smacked up against 92.

This borrows heavily from the Jack classic, Lynchburg Lemonade, but it’s a homemade version with no Sprite or sour mix or any of that other crap. (I’m calling this “Philly” because of the [...]

I am aching with envy that so many of our fellow drinks nerds will be overheating and overimbibing in New Orleans later this week, for Tales of the Cocktail. I really can’t imagine a better way to spend a weekend. But this has just been a hard year, financially, for many reasons that I won’t [...]

In this week’s “Shaken and Stirred” column in the Times, Jonathan Miles looks at the Manhattan cocktail, its origins, and its ingredients. Now, I’ve often heard that rye is the traditional backbone for the Manhattan, and that’s certainly the way I prefer them, but I never knew why rye is the tradition.

Miles doesn’t exactly answer [...]