Floating through Repeal Day: the Twelve Mile Limit Cocktail
December 5 is Repeal Day in the United States, the anniversary of the December 5, 1933, end of Prohibition. (Don’t get me started on Prohibition… )
Reason enough to examine a couple Prohibition-themed cocktails.
Between the Sheets
The Between the Sheets Cocktail is a delight, much better than I expected from a cocktail with such a tacky, frat-house name. It is a very successful variant of the classic Sidecar. Read more 
A return to Havana — the El Presidente Cocktail
Modern cocktail guides have done the El Presidente a terrible disservice. They typically describe a sweet, fruity rum cocktail—a cloying, undrinkable embellishment of the original. They do not describe the classic El Presidente. Read more
Back to the tropics with the Queen’s Park Swizzle
I hadn’t paid attention to swizzles until a couple of months ago. I had always found the name amusing, but I had never bothered to learn about them—so many cocktails, so little time. Then Tony Harion suggested I add the Queen’s Park Swizzle to my list of summertime coolers, and my interest was piqued. It was a hot day, and I had a brand new ice crusher, so it was time to learn about swizzles.
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The Old Cuban Cocktail
You could think of the Old Cuban as a Mojito for grown-ups—more refined, more complex, and more sophisticated than the popular, tall summer drink. It starts with the same set of fundamental flavors—rum, sugar, mint, lime, soda—but expands on them to arrive at a delicious and memorable cocktail. Read more
The Last Word with an Asterisk: variations on a classic cocktail
When I first encountered Phil Ward’s “Final Ward” cocktail, I wrote it off as a “why would I do that?” type of experiment. It was, after all, just a variant of the Chartreuse and Maraschino Last Word, which didn’t make sense to me, either, on paper. Read more
Crimson Slippers Cocktail
The Crimson Slippers Cocktail taught me that rum and Campari are an astonishing, and nearly perfect, combination. Read more
The Mai Tai
One of the fun things about the Mai Tai is that the generally accepted modern recipe calls for two, or sometimes three, different rums. You get to be your own rum blender, and with even a very modest rum shelf, there are endless flavor possibilities—and, hey, they’re all likely to be good. Read more
