Cocktail

This orange, peach, cranberry, and lime drink makes the ultimate “fruit cocktail.”

You can also make these in a pitcher and serve them as the evening’s party drink. They have the perfect balance of tart and sweet. Great in the summer.

The key to this drink is fresh pineapple juice.

Virtue Feed & Grain in Alexandria, VA, serves this take on an Old Fashioned, just one of their signature "hoptails."

Go festive with this floral, slightly fizzy punch, replete with decorative ice mold.

This hot toddy recipe comes from Matt Tanner at Houston's Anvil Bar & Refuge, whose addition of house-made apple-infused bourbon is a spirited stroke of genius.

Simple Syrup is the most basic sweetener used in cocktails, and as the name states, it's simple—made of just sugar and water.

This punch was originally inspired by a sangria recipe I learned from my friend David Hanna. More flavorful and higher in alcohol than your average sangria, this punch uses inexpensive wine from Spain. My two favorite brands are Protocolo and Borsao, both of which provide a juicy, full-flavored foundation for spiced juice and liquors. The punch has a tendency to be rather tannic tasting, so I add simple syrup cup by cup until the sweetness is just right. One of the most tragic downfalls of a party punch is overdilution, which happens when the punch is chilled with fast-melting ice cubes. I serve this punch either prechilled with ice on the side, or with one large piece of block ice in the bowl and ice on the side.

What makes this recipe special is its lightness: twice as much milk as cream, and the white of the egg whipped stiff and folded into the mix, so it was almost like clouds on top of the eggnog.

This is one of our End of Prohibition party special punch recipes and it was adapted from the Philadelphia Fish House punch, which was a favorite of Generals Washington and Lafayette. We replaced the original cognac with our local Laird’s AppleJack and got something fantastic as a result. We use all seasonal fruits for this—a beautiful feature that also makes it extra tasty.

This was on the bar at every establishment in New York City during the holidays in the Gay Nineties.

We found this recipe in Jerry Thomas's 1862 How to Mix Drinks or the Bon Vivant's Companion, in a recipe for a single serving. It called for Holland gin—or genever, as we know it today—and was probably a very popular drink. The back story is that when planning our first End of Prohibition party we were searching for punch recipes that could be served in teacups. So we started going through books and shot a few ideas back and forth until we found papa Jerry's recipe. We replaced the genever with Plymouth gin, and with a few more tweaks we got it perfect. The decorative ice block adds a great visual effect.

Family: Punches—A very similar recipe for this punch was detailed in 1958 by David Embury, and following his instructions I use [simple syrup—without it, it's far too dry.](<epi:recipeLink id=)

Meyer lemons, a cross between lemons and oranges, start to ripen in November. They add a deliciously fragrant sweet-and-sour note to this cocktail.

Herbaceous, nutty, and bright, this rendition of the Prohibition-era classic doubles the gin for a more robust cocktail.