“Hpnotiq is back?” asked Punch, in a strange article posted this week. The answer? Maybe? “A handful of bars are reaching for the aquamarine bottles yet again,” and some are making updated versions of the Incredible Hulk, a venomous early aughts “cocktail” that combined Hpnotiq and Hennessey Cognac. Overall, not a particularly convincing argument that a renaissance is under way.

The Punch post is just one of several articles I’ve seen over the past year or so suggesting that the infamous electric-blue liqueur is having a moment. I mean, people have been actually predicting Hpnotiq comeback for more than a decade. In 2015, AdWeek reported, “Once a club staple, the spirit now looks to nostalgia.”

In what I guess we can call The Golden Age of Hpnotiq (2001-2009), the liqueur was a standard in hip-hop lyrics. In fact, there are at least 163 songs that name-check Hpnotiq. (Everyone from Drake to Kanye to Eminem to Karol G has used it in a rhyme). This would be the same era as Lil Jon’s “Crunk Juice” (a poisonous mix of Cognac and an energy drink like Red Bull) and Busta Rhymes’ “Pass The Courvoisier, Part II.” Y2K, baby.

So, what is Hpnotiq? Well, kids, just read the label on the slender bottle, which explains it’s “A Refreshing Blend of Premium French Vodka, Exotic Fruit Juices, and a Touch of Cognac.” It’s only 17% alcohol by volume, cloying, and tastes sorta pineapple, sorta passionfruit, sorta mango, sorta citrus. Honestly, Hpnotiq tastes…blue? But a crazy, artificial blue never before seen in nature.

According to a 2019 “oral history of Hpnotiq” in Mel Magazine (which also declared a “comeback” and a “Hpnaissance”), the liqueur in the “sex-toy-shaped bottle” was created in 2001 by Raphael Yakoby, a 25-year-old college dropout with zero business experience, who was living on Long Island—which, of course. “I was walking through Bloomingdale’s and saw this blue perfume in a beautiful bottle on a counter, and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be great for a liqueur product?’” Yakoby told the New York Post in 2007. It was an instant hit. By the following year Yakoby was worth $50 million.

You started seeing Hpnotiq pop in all sorts of cocktail abominations: A Hpnotiq Margarita where it subbed for Cointreau, a Hpnotiq “Martini” with coconut rum and pineapple juice, and the aforementioned Incredible Hulk, which turned an angry green when Cognac was added. Cocktail menus were populated by these sorts of drinks in the mid-to-late aughts. If you ever wonder why the classic cocktail renaissance happened, well kids, it was a reaction to monstrosities such as the Emerald Ice (Hpnotiq floated on top of Sprite, lime juice, and Sour Apple Pucker). Now, I guess, the pendulum could be swinging back, away from the whole speakeasy-craft-cocktail thing and toward…Hpnotiq?

In Hpnotiq’s defense, I will say that in the category of bad, cloying liqueurs, it’s one of the better ones. Is that faint praise? Well, yes, but still praise all the same. And to be fair, with the brandy category in such a dire crisis, it might be time for Cognac to embrace Hpnotiq and the Incredible Hulk (and maybe even Crunk Juice) once again.

For someone who covered spirits during those heady days of the 2000s, Hpnotiq brings back warm memories of a time when the the spirits market was ecletic, the wild west, and people were willing to buy and try anything weird and new. This was long before celebrity tequila, before a million “new gins” crowded shelves, before every dude became a bourbon aficionado. Back then, a small handful of entrepreneurs seemed more apt to bring in crazy, off-the-beaten-path products, with a few hits (St-Germain elderflower liqueur, for instance) amid many misses. I wrote about this era a couple of years ago in an essay called “Cleaning Out the Liquor Cabinet”:

How about a stone pine liqueur from the Alps? How about a peanut rum liqueur from St. Lucia? How about Dutch genever in heavy clay bottle? How about a root-beer-ish-flavored “amaro” meant to historically recreate early American root tea? How about a Polish vodka made with bison grass that’s banned in the U.S. because it has a chemical that causes blood thinning?

Hpnotiq grew out of that time, and its sheer staying power is sincerely impressive.

All of which still fails to answer the question: Is Hpnotiq having a comeback? My only recent experience with Hpnotiq is when my brother gave a bottle to my son Wes as a joke gift as he went off to college. I asked Wes whatever happened to the bottle. “I drank it once and it sat in my closet for like a year,” he said.

Was it a Gen Z thing? I texted Everyday Drinking’s resident Gen Z drinks trend specialist Annie Arriaga. “So is Hpnotiq back or not?”

“Asking the wrong gal. Never left for me.” (Annie, who is from Miami, suggests however that it might be a Miami thing.)

In the end, whether you are a Hpnotiq hater or a fan, I invite you into the comments to share your memories, nightmares, and above all, cocktail recipes involving the infamous electric-blue booze.

Related Booze Coverage in Everyday Drinking

Distiller and winemaker Laurent Cazottes pointed to a diagram on the wall of his tasting room that showed the differences between conventional, organic, and biodynamic viticulture and certifications for the latter two practices. “Eighty-five percent of wine in the world is conventional, but 15 percent is here,” Cazottes told me, gesturing to the organic and biodynamic segments of the chart.

“And in spirits, 99.9 percent is made here,” he said, pointing to the conventional segment and the list of deplorable practices it permits: the use of pesticides, insecticides, additives, and so on.

For someone like me who started in wine and came to spirits from the side, I’ve often wondered about this difference. There’s a significant, influential movement in the wine world that recognizes an essential connection between quality produce and quality wine, and that improved agricultural practices result in a better-tasting product. This idea is still quite niche in spirits. While there is a strong trend in the wine industry toward small-scale organic farming, biodynamics, and regenerative practice, agriculture in the spirits industry remains heavily industrial.

I visited Cazottes in February at his distillery in Gaillac, in Southwest France, where he farms 20 hectares of fruit trees, grapes, flowers, plants, and grains that are the raw materials for his range of eaux de vie, liqueurs, and aperitifs. He grows Williams pear, greengage plum, wild quince, Périgord truffle oaks, walnut trees, tomatoes, aromatic herbs, and five hectares of an ancient grain called petit épeautre, or Einkorn wheat. He also has four hectares of indigenous grape varieties like mauzac rose and prunelart.

Cazottes drove us through the village to see his orchards. “My father was a moonshiner,” Cazottes said cheekily, meaning a bouilleur ambulant, or itinerant distiller, a traditional occupation in France. In 1998, when Cazottes was 23 years old, he decided to take over his father’s business. He changed the focus, planted trees and vineyards, and sought to create a brand.

Cazottes’s approach makes him part of the 0.1 percent of spirits producers that reject conventional agriculture’s sacrifice of quality for high yields and low costs. He’s meticulous about using the best produce—organically grown with biodynamic practices—to craft his spirits, most of which are single vintage. This is the reason why Michelin-starred restaurants and top bars in France, the U.S., and around the world clamber for bottles of his small-production eaux de vie and liqueurs. It’s why they pursue collaborations with him, as do cult winemakers like Jacques Lassaigne in Champagne, Yvon and Jules Métras in Beaujolais, and Eric Pfifferling in Tavel.

Cazottes is a rarity as a distiller. There are now some organic vodkas, gins, and maybe a couple dozen tequilas on the market. There are a tiny number of organic Cognac producers. Of course, the overwhelming majority of grain production—which is the base for the majority of spirits production—is not organic, and is often grown far away from where it’s distilled. (Japan, to take an extreme example, imports its barley from Scotland and elsewhere in Europe.) There are only a handful of small, artisanal independent distillers working like Cazottes: farming their own produce, organically, transparently, and sustainably. Within the spirits industry, there are so few that it’s almost statistically insignificant. Two examples of distillers making brandies from organic fruit in a similar vein to Cazottes are Hans Reisetbauer and the Rochelt family, both in Austria.

Cazottes showed me the copper alembic still where he makes his spirits. It was his father’s old still, and he pointed out where the wheels were once attached when it was driven around. He explained the distillation process, how the aromas, flavors, and alcohol concentrate. It’s a relatively simple process, but it’s what goes into the still that makes the end product so remarkable.

“Alembic is not magic. It’s a concentration tool. If you put something very good inside, and you understand what’s happening in your still, you can make something very good,” Cazottes told me. “But if you put bad things in it, you can’t have something good. It’s exactly like wine.”

The production of Cazottes’s famous tomato liqueur is proof of this concept. Years ago, Cazottes started collecting tomato varieties. He now grows 300 cultivars in his home garden, planted amongst sage, savory, and greengage plum trees for biodiversity. They are handpicked from July to September, at peak ripeness, then destemmed and quartered by hand, and macerated in Cazottes’s eau de vie (made from local grapes).

The first iteration of this liqueur included 48 varieties of tomato in the liqueur, then 72 varieties; the current total is more than 280. “The diversity gives the aromatic complexity in a different way than the aging that you see everywhere in spirits,” he told me. We talked beneath a poster of hundreds of tomato varieties in his tasting room, and I took a sip of the tomato liqueur he poured. It tasted like summer concentrate: tomato skins still warm from the sun, tapenade, leafy herbs, sultanas, fish sauce. It was fresh, salty, funky, and mind-blowingly detailed.

It’s one of a range of liqueurs and eaux de vie that Cazottes makes from his fruits and plants, like mauzac rose grapes, Williams pear, greengage plum, and sour wild cherries. Each one has so much depth of flavor and complexity from the distillation process that they are almost hyperrealistic—more representative of the fruit than the actual fruit itself.

Cazottes poured a taste of his Genièvre Infusion Naturelle (G.I.N., for short), as well as the spirit he makes from Einkorn wheat. G.I.N. is so-named because it isn’t made by redistilling industrial 96 percent abv alcohol and thus can’t legally be labeled as gin under EU regulations. The Einkorn was originally crafted for Le Bristol in Paris, home of the three-starred Michelin restaurant Épicure. The bar had first asked Cazottes if he could make vodka from the ancient wheat. “I told them no, because vodka is like gin, it’s like pastis. You need to use industrial alcohol, 96 degrees,” Cazottes said. “It’s neutral, and I don’t want neutral alcohol. I want aromatic alcohol.”

Of course, this kind of highly artisanal approach to spirits, with its focus on intensity of aromas and flavors, means the price is going to be higher—but so is the ratio of quality to price. With tariffs and inflation, more people are drinking less, including spirits, but people are still drinking, even if that means “less but better.”

As Jason Wilson pointed out just a few weeks ago here at Everyday Drinking, fewer and fewer people are drinking cheap, crappy wines anymore—not even when beginning their wine-drinking journey. The wine industry should be embracing the reality that people want high-quality, organic practices, transparency, and sustainability. Consumers are looking at not just what’s in the bottle, but what went into making it, too.

There’s a real possibility that the spirits industry may face a similar reckoning, very soon. Before it does, maybe it’s time that it takes a page out of the Cazottes playbook.

Six Spirits from Cazottes, Made The Right Way

Goutte de Reine-Claude Dorée, 375 mL ($65)

After harvest, greengage plums are dried on racks (a process called “passerillage”) and the stones and stems are removed manually before fermentation and distillation. Notes of dried and fresh white-fleshed fruits, marzipan, sweet baking spices, herbal tea, with floral and savory notes. It reminds me of a scene in The English Patient, when the badly burned Count Almásy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is fed foraged fruit by his nurse Hana. Savoring the intense taste, he proclaims: “It’s a very plum plum.” (45% abv)

Goutte de Poire Williams, 375 mL ($125)

Ripe Williams pears are dried in passerillage, then meticulously destemmed, deseeded, and any blemishes removed by hand, before fermentation and distillation. Crystalline fruit, heady floral notes, sweet almond pastry, tea leaves, citrus peel, and pleasant woody aromas, with a mineral finish and a lovely creamy texture. (45% abv)

Tomates, 375 mL ($70)

Cazottes includes more than 280 varieties of tomatoes in this liqueur. Handpicked at peak ripeness, they are destemmed and quartered (also by hand), and macerated in Cazottes’s eau de vie—made from Jurançon Noir grapes—for 10 months. It’s redolent of fresh summer tomatoes, olive tapenade, oregano, sultanas, tomato leaf, even a touch of fish sauce. The rich flavor, almost sweet, is balanced by refreshing acidity. It’s bright, saline, and incredibly detailed. There’s unlimited potential here for cocktails and food pairings. (18% abv)

Guignes & Guins, 375 mL ($70)

This liqueur is made from sour cherries growing wild on the Cazottes domaine, harvested and pitted by hand, then macerated in eau de vie for 14 months. So very cherry, with aromas and flavors of cooked and tart fruits, red and purple flowers, mint and other fresh herbs, cloves, a hint of forest floor. It’s wild and sexy, a snapshot of super-ripe juicy fruit preserved in a bottle. (18% abv)

Coings Sauvages, 375 mL ($70)

This liqueur is from wild quince found growing throughout the orchards and hedges of the estate. The fruit is dried, destemmed and deseeded, then macerated. Delicate, fresh, floral and expressive, with notes of waxy yellow fruits, citrus, meadow grasses and flowers, honey, and marzipan. It’s slightly sweet, but a savory component and lifted acidity keeps everything in perfect balance. The finish is long and lingering. (18% abv)

Fleurs de Sureau, 375 mL ($72)

This will ruin St-Germain for you forever. An aperitif made from Cazottes domaine elderflower blooms picked by hand. Painstaking work is taken to pick only the petals for maceration. Aromas and flavors of pure, vibrant blossom and fresh-cut stems, powerful but simultaneously delicate and filagreed, with a long finish that carries a pleasant tisane quality. (17% abv)

I would love for you to believe that I’ve always been the sort of person who enjoys pastis on a warm spring day, under a Mediterranean sky, sipping and nibbling on tapenade in between games of pétanque and drags of Gauloises cigarettes. But the reality is I’ve only come to appreciate the challenging flavors of pastis as I’ve grown older. But now that I am a pastis convert, there is no going back.

Of all the spirits, the anise-dominated ones seem to be the toughest sell to Americans. Ouzo, arak, absinthe, sambuca—not exactly top of the liquor pop chart. Even in an era when super bitter amari have risen to popularity, booze that reminds people of black jellybeans has yet to crack the zeitgeist.

I admit, I was slow to the anise spirits game, too. More than two decades ago, I dismissed the absinthe revival as a fad, and in Boozehound, I recounted the story of how a mysterious bottle of sambuca sat mostly untouched, for years, in my parent’s liquor cabinet (and how, less mysteriously, it ended up becoming the de facto shot of their teenagers).

My conversion came during research for a column on ouzo. During a tasting at José Andrés' Mediterranean restaurant, Zaytinya, the beverage director told me: “It’s one of the hardest spirits to learn to like. You love it or you hate it. Or, like me, you are learning to appreciate it.” Ouzo, like all anise-flavored spirits, was “an acquired taste.”

Is there a more backhanded compliment, a more passive-aggressive judgment, a more of kiss-of-death phrase, than “Well, I guess that’s an acquired taste”? It’s also rather centering of a certain type of American suburban taste mindset. I mean, if you grew up in another culture, black salty licorice, anchovy, sea urchin, espresso, fish sauce, huitlacoche, kimchi, vegemite, lutefisk, curry and scores of other so-called “acquired tastes” would not be acquired tastes at all. They would be innate. I grew up eating Scrapple, for god’s sake—an “acquired taste” for anyone but a person born in the Philadelphia metro area.

Anyway, my point is this: Try pastis. Open your mind. Grow up. Make peace with your childhood dislike of black jellybeans.

Pastis is amazing. The trick is how you drink it, which is to add a significant amount of cold water (around 4:1 ratio). I’m told ice is not traditional. I’m sure Francophiles will shout me down, but ice is not optional for me. As you add water, the pastis turns cloudy, milky white. In the 19th century, this emulsion of water and oils was called the louche. It is a simple preparation. It does not require housemade bitters or the Japanese hard shake or molecular mixology. I have made a video to demonstrate the louche. (Yes, that is my hairy arm.)

Because the louche was associated with absinthe, the word louche also began to mean something disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way.

The most famous pastis in France are Pernod and Ricard. Pernod is the original, created after absinthe was banned in the early 20th century. Pastis was meant to be a legal alternative to absinthe that has no wormwood and a lower alcohol level. Not that pastis is low in alcohol. Most have over 40 percent alcohol by volume. My favorite is Henri Bardouin, which is 45 percent abv. This is why significant dilution with water is key. Pastis is a drink to sip over a long, lazy afternoon.

Made in Provence, Henri Bardouin is just a litle more complex and delicate than Pernod, blended with 65 herbs, including angelica, cardamom, cornflower, tonka bean, clove, nutmeg, sage, rosemary, and thyme. But honestly, it’s the taste of anise, star anise and licorice that you’re going to experience most vividly.

What I like best about pastis is that it’s a mixed drink with a classic food pairing, rare in the world of distilled spirits. In the south of France, pastis is traditionally served with tapenade, the Provençal spread made with olives, anchovies, and capers. It makes sense: Olives, anchovies, and capers may represent a trifecta of so-called “acquired tastes.” It may seem odd, but the salty, savory, pungent tapenade mingles wonderfully with the anise jolt of the pastis. Honestly, served on a toast with a little herbed goat cheese, it’s one of the most surprising and perfect pairings I know.

For the tapenade, I use David Lebovitz’s recipe that calls for black olives (I use Beldi or Niçoise but Kalamata is fine, too). Capers and anchovies are non-negotiable in tapenade—in fact, the name is derived from the Provençal word for capers, tapenas. In his book, My Paris Kitchen, Lebovitz writes, “Pastis is the classic accompaniment, although I never developed a taste for the anise-scented elixir that mysteriously turns cloudy when water is added to dilute its high-test taste and strength. I opt for chilled rosé.” Since I admire Lebovitz and his work, I’m giving him a pass on that—mainly because I know he’s made a good faith effort to acquire the taste of pastis.

All I’m asking is that you give pastis and this pairing a try. Who knows, maybe you’ll love it so much that you’ll even take up pétanque, like I have. Yes, it’s true. I now actually own a set of authentic metal pétanque balls. Maybe this is also true: I am actually an acquired taste myself.

Black Olive Tapenade

This recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbook authors, David Lebovitz, featured in his book My Paris Kitchen—even if he admits he “never developed a taste for the anise-scented elixir.” (He prefers chilled rosé)

• 1 1/2 cups black olives, pitted

• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

• 1 tablespoon capers

• 2 anchovy filets

• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped

• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

• Juice of half a lemon

• 1/3 cup olive oil

In a food processor, pulse the olives, garlic, capers, anchovies, thyme, mustard, lemon to break them down. Drizzle in the olive oil and run the processer until the mixture forms a slightly chunky paste. It’s pretty salty, but if you like saltier, add salt to taste. Serve on toasts with a little herbed goat cheese. The tapenade will keep in the fridge for up to a week.

More Dips on Everyday Drinking

Maxim, the infamous bro magazine, has ruined numerous things over the years. Some of you will soon count egg nog among those things.

But first, a confession: About a decade ago—during a strange detour in a career full of strange detours—I did a short stint writing about drinks for Maxim. Yes, I realize this puts a big dent in my feminist credentials (and…

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Note: I know I said on Tuesday that there would two holiday cocktail posts. Well, I’ve since decided there should be THREE. Next week, I’ll give you my hot take on egg nog. Then, after the Christmas holiday, we’ll publish a piece on bubbly for New Year’s from Sarah Parker Jang, as well as my annual In/Out list.

Every time we have the first cold spell, I get nostalgic about winters—and also hot chocolate. As I was moving old boxes over the past few months, I came across a hand-drawn spreadsheet, created by my oldest son, Sander, when he was 12 or 13—at the time, he wrote a local food review column for his middle-school newspaper. (A memorable piece was a rant about the inauthentic churros served at school). The spreadsheet showed his ratings of various places that served hot chocolate in our small town, categorized by thickness, topping, price, “chocolate-y goodness,” and his observations on atmosphere and service.

Hot chocolate had become something of an obsession in our house. A couple of winters before that, he and I had traveled to Brussels, along with his younger brother Wes, where we spent a few days gorging on frites, mussels, and of course chocolate. During that cold trip, all of us had a sort of hot chocolate epiphany. We’d been trying ever since to create our own perfect version at home. So he brought quite the critical eye to this particular writing exercise.

My son gave up journalism as soon as he moved on to high school. He did not follow his old man into the family business. After college, he went into investment banking, sensibly steering clear of food writing, and of our media dystopia in general. But he still loves hot chocolate, and is still very discerning about it. Though, these days, he’s more likely to join me in a boozier spiked version.

Spiked hot chocolate is simple. But like all great and simple things, there is nuance and variation.

Focus first on the chocolate. Bitter or sweet? Mexican or French style? Cocoa powder or ganache? Whole milk or heavy cream? Sea salt or spices? A pinch of ancho chile? A little bit of butter? Marshmallow or whipped cream?

We’ve tested several different methods and techniques, as you’ll see in the recipes below. As a rule of thumb, I find that the more expensive, darker, higher-cocoa-percentage don’t always work best in a hot chocolate. In plenty of recipes, sweet Mexican chocolate is superior, though you have to stir really well to avoid a certain gritty texture. Also, when recipes call for cocoa powder, you’d be hard-pressed to beat old Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened.

Then, there is the matter of what to spike the chocolate with. I’ve experimented with all manner of spirits. Consulting many friends over the years, it’s interesting how often green Chartreuse, absinthe, and agave spirits pop up as suggested pairings.

Chartreuse is a no-brainer. For years, the Verte Chaud has been a popular aprés-ski drink in the French Alps, so the idea of green Chartreuse and chocolate isn’t a big shock. I even have a recipe below for Chartreuse-spiked whipped cream (hope you stocked up during the Great Chartreuse Shortage of 2023!)

Agave spirits also seem logical, considering Mexico’s hot-chocolate connection. Surprisingly, absinthe also works great. Like Chartreuse, its high proof and herbal quality balanced the thick, rich chocolate. I also love kirsch and other schnapps/eaux di vie—which as I’ve expressed many times before are a ride-or-die spirit for me.

The biggest surprise in my spiked hot chocolate experiments, however, is Branca Menta, the minty sibling of Fernet Branca (the infamous bartender’s shot). In fact, I like Branca Menta so much that we will be delving deeper into its holiday uses in the next newsletter.

In any case, I’d love to encourage you to experiment wildly with different spirits in your hot chocolate, and let me know what you like best.

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When I look at the spiked hot chocolate recipes below, it strikes me that two of the three bars they come from do not exist anymore. It makes me feel nostalgic for a certain era of cocktails that existed a decade ago, when we were all younger and perhaps less pretentious.

In any case, if it snows this weekend, I will toast the winter with my son, and see how these drinks stand up to his critic’s palate.

Green Lantern

Verte Chaud—green Chartreuse and hot chocolate—is a popular après ski drink in the French Alps. This boozy version, from Jim Meehan (when he was still at PDT), adds a little tequila and spice to light your lantern. It works with both the standard Ibarra Mexican chocolate, and also with the Columbia Room or Pourings Ribbons Hot Chocolate recipes below.

• 5 ounces Mexican hot chocolate

• 1½ ounces añejo tequila

• ½ ounce green Chartreuse

• 1 dash Cholula hot sauce

• Pinch dried ancho chili

Combine all ingredients in a heatproof mug. Garnish with a pinch of dried chili

Columbia Room Hot Chocolate

This may be the perfect hot chocolate to spike, created by Derek Brown at the gone-but-not-forgotten Columbia Room. Originally designed to take a shot of absinthe, you can spike it with many different spirits: Chartreuse, kirsch, spiced rum, mezcal. One of my favorites is Branca Menta, Fernet Branca’s minty cousin.

• 2 cups whole milk

• 4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

• Pinch of salt

• 3 ounces Mexican sweet chocolate, chopped

• Spirit of choice: Chartreuse, kirsch, absinthe, spiced rum, mezcal, Branca Menta, etc.

In a saucepan, heat the milk, cocoa powder, and salt, whisking constantly to combine until the mixture comes to a boil.

Remove from heat and add the chopped chocolate, whisking gently until it’s completely melted. To spike: Pour, while hot, into warm mugs, and stir in ¾ ounce of spirits. Makes 5-6 servings.

Fever Dream

This recipe came from the gone-but-not-forgotten East Village bar, Pouring Ribbons, which was once a locus for Chartreuse lovers. Like the other chocolates, it’s versatile and can be used with numerous spirits, though Chartreuse and spiced rum work really well here.

• 6 ounces Pouring Ribbons Hot Chocolate (below)

• 1 ounce spirit of your choice

• 1 dash Angostura bitters

• Dollop Chartreuse-spiked whipped cream (below)

Combine spirit and bitters in mug. Top with hot chocolate. Garnish with Chartreuse-spiked whipped cream.

Pouring Ribbons House Hot Chocolate

This recipe uses a ganache, which prevents a gritty texture and adds richness. The ganache is made using one part heavy cream and one part chopped chocolate. Bring the heavy cream to a boil and pour over chopped chocolate. Let sit for 1 minute, then gently stir until emulsified. Use a slightly sweeter dark chocolate, with around 55%-65% cacao. If you use super high-cacao dark chocolate, you may want to add a bit of simple syrup to the final cocktail.

Once you have the ganache, you can make the hot chocolate.

• 5 heaping tablespoons chocolate ganache

• 16 ounces whole milk

In a saucepan, heat milk until just below a boil, then immediately reduce heat. Add the ganache and whisk well. Pour hot into a mug, and add your preferred spirit and garnish Chartreuse-spiked whipped cream (below).

Chartreuse-Spiked Whipped Cream

Pouring Ribbons is well known for its vintage Chartreuse collection, and so spiking the whipped cream with it seems like a no-brainer. Be sure to use green Chartreuse and not yellow.

• 1 cup heavy cream

• 2 ounces green Chartreuse

• 2 ounces simple syrup

• Pinch of salt

In a mixing bowl or stand mixer, whip together all ingredients to medium peaks.

Here in the northeast, this past weekend, we had our first snowfall of the year. For once, it didn’t all melt away immediately. Yes, the temperature has remained frigidly below freezing. I know that a lot of you hate cold weather like this, but I don’t care. It’s beautiful, and I am hoping for a true winter this year.

I’ve always believed that one has to had to live through a few winters to truly enjoy and understand the sublime pleasures of the hot toddy. When cold weather like this finally rolls around, a cranky old man’s voice inside me demands that I switch from the youthful, easy-sipping drinks of summer to the more mature enjoyment of a toddy.

Over the years, “hot toddy” has become a catch-all for any sort of steaming boozy drink. At the risk of sounding like that cranky old man, a true hot toddy does not include a tea bag or a dollop of cream. And it does not call for a cinnamon stick (what is it always with the cinnamon sticks?)

The beauty of the toddy lies in its simplicity: spirit, sweetener, hot water, lemon peel. David Wondrich, in his cocktail history Imbibe, describes a toddy as “a simple drink in the same way a tripod is a simple device. Remove one leg and it cannot stand, set it up properly and it will hold the weight of the world.”

I like a ratio of 2 ounces spirit, plus ½ ounce sweetener, plus 3 ounces hot water. It’s a drink you can’t mess up. Just remember to use enough water – dilution can be your friend, embrace it. You’ll also want to remember to swirl a little hot water in the mug before you start so the cooler spirit doesn’t bring the temperature down to lukewarm.

Beyond that, there is plenty flexibility for experimentation. Will you use bourbon or rye or Islay scotch or Irish whiskey? Or how about changing up the whiskey with aged rum, Cognac, or even gin? Will you sweeten your toddy with sugar, honey, or maple syrup? Or perhaps you will use a liqueur such as Bénédictine or Chartreuse or Grand Marnier as your sweetener?

One of my favorite spirits for a toddy is Calvados, mixed with little yellow Chartreuse or a ginger liqueur or with fresh baked apples. This trio of Calvados toddies will cure just about anything.

Which brings us to the age-old question: Was your drunk old aunt right? Will a hot toddy cure the common cold? Well, yes and no. There are certainly benefits to drinking hot drinks when you have a cold, to open up the nasal passages and such. And the alcohol can’t hurt to relax you and help you sleep in the same way that Nyquil does.

But I like to think that it also cures more existential ills. For instance, as I was writing this, I started to fear I was becoming that cranky old man inside me. And that bummed me out. But once I poured myself a steaming hot toddy…well, everything was okay.

Toddy Tales: 3 Apple Variations

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Miscommunication has been a general theme of my life this week. I am once again reminded of how much gets lost or confused in all of our disjointed texting—idle yapping and emoji-ing, oversharing and omitting. Let’s talk instead about something that seems straightforward and certain: the martini.

When you write about drinks for a living, the people in your life eventually ask you to teach them how to make a martini. Sometimes they ask you to show them a “real martini” or a “proper martini” or simply a “gin martini.” But it all means the same thing. Even though your nerdy drinks friends on social media spend a lot of time talking about Negroni variations, the normal people in your life never really ask about a Boulevardier or an Old Pal. Even if you’ve written about dozens, hundreds, of cocktails, your friends usually don’t want to hear about your favorite recipes for a Red Hook or a Greenpoint or a Bijou. And this is fine. You want the people close to you to be happy.

When someone asks me to show them how to make a martini, I know this is a way of saying “I appreciate you” or “I’d like to understand you better” or maybe it’s a way to avoid deeper conversations altogether. Often, they’d be just as happy drinking a sparkling rosé or a hard seltzer or a buttery chardonnay or a vodka iced tea or a bourbon on the rocks. But here I am, and here we are. So I mix them a martini.

The thing is, when you get down to it, a martini isn’t straightforward or certain at all. A martini so personal. I am only ever guessing at what someone else may like. I’ll start with a couple ounces of gin, and a healthy amount of dry vermouth (possibly an ounce or more), and a few dashes of orange bitters. I stir it with ice until it’s very cold.

As I stir, I remind them that this is only one way to make a martini. “If you don’t like it this way, I can make another, using less or more gin, or more or less vermouth, or a different gin or sweet vermouth…” Then I realize I’m being too solicitous, too overbearing, trying too hard. So I shut up and pour the martini into a chilled glass. I cut a lemon peel twist and squeeze it to express the oils and drop it into the drink. “We could also do olives if you’d rather…” I wait to see if it’s a wince or smile on the first sip. Do they like it or are they just being polite? It’s not an insignificant moment.

I’ve been making martinis since I was a teenager. I lived with my grandmother during summers at the Jersey Shore. She often drank a martini in the evening, sipping it as she listened to the Phillies game on the radio. Sometimes I mixed her martini, which she took very dry, always with Gordon’s gin and virtually no vermouth. I recall the same bottle of Cinzano in the bar, unrefrigerated, for the entirety of my adolescence. I’d mix it in her tall, glass martini pitcher, the one with an etching of a seagull. It was to be garnished with a minimum of six olives. With my grandmother’s martini, there was certainty.

Because it was so familiar—as so often goes in life—a martini didn’t strike me as anything special for a long time. When I was younger, I never understood the fuss over first “martini renaissance” in the late 1990s, which spawned the surprisingly persistent concept of the “martini bar.” I never got why, during the Sex and the City years, every terrible cocktail served in a V-shaped glass (Appletini, Chocolatini, et al.) needed the suffix “-tini.” I was bewildered by how much of the early 2000’s cocktail writing focused on the 19th century original story of The Martini.

More than a decade ago, I wrote columns insisting that the Manhattan was a superior cocktail to the martini (“more complex” and “more flavorful”). I was wrong. As I get older, I realize that a martini is clearly superior. I find myself making more of them these days, often in my grandmother’s martini pitcher with the etched seagull. Recently, I’ve decided I like them with more gin—more of the juniper bite—and less vermouth. Or maybe I’ve always liked them this way, but for whatever reason have always been trying something different.

I don’t exactly know what’s made me reconsider something as basic as the martini. Maybe it’s been seeing my sons and their friends “discover” the dry martini for themselves. Maybe I’m just finally willing to embrace some of life’s truths and certainties—even if it’s simply a 5:1 ratio of gin to vermouth.

I’ve often quoted H.L. Mencken’s famous assertion that the martini is “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet” and there’s certainly something poetic about it.

But by a certain age, trust me, too much poetry—frankly, too much talk, too much texting, too much communication in general—can be a recipe for disaster. Better just to focus on gin, vermouth, and bitters in the way you like it best.

The Recipes

Since the martini is so personal, why limit things to one basic recipe? You can make dozens of classic variations by simply switching the vermouth from dry to sweet, changing the gin from Londont Dry to Old Tom, or adding dashes of liqueurs such maraschino or Chartreuse. Do enough switching and suddenly you are quite far from a “martini.” What is your favorite variation?

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Several years ago, I read a New York Times article that asked, “Are You an Anti-Influencer?” Apparently, based on a study of purchasing patterns at a national convenience store chain, some consumers are drawn over and over to unpopular products—Crystal Pepsi, Watermelon Oreos, Frito-Lay Lemonade, and Cheetos Lip Balm were given as examples.

“We looked in the data and saw there were some customers who were really good at picking out failures,” said one of the study’s authors, economist Catherine Tucker of MIT. Researchers called these people “harbingers of failure.” Further, they found that these harbingers cluster in similar ZIP codes (“water seeking its own level”) and even regularly donated money to political candidates who ended up losing their races. Unsurprisingly, property values in ZIP codes with lots of harbingers of failure consistently under perform the broader real-estate market.

“I think what we’re picking up on is that there are just some people who, for whatever reason, have consistently non-majority tastes,” said Tucker. “They like that odd house. That political candidate everyone else finds off-putting. They like Watermelon Oreos.”

After reading that, I suddenly felt seen—as if my entire personal and professional life was being explained to me. Maybe I am on a completely different wavelength than other consumers. I’ve spent years extolling the virtues of less popular wines and spirits. I’ve written one book on obscure booze, another about grape varieties you’ve never heard of, and finally a book about cider—which is always about to have a moment, but never does. If it confuses you or you can’t pronounce it or it’s a hopeless underdog, I’m all over it.

I’ve been thinking about my role as a “harbinger of failure” as I’ve been reading about the sad plight of Cognac. As anyone who reads this newsletter knows: No one loves brandy in general—and Cognac in particular—more than me. Few drinks writers devote more of their intellectual energy to Cognac than I do.

At the end of last year, I begged the question: “Will 2025 (Finally) Be Brandy’s Year?”

Well, I think we are getting the answer. In August, Reuters reported that Cognac sales (particularly premium Cognac sales) have declined by 13 percent. In July, Spirits Business published a piece entitled “Why Cognac is stuck in limbo land,” which noted that all of Cognac’s top brands were showing big losses this past year: Hennessy’s sales fell 14 percent; Martell plunged by 25 percent; Rémy Cointreau (owner of Rémy Martin) reported a 19 percent drop. The past two years for Rémy Cointreau has been nightmarish, with with nearly 40 percent of its revenue vanishing between 2023 and 2025.

And that’s just the big guys. As readers know, I’ve been advocating for smaller family producers and negociants for years. For me, labels like Pasquet, Grosperrin, Fanny Fougerat, Jean Fillioux, Remi Landier, Navarre, Vallein Tercinier, and others are where the real quality and energy of the region lie. But as the big Cognac companies struggle, the effects ripple through the entire ecosystem of 4,000 vine growers and hundreds of small producers.

Cognac’s situation in the U.S. market is especially dire. The four biggest brands account for about 90 percent of the Cognac consumed in the U.S., with Hennessy alone accounting for 60 percent. Meanwhile, the smaller artisan brands I write about have struggled mightily to gain traction. So if the big brands keep failing, Cognac will ultimately disappear from the American mindspace.

For those of us who remember how popular Cognac was 10 or 15 years ago, it’s hard to believe Cognac’s fall. Think, for instance, about how ubiquitous Hennessy and Courvoisier was in late 1990s and early 2000s hip-hop culture, with artists like Tupac, Busta Rhymes, and Jay-Z frequently referencing Cognac in their lyrics. But obviously culture changes.

At the end of 2024, Nicolas Palazzi, the founder of PM Spirits and one of Cognac’s biggest advocates in the U.S. posted this on LinkedIn: “I think that Cognac in the U.S. is in a dire spot.” Given that PM Spirits imports one of the finest French brandy portfolios in the U.S., that felt rather alarming. Palazzi explained his reasons:

- there are very little Cognac-based cocktails on drink menu and even less people ordering them when they exist.
- the neat Cognac drinker seems extinct
- the market for non-mega-brands is made of a very limited amount of enthusiasts, most of which coming from a whiskey background.

“In a word, Cognac has lost its cool factor,” Palazzi continued. “Sure Cognac still retains a strong image, but it has grown disconnected from who the drinker is and what she is looking for. Is there a future for a ‘Cognac category’ in the U.S.? Maybe, but it will be extremely hard to get messages to sound relatable to the potential consumer.”

Palazzi said that Cognac today reminds him of Bordeaux in the 2010s:

What was referred to as the ‘Bordeaux market’ was a lot less solid than one thought. Those top estates had true brand power but the rest of the appellation had lost its allure. Turns out Cheval had been selling ‘Cheval,’ not ‘Bordeaux.’ 15 years later, Bordeaux as an appellation has lost its appeal but a few cool winemakers who make good wines & happen to be located in the region have developed a following.

I wouldn’t be so rude as to suggest that Palazzi is an anti-influencer like me. And certainly, when I’ve published his pessimistic views of the U.S. Cognac market in the past, I’ve inevitably gotten emails from other brandy importers vehemently disagreeing.

But anyone observing the trends can see that Cognac risks sliding into obscurity and irrelevance in a U.S. spirits market increasingly dominated by whiskey, mezcal, and gin—not to mention hard seltzers, hard ice teas, and canned vodka cocktails.

Would love to hear your take on Cognac’s place in the world of spirits, circa 2025.

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More Cognac Content on Everyday Drinking

Before we talk about sangria, we must talk about the truth. I know that sangria conjures images of flamenco and bullfights and paella. But the reality is that Spanish people do not drink a lot of sangria. Sangria, in Spain, is mostly a drink for tourists.

To be clear, people in Spain do enjoy wine cocktails, and there is a whole universe of wine-plus-soda drinks that Spaniards love—which we will delve into below. Among them is the Calimocho (red wine mixed with Coca-Cola), the Rebujito (fino sherry mixed with 7-Up or Sprite and garnished with mint) and the Tinto de Verano (red wine mixed with 7-Up or Sprite and a squeeze of citrus). Yes, these drinks sound vaguely trashy, but trust me, they are delicious over ice on a hot day, and a good use of last night’s leftover wine.

Now, let’s talk about sangria, which was introduced to Americans at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Almost six decades later, whatever sangria you are mixed at an American bar has long detached itself from the Iberian original. At this point, let’s just consider sangria to be some kind of Anglo-American concoction, shall we? Who cares how they do it Spain, amiright?

Still, I would like to make a case for quality sangria. My issue with the drink is that it’s almost always made incorrectly. Sangria is not simply chopped fruit dumped into cheap wine and left to turn soggy.

The most dramatic example of this was at my cousin’s wedding, almost two decades ago, on a gorgeous island in Puget Sound. On the sunny afternoon of the wedding, I was relaxing on the balcony of my hotel room when my mother came running up. “I think they need your help,” she said. “Your cousin is freaking out because they’re making her sangria for the reception all wrong.”

I had just started writing my drinks column for the Washington Post, and rarely saw what I did for a living as important. But here was my mother asking me to save the cocktail hour, or at the very least my cousin’s frayed nerves. Heroes do not always wear capes.

I swaggered over to the resort bar and found what looked like fruit cup in a pitcher. I delivered a brief class on how make a proper sangria for 300 guests. I am certain the bar staff did not appreciate my intervention, but my cousin was able to go get into her wedding dress, and it all worked out fine.

I suggested the same things on that wedding day as I will suggest to you:

• True sangria should have a significant portion of brandy (or some other booze) and possibly a small amount of orange liqueur, such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier. You see a lot of recipes that replace the liqueur with simple syrup, but the liqueur will give better flavor.

• For the wine, you certainly don’t want to use your single-vineyard Barolo or gran reserva Rioja, but you also don’t want to use garbage. A value red wine that’s fruity and not oaky, but still has a little structure works best.

• For the brandy, I use Spanish brandy (aka Brandy de Jerez) such as Lepanto, Gran Duque d’Alba, or Cardenal Mendoza, because it’s generally a sweeter brandy. (You can experiment with younger Cognac or other brandies, though I might use a little more liqueur with those.)

So let’s make some sangria. We’re all tourists somewhere.

Basic Boozy Red Sangria

• 750 ml of red wine (fruity, young, not too oaky)

• 4 ounces of Brandy de Jerez

• 2 ounces of Cointreau or Grand Marnier

• 2 cups of chopped fruit (oranges, limes, grapefruits, berries, pears, peaches, etc.)

• Ice for serving

• Citrus wheels (orange, lemon, blood orange, grapefruit, etc.)

Combine all the ingredients except the ice and citrus wheels in a large pitcher and stir. Cover and let stand for 2 to 3 hours before serving or refrigerate overnight. Serve in wine glasses over ice, garnished with citrus wheels. Serves 8 to 10.

Thieves’ Punch

Still, if you really want to upgrade your wine cocktail game this summer, I’d like to suggest another sangria-like punch that is one of my go-to, easy-to-make pitcher drinks for a party. The Thieves’ Punch swaps out red wine for port and brandy for rum and it’s a flat-out crowd pleaser (particular if your crowd is a little boozier, as mine is).

Thieves’ Punch was created by my friend Duggan McDonnell, a (legendary? infamous?) San Francisco bartender. His original recipe calls for white rum, but I like to use cachaça (rum’s Brazilian cousin) because it’s funkier and sharper and stands up to the other strong flavors. If you use rum, I suggest a rhum agricole, made from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice. The simple syrup is slightly variable according to your taste and what sort of cachaça/rum you’re using—taste as you stir and add accordingly. This recipe calls for an eyebrow-raising amount of bitters, but don’t skimp on them: They keep things balanced.

• 16 ounces cachaça (or white rum)

• 5 ounces port (ruby or tawny)

• 10 ounces freshly squeezed lime juice (from about 5 limes)

• 3-4 ounces simple syrup

• 20 dashes Angostura bitters

• 1 cup ice, plus more for serving

• Lime wedges

Combine the rum, port, lime juice, simple syrup, and bitters in a large pitcher. Add the cup of ice, then stir vigorously. Strain into ice-filled old-fashioned or small wine glasses. Garnish with lime wedge. Serves 8.

The Art of Wine + Soda

Since we’ve discussed sangria, we should also talk about the kinds of casual wine-plus-soda cocktails that people in Spain actually drink. I have praised this kind of lazy bartending before. But In Spain, they take it to another level.

These wine-plus-soda cocktails are all ridiculously simple to make, but they also give a template for creating drinks that could potentially (maybe?) be (slightly?) more creative and complex. In an effort to make them a little more classy, I’m tapping my old friend Oscar Díez, a Spanish winemaker and bartender, to add his take on the classic wine-plus-soda cocktails.

Oscar is based in Toro, a small town in Castilla y León, where his winery Bodegas Díez Gómez produces tempranillo and verdejo (I particularly like his barrel-fermented verdejo). Before took over his family’s vineyards, though, Oscar ran a bar called Discoteca Q in Toro (which at that time was a town of 10,000 with 100 bars!) and won numerous bartending awards, including one for “Best Gin Tonic in Spain,” noteworthy in a country that has elevated this drink to an art form.

Even as a winemaker, Oscar is committed to what he calls “Wine Mixology,” using wine in building cocktails. Each of his wines actually has a cocktail recipe on the label. When I saw him in May at a wine fair, Oscar was mixing up a variation on a mojito with verdejo wine, and a crazy cocktail made with gin, raspberry syrup, lime juice, his big Tinta de Toro (aka tempranillo), garnished with a sprig of rosemary. What follows here are Oscar’s twists on three classic wine-plus-soda cocktails.

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Last week, in case you missed it, I posted a lil rant about big brands co-opting cocktail culture, spirits media, and how main character energy is killing artisan spirits. As I wrote:

But with bartending—particularly at the high end, where some people call it “mixology”—things get a whole lot murkier. With cocktails, the focus is much more on the bartend…

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Wine media certainly comes in for a lot of criticism. We’ve covered the many ways it can be embarrassing, joyless, insufferably boring, corrupt, or worse. There’s an awful lot of hand wringing over the state of wine content and influencing and sommeliering. Meanwhile—over at the louder, flashier …

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Will the fern bar ever have its revival? Will we ever see trendy bars created to look like the Regal Beagle, Jack Tripper's swinging hangout in the 1970s sitcom Three's Company? I mean, why not? We've already lived through the speakeasy reviva…

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So how does tariff whiplash feel?

The drama certainly continues to evolve. Yesterday, the European Union dropped plans to slap American bourbon with retaliatory tariffs. The drinks industry has been nervously waiting to see if the EU would levy a bourbon tariff—since Donald Trump threatened to hit back with a 200 percent retaliation tariff on European wine and spirits if they did. The EU, apparently, blinked.

Today (literally less than 2 hours ago) Trump announced that he’s paused his reciprocal tariffs on most countries for 90 days, implementing a universal tariff of only 10 percent (down from 20 percent). My hope is that this will give importers enough time to make some large orders from their European suppliers, get them on the water, through customs, and into the U.S. market before any more madness happens.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about what I’m personally going to be stockpiling personally. I’m no economist (I got a C+ in macroeconomics back in college) but priority one feels straightforward: stock up on name-brand, legacy spirits. I’m talking about stuff like Cointreau, Campari, Aperol, my favorite amari and vermouth—the staples of a home bar.

I’m not saying that a future tariff won’t hit European wines hard (it will). But for the consumer, you will likely have some options, and we can take a breath. For instance, if you love Sancerre, you could look for wines from another less-known region that makes sauvignon blanc—say, from appellations like Menetou-Salon or Touraine—which will likely be lower in price. If your favorite Burgundy pinot noir gets too expensive, you could try lesser-known grapes like Austrian blaufränkisch or Portuguese baga. For the moment, the hunt for value in wine will remain similar to what it’s always been.

But with the spirits, it’s a different story. We saw this a couple of years ago, during the infamous Chartreuse Crisis—when the Carthusian monks decided to limit production of their liqueur. When a popular spirit becomes scarce, people start panic buying.

The reason why is pretty simple: If you enjoy Charteuse, or cocktails that use Chartreuse, you don’t have a lot of alternative options. Likewise, if you love a Negroni or an Aperol Spritz, you’re not going to get far without Campari or Aperol. If you like Cointreau in your Margaritas—or your Sidecars, your Cosmopolitans, your White Ladys, your Mai Tais, your El Presidentes, et al.—you’re probably not going to switch to another brand of orange liqueur. (Though I might recommend that Combier would be a fine substitute).

I talked about this phenomenon of secondary and tertiary liqueurs in my dispatch from Bar Convent Brooklyn a couple of summers ago:

I’m not as worried about base spirits like British gin or Jamaican rum. The proposed tariff on those countries is smaller, and there are options. For instance, with gin, you have some good quality domestic alternatives, from distilleries such as Isolation Proof, St. George Spirits, or Bluecoat.

Several of my friends told me over the weekend they’d been low-key hoarding liqueurs. One friend, who loves Sidecars and Paper Plane cocktails, actually drove to a liquor store in tax-free Delaware and bought several 1.75-liter bottles of Cointreau, and multiples of Aperol and Amaro Nonino. A spirit like Amaro Nonino, already sitting at around $50, seems like the kind of product that’s vulnerable to the tariff. For a lot of spirits, I’m wondering what price increase is finally a step too far for consumers.

So, now that the tariffs are paused for 90 days, I'm not saying it's time to start panic buying Cointreau and Campari, but I'm also not not saying that. Who knows what the whims of our president will be tomorrow, let alone 90 days from now.

To that end, for my paid subscribers, what follows below is my list of home-bar staples you should (calmly) stockpile.

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When they’re ripe and juicy, apricots are undoubtedly among my favorite fruits. But the truth is, apricots are also among the most frustrating, inconsistent fruits. I’ll eat four mealy, blah ones, only to have a single, mind-blowingly delicious one, which then forces me to endure the next four mealy ones.

Apricot brandy is sort of the same experience. Or should I say apricot “brandy” in quotes. For years, it occupied a dusty corner of the liquor store that I avoided. It confounded me. Most of it wasn’t even brandy, and most of it was awful: cloying and full of artificial flavoring and coloring.

For me, apricot “brandy” has always brought bad associations; it seemed to be the sort of thing you bought in pints and drank out of little paper bags. As a teenager, I remember classmates buying pints of Jacquin’s Apricot Flavored Brandy for illegal parties in the woods. Later, I had a friend who ordered apricot sours, and I was always vaguely embarrassed when she did that, particularly in dive bars.

As it happens, I had good reason to be skeptical about apricot brandy. Even the best bottles that bartenders use—say, Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot from Austria or Luxardo Albicocca from Italy—are actually liqueurs, not technically brandies. You’ll rarely find a bottle of the stuff, good or bad, that’s higher than 60 proof. Because of that, apricot brandy will not work well as a base spirit in a cocktail.

And yet. Something about apricot brandy has appealed to generations of cocktail makers. Just look in classic cocktail guides such as The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) or Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual (1934), and you’ll find plenty of recipes calling for the spirit. Over the years, I’ve talked to so many top bartenders who embrace apricot brandy that it frankly surprises me.

You see apricot brandy popping up in gin cocktails, rye cocktails, bourbon cocktails, pisco cocktails, even absinthe/Chartreuse cocktails such as the Yellow Parrot. It seemed to be used wherever people enjoyed cocktails. In pre-Prohibition New York, you had a gin cocktail called the Frankenjack (equal parts gin, vermouth, Cointreau, apricot brandy) and its more popular variation, the Darb. Further south, you had the Baltimore Bang, a tasty mix of bourbon, apricot brandy, and lemon juice: an apricot-y whiskey sour. Further south, in Havana, you had the Nacional, which combined rum, apricot brandy, and lime juice.

So with apricot season soon upon us, I decided to explore apricot brandy a little bit, sipping and making cocktails. Mostly, I’ve been pleasantly surprised and excited by what I’ve found.

First, Let’s Talk About Real Apricot Brandy

You’ll only find a few that are actual fruit brandies (aka schnapps or eaux de vie) actually distilled from apricots. And the best of those are quite pricey. For me, greatest apricot brandy comes from Rochelt, in the Tyrolean Alps, made from special apricots from Austria’s Wachau region. Aged seven years in glass balloons, it’s hard to explain just how ethereal, complex, and beautiful this spirit is—one of my favorites in the world. Rochelt Wachau Apricot, however, will set you back about $400 for 375 ml. My second choice is also from Austria, and also amazing: Han Reisetbauer Apricot Eau de Vie, which is around $80 for 375 ml.

The most widely available true apricot brandy is Blume Marillen Apricot Eau-De-Vie from Purkhart distillery, which is also in Austria (are we detecting a theme: the Austrians know how to distill apricot brandy) and imported by Haus Alpenz. Blume Marillen Apricot Eau-De-Vie is the most affordable, at under $40 for 375 ml., and a great introduction to the pleasures of real fruit brandy.

A rare domestic apricot brandy that I like is Öömrang Apricot Brandy, which comes from Washington state and is surprisingly good, and a good deal at around $45.

All of these eau de vie I enjoy neat, the same way I’d sip a Cognac or aged rum after dinner—or like other clear fruit brandies such as kirschwasser or poire Williams. I will continue to make the case for these amazing spirits until my last breath.

Apricot “Brandy” For Mixing

For cocktails, we’ll be talking about the apricot liqueurs that people call “apricot brandy.” For me, the best brand is Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot (also made by Purkhart), which you can find for around $20. I also like Luxardo Albicocca ($25) and Giffard Abricot du Roussillon ($30). In a pinch, Marie Brizard Apry also works.

I do not recommend sipping those on their own. They’re cloying, like drinking apricot jam without the toast. But in a cocktail, I have to admit they bring something to the table that no other liqueur does—an odd, rich, not-too-sweet sweetness. Just be warned: a little goes a long way.

Another word to the wise: Apricot is one category where you probably don’t want to venture too far from the top shelf. The other apricot brandies I tasted — from Hiram Walker, Bols, and Jacquin’s—probably should remain in that dusty corner.

Still, flipping through those old books, I can’t discern that there ever were halcyon days of apricot “brandy.” Mostly the same brands pop up then as now. Perhaps apricot brandy has always confounded. And, likewise, perhaps it has always pleasantly surprised.

Four Apricot-Kissed Cocktails

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This piece first appeared in The New Wine Review

We live in a golden age of rum, but you’d never know it from the chatter of American spirits aficionados. Their talk seems focused on whiskey all the time, with occasional forays into tequila and mezcal. Rum? Of all the aged spirits, rum suffers most from a misguided, lowly reputation. For many people—in 2024, incredibly enough—rum is still just a parties-and-pirates thing, something for mojitos or fruity daiquiris or to mix with Coca-Cola. I feel like I am always imploring serious spirits drinkers to give high-end aged rum a try, to begin their own journey into this fascinating spirit.

I’ve been lucky. I had an early soaking in the pleasures of aged rum. It began in the 1990s, when I spent a lot of time in Central America, particularly Nicaragua. At that time, Nicaragua was emerging from more than a decade of civil war. Its top rum brand, Flor de Caña, had amassed a huge quantity of aged barrels it couldn’t sell under Sandinista rule. (Back then, by some accounts, Flor de Caña had the largest reserve of aged rum in the world.) In late 1990s Nicaragua, you could buy a bottle of 7-year-old Flor de Caña in a bar for about $4—generally served with tonic and Coke, limes, and a big bucket of ice. I could not begin to count how many empty bottles of 7-year-old Flor de Caña were left floating in the ice bucket on those tropical nights.

As I began writing about spirits professionally in the aughts, I fell in love with rhum agricole from Martinique and Guadalupe, which was just starting to become widely available in the U.S. Unlike most rum in the Caribbean, rhum agricole is made with fresh-cut sugarcane juice—rather than molasses—which gives it complex grassy, smoky, funky notes. Brands like Rhum Clément, Rhum JM, and Neisson have been the standard-bearers of rhum agricole to most American rum fans. Rhum agricole follows strict rules enforced by an appellation d’origine contrôlée in France. I’ve gone even deeper into the world of “rum with an h” during my visits to France, which naturally has a much wider selection of amazing rhum agricole.

Soon enough, we started to see more high-ester, pot-still rums from producers such as Hampden Estate, Long Pond, or Worthy Park from Jamaica, Foursquare from Barbados, or the now-defunct Caroni from Trinidad, barrels of which are still coveted by collectors. Rum heads also started talking about rum as a spirit with genuine terroir—such as those from the mountainous region of Trelawny, in Jamaica, a veritable grand cru of rum. Rums from regions outside the Caribbean started popping up, from places as far flung as Fiji, Cambodia, Oaxaca, or Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

Rum begins, of course, with sugarcane. And just as with grapes or grain, there are numerous varieties of sugarcane. Rural Haiti, for instance, is a living agricultural museum of lost cane varieties. But it’s usually how that harvested sugarcane is processed that primarily determines the flavor. While the French islands tend to favor using fresh-cut sugarcane juice, most rum in the Caribbean is made from molasses, the byproduct of refining sugarcane. Some Haitian rums will be made with cane syrup rather than fresh cane juice. “Blackstrap”—heavier, darker molasses rums—became popular in the former British colonies, such as Cruzan from St. Croix or Goslings from Bermuda. Then there is the rich, creamy, dark Demerara rums of Guyana, such as El Dorado.

Then there is the barrel aging, which in the hot, humid tropics is quite different than with other brown spirits. So-called “tropical aging” runs about three to four times faster than in, say, Kentucky or Scotland or Cognac. Leave most rum in a Caribbean cellar for a couple of decades and you’ll have very little liquid left in the barrel. That’s why it’s relatively rare to find rums aged longer than 12 or 15 years. Which could be one reason why rum is ignored by spirits geeks wowed by age and numbers.

What I’m trying to tell you is that rum is just as diverse and complex as any other brown spirit in the world. If you’ve never explored rum’s high end, now is a perfect time to give it a shot—as we enter what I call “splurge season” for spirits.

What follows is my introduction to the wide world of high-end rum. It’s my quest to point you to some unique rums you may not know, from places both familiar (Jamaica, Massachusetts) and far flung (Réunion Island, Cambodia).

These rums are not cheap—the spirit has come a long way from those $4 bottles of 7-year-old Flor de Caña I drank in the late 1990s. But these are rums for serious sipping, and they belong next to the finest whiskeys, brandies, and agave spirits on your back bar.

My Rum Buying Guide

Below are my bottle picks for rums that make converts out of whiskey aficionados. For paid subscribers only.

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“Taste has no system and no proofs,” cultural critic Susan Sontag once remarked. In his 19th century gourmand treatise, Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin writes, “the space between something called good and something reputed to be excellent is not very great.” Old Nietzsche famously declar…

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“I think that Cognac in the U.S. is in a dire spot.” That’s from a recent LinkedIn post by Nicolas Palazzi, the founder of PM Spirits. Given that PM Spirits imports one of the finest French brandy portfolios in the U.S., this feels rather alarming to Cognac fans, like me. Palazzi elucidated his reasons:

- there are very little Cognac-based cocktails on drink menu and even less people ordering them when they exist.
- the neat Cognac drinker seems extinct
- the market for non-mega-brands is made of a very limited amount of enthusiasts, most of which coming from a whiskey background.

“In a word, Cognac has lost its cool factor,” Palazzi continued. “Sure Cognac still retains a strong image, but it has grown disconnected from who the drinker is and what she is looking for. Is there a future for a ‘Cognac category’ in the U.S.? Maybe, but it will be extremely hard to get messages to sound relatable to the potential consumer.”

Palazzi says that Cognac, in 2024, reminds him of Bordeaux in the 2010s. He writes:

What was referred to as the ‘Bordeaux market’ was a lot less solid than one thought. Those top estates had true brand power but the rest of the appellation had lost its allure. Turns out Cheval had been selling ‘Cheval,’ not ‘Bordeaux.’ 15 years later, Bordeaux as an appellation has lost its appeal but a few cool winemakers who make good wines & happen to be located in the region have developed a following.

It’s hard not to see the parallel. Cognac has long been dominated by the Big Four of Hennessy, Martell, Rémy Martin, and Courvoisier. Those companies always sell their own brand over Cognac as a region. I wrote about this after watching Rémy Martin’s Super Bowl ad in 2023:

What does any of this have to do with Cognac, or spirits, or drinking? Who knows? By this stage of late capitalism we all know how branding works. It’s always great for a brand to have someone so widely admired as Serena sitting at a bar ordering its liquid on the rocks. But here’s the thing. Do many people who watched that ad, or see the bottles of V.S.O.P. and 1738, or hear the name Rémy Martin…even know that it’s Cognac? If they do, do they even know what Cognac is?

Cognac is very complicated. It’s a region of thousands of growers and producers, but it’s controlled by four brands…In the U.S., these so-called Big Four sell about 90 percent of the Cognac consumed, with Hennessy alone accounting for 60 percent. The majority of those sales are of one product: Hennessy VS. Prices, aging, and pretty much any other rule about what’s allowed and what’s not is effectively set by these Big Four. They wield their power…

For instance, the Big Four rarely explain to consumers what Cognac, or even brandy, actually is. Just ask a random person to tell you the basic difference between brandy and whiskey. Or ask someone to tell you what Rémy Martin is. Unless everyone you know is a spirits nerd, I bet at least 8 out of 10 people cannot. Even if they are regular drinkers of Hennessy or Rémy Martin they might not even know. If you watch its Super Bowl ad, Rémy Martin’s liquid is simply a brown spirit consumed on the rocks—an alternative to Crown Royal, or Jameson, or whatever other big-brand brown spirit.

For me, and many others, it was no surprise that Rémy Martin announced its U.S. sales had plunged 43% in just the first half of 2023—which I wrote about in Wine Enthusiast. A year later, little has changed.

So what’s the answer for Cognac, and for brandy in general? Well, the answer I’ve been giving for several years now is: Focus on the handful of artisan brands doing things the right way. In fact, Cognac would do well to borrow the model of what’s happening in cousin regions Armagnac and Calvados, where a number of smaller producers are focused on single-casks and special bottlings as their introduction to American spirits aficionados.

Which is what I am recommending below in my annual brandy roundup, with my latest faves among single-barrel selections, as well as nine picks that are $100 and under (and relatively easy to find) for brandy newbies. I’m also making a case for two smaller Cognac negociants to be more widely available in the U.S. market.

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According to the calendar of made-up holidays, January 1st is supposedly “National Bloody Mary Day.” Yes, yes, I guess the clichéd idea is that, once you finally wake up from your New Year’s Eve revelry, a spicy Bloody Mary might be the only way to ease into the new year. Yawn. False.

First of all, New Year’s Eve is amateur night compared to the Wednesda…

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This piece first appeared in The New Wine Review

For most people, Thanksgiving is that one time of the year to eat certain foods. How many of us are eating green bean casserole or turkey stuffing or pumpkin pie on the reg? I think the same thing can apply to after-dinner spirits. If there was ever a Digestif Moment, the 4,500-calorie holiday meal is defi…

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Asking whether or not the Cosmopolitan is a Thanksgiving cocktail is sort of like asking whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. (As the old meme goes: “There are two types of people in the world. Those who think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and those who are wrong.”) Of course the Cosmo is a Thanksgiving cocktail. Its key ingredient is…cranberr…

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