SPRING SIPS
Romantic cocktails perfect for any occasion
Velvet Glove INGREDIENTS
4 ounces Point Reyes Vineyards Marin County blanc de blanc sparkling wine ½ ounce Empress indigo gin ½ ounce fresh-squeezed Meyer lemon juice
1 Bada Bing stemmed allnatural cherry
DIRECTIONS
Mix gin and lemon juice in a cocktail mixer with ice. Strain into chilled flute. Slowly add sparkling wine and sink cherry to the bottom.
Marin County Vesper INGREDIENTS
1 ounce Hanson of Sonoma Mandarin Organic Vodka 1 ounce Alamere Spirits gin 1 dash King Floyd’s orange bitters
1 Meyer lemon zest
DIRECTIONS
Combine first three ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until ice cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with lemon zest.
Whether it’s date night or last month’s Valentine’s extravaganza, a romantic evening tends to be expensive. But there’s no need to hit a local hot spot, if you’ve got a few mixology skills of your own.
Can you scoop ice? Measure liquid? Shake things up? You’re golden. All you need are some great cocktail recipes.
Various alcohols have often been assigned amorous- enhancing qualities, always a good thing for a date night. Certainly, sparkling wines have a celebratory appeal, as does cognac (and cognac snifters do float in hot tubs). Tequila has its own special qualities. And martinis occupy a James Bond-ian class all their own.
Up the wow factor — and support local distillers and makers — by making those date night cocktails with high- quality, local spirits, and you’ll have a story to tell, too. This Velvet Glove cocktail recipe, for example, uses a sparkling wine made by Point Reyes Vineyard in Point Reyes Station. It was the only winery that then-prince Charles visited on his Northern California trip in 2005. He was accompanied by his new bride, then-duchess Camilla. And there is nothing more romantic than a story involving a prince and princess (or duchess) — just ask Walt Disney.
The Hot Smoky Passion sipper calls for Santo Mezquila, which is owned by Marin’s Sammy Hagar. It’s technically neither mezcal nor tequila. Mezquila’s lightly smoky flavor falls somewhere in between the two, and it is much easier to mix than the much more assertive mezcal, especially in cocktails. Both the rimming salt for this cocktail and the orange bitters used for the Marin County Vesper hail from Novato’s King Floyd’s, which makes its own bitters, syrups and salts.
The Vesper, of James Bond and Vesper Lynd fame, was originally made with Kina Lillet — it’s nothing like today’s Lillet, which is an aromatized wine like vermouth. “Kina” refers to cinchona, a bark and bittering agent in the original product that is now gone from the modern one. The combination of mandarin vodka — from Hanson of Sonoma — and orange bitters does a good job of replicating the original flavor profile. And the gin comes courtesy of Alamere Spirits, another Marin County distillery. And the smooth, citrusy, brandy-based Beautiful owes its flavor to Sonoma’s Prohibition Spirits Distillery and its Grand Orange brandy liqueur.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” and the host of the Barfly Podcast. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net.