December Drink of the Month - Bitter Passion

Ann and I rent our house out every fall during Notre Dame home football weekends. Our renters almost always leave behind something after departing. Sometimes the items are odd, like a single novelty sock, or a horribly smelly cooler that went straight into the trash can. But sometimes the leavings are truly gifts, like the cans of champagne left in our refrigerator by Ann's old student workers. Single serve CANS of champagne. This was a life changer for me, as I NEVER go through enough champagne while mixing drinks to justify a whole bottle. Mini bottles have been around for a bit, and they are nice... but cans are even easier to store, and the serving size is excellent for four-ish drinks. Somehow, I missed out on this innovation until it was deposited in my refrigerator. And yes, naysayers, the can of champagne isn't of the finest vintage, but it is cheap and convenient. I'm going to mix it with lots of tasty booze and juices - so I'm not going to be overly focused on the label here. I'm just here for the bubbles.

Our renters' gift allowed me to play down in the bar one night, and the result was a pretty tasty bubbly drink - just in time for New Years! It is a mix of sweet (passion fruit & simple syrup), sour (lime and passion fruit again), bitter (grapefruit), and dry (champagne). It's a lot all in one glass, but the tropical flavors all pair well, and champagne bubbles keep it light, and there is a strong backbone of vodka to keep it boozy enough. This is what I'll be drinking on NYE if I have my way!

Ingredients: 1.5 oz vodka, 0.5 oz grapefruit vodka, 0.5 oz passion fruit syrup, 0.5 oz simple syrup, 1 oz lime juice, 2 oz brut champagne to top.

Preparation: Pour all of the ingredients except for the champagne into a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with brut champagne, and finish with lime zest.

Notes: I use Deep Eddy grapefruit vodka and Small Hands Foods passion fruit syrup. I can't remember what brand of champagne in a can we had, but I'd buy it again. What a concept!

November Drink of the Month - The Autumnal Equinox

If you haven't read last "month's" post yet, go check out the Granny Sour, one of the best original drinks that Zack and I have created. It's up there with Smoke on the Water... Melon and our first original drink for the blog, the Opera Glove. Also, as a side note, Zack and I have been mixing drinks together for a while - the Opera Glove goes back to 2013. Wow!

After testing a number of apple varieties to create the Granny Sour, Zack and I found ourselves with a surplus of apples on hand, and no great need for cobbler. Luckily, we had Cocktail Club the following Tuesday, so more experimentation was on tap. Attendance at Cocktail Club was low this past month (I suppose having a new baby is an acceptable excuse for missing a club meeting), but that meant we had a little more freedom to sit and experiment. Our goal was to riff on the classic Żubrówka and apple juice, and maybe play around with some sour and/or sweet flavors (grapefruit? apple caramel? aperol? mint syrup?). The only requirement for the drink was that it feature fresh apple juice, and be served in a hollowed out apple.

Showstopper!

After a few rounds of bar "scientific method," we had a base drink we liked - Żubrówka, jonagold apple juice, lemon, ginger liqueur, and (eventually) rosemary. That drink was fine, but it needed one final touch. Would we go sweet, and add apple caramel? Bitter and dash in some grapefruit juice? Or do both?

It turns out that doing both was a terrible idea. So lets get that out of the way first. Ick.

Adding grapefruit did give some pleasant tartness and bitter finish to the drink, but it was nothing outstanding. However, slowly adding apple caramel made this into a semi-tart, spiced dulce de leche (in liquid form), and that was absolutely worth writing home about. We named the drink the Autumnal Equinox, because it uses fresh fall flavors, and is half sweet and half tart. I hope you enjoy it, and the photo, which made use of the portrait mode on my new phone camera.

Ingredients: 2 oz jonagold juice, 1 oz Żubrówka, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 0.5 oz ginger liqueur, 1 tsp apple caramel, 1 sprig rosemary

Preparation: Juice the jonagold, and strain out any pulp using a mesh strainer. Combine juice with Żubrówka, lemon and ginger liqueur in a Boston shaker. Slowly stir in apple caramel using a bar spoon until it is well dissolved. Remove rosemary needles from stalk, and add to shaker. Shake over ice, double strain into a hallowed out apple. Garnish with a half caramel rim and a rosemary sprig.

October Drink of the Month - The Granny Sour

Photo Credit: Ann Kiley

I'm going to keep this month's post short and sweet. Zack and I created the Granny Sour over a Friday afternoon, another product of our newfound love for the drink creation "scientific method." Because it is the fall, we actually purchased a number of locally sourced apple varieties and juiced them all, searching for nuance in the different cultivars (fuji, johnagold, courtland, granny smith, and honeycrisp were the ones we toyed with). Our experimentation began as a riff on the classic Stone Fence (rye and cider, although there are many variations - the Stone Fence from Dead Rabbit is immensely more complicated!), partially because Zack picked up some decent rye on clearance while we were apple shopping. The rest is history, as we played with independent variables on the way to discovering a drink we both consider one of our finest original creations. This was a really fun experiment, because it made us consider where the flavor for commercial apple juice comes from, and how we can tweak and play with that formula by using fresh ingredients. When you recreate this drink at home, you absolutely must juice your own granny smith apples - store shelf apple juice will not have the same tart/crisp notes that are essential for this drink. You can buy granny smith year round, but the harvest is still fresh now, so go get some local apples if you live in orchard-friendly states!

Ingredients: 2 oz rye, 2 oz granny smith juice, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 0.5 oz mint syrup, 2 dashes cranberry bitters

Preparation: Juice the granny smith apples, and strain out any pulp using a mesh strainer. Combine juice with remaining ingredients in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, double strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with skewered cranberries.

Notes: Peeling the granny smith apples before juicing helps the drink's color - juicing with the skin on results in a darker juice, so the cranberry hues get washed out. Also, the juice oxidizes quickly, so don't allow it to sit for long before mixing.

September Drink of the Month - The Hummingbird Daiquri

Last time Zack and I sat down to fiddle with drinks, he had a very specific challenge in mind: find something to do with a tasty bottle he had just purchased. The bottle in question was Flora from Cardinal Spirits, a raspberry and edible flower liqueur. He had sampled the wares at Cardinal, and declared this bottle was the most interesting thing they had to offer. So we went to work crafting a drink to highlight the sweet, floral notes found in "Flora," using the scientific method.

"Scientific Method" Round 2

"Scientific Method" Round 1

The process involved lemons, limes, and lots of agave, grape, and sugarcane based spirits. For those keeping score at home, pisco, brandy, and mescal were non-starters. The grape-based spirits provided too much of the same flavors as the Flora, masking what made it special. And the mescal was just too much for this delicate liqueur. Rum and rum-adjacent spirits, however, played really nicely with what Flora brought to the table. At the end of the day, we settled on concocting a daiquiri riff, swapping in the Flora as the sweetener instead of sugar. That led to a second round of experimenting with different sugarcane spirits using our base formula, and a momentary disagreement. Zack found a drink made with Havana Club rum to be just about perfect. I preferred the extra earthiness that came from using cachaça. Instead of arguing ad-nauseam, we relied on a trick we had just learned from the Cocktail Codex: we used a split base, keeping Havana Club as the dominant flavor, but adding a little cachaça for seasoning. The drink by itself stands up with rum alone, but the split base is divine. Want to try this, but can't find Flora in your local spirits store? They sell and ship online: Cardinal Spirits. Or else sub out the Flora for 0.75 oz creme de framboise and 3 dashes of rose water. It won't be the same, but it is a close approximation.

Ingredients: 1 oz white rum, 0.5 oz cachaça, 1 oz lime juice, 1 oz Cardinal Spirits Flora

Preparation: Combine ingredients in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with an edible flower.

August Drink of the Month - Fram-brandy Sidecar

I've detailed over the years my great love for the Sidecar, perhaps one of the perfect "mother" drinks, and my favorite formula to play with. Early on in the history of this blog, Zack and I performed a "side-by-sidecar" test with a number of (cheap-o) fruit brandies, our first foray into the scientific method of drink production. We tried out a number of flavors, and Apricot took the cake (and bad cherry brandy was the worst). However, raspberry (framboise in French) was missing from that list, and I now realize this to be a glaring omission (or perhaps a felix culpa, as I don't have memories of bottom shelf raspberry brandy to poison by brain).

While I was not on the lookout for new fruit brandies, a chance conversation at a family wedding this summer resulted in me becoming the proud owner of a bottle of "Nick's Red Raspberry Brandy," lovingly made by Ann's Uncle Nick. While it is quite sippable on its own, I can't resist an opportunity to tinker at the bar. A sidecar is brandy's best friend (and grappa, and pisco, and signani, and...), but a traditional formula with Cointreau would have been far too sweet. Tinkering with the ratios and subbing a dry curacao for Cointreau resulted in a gem which I'm looking forward to enjoying again this weekend (since my little sample bottle has now been replaced with a full fifth). Below is the formula for the Fram-Brandy Sidecar.

Ingredients: 1.5 oz raspberry brandy, 1 oz dry curacao (I use Pierre Ferrand), 0.75 oz lemon juice.

Preparation: Combine all ingredients in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a fresh raspberry and a lemon twist.

Notes: Can't find Nick's Red Raspberry brandy? He'll trade you for some! Or else St. George Spirits makes a nice bottle as well ;).

July Drink of the Month - Bourbon Slush (Guest Post)

Hello loyal following (of three)! I apologize for a lack of posting this past month and a half - between kitchen renovations, anniversary celebrations, and the start of the school year, I've been quite incommunicado. But we are back with a vengeance, and I hope to have us all caught up before October hits. Let's begin with a guest post that has been sitting in my email inbox since June 23: my mom's foolproof bourbon slush recipe. She uses this for almost any occasion, and sometimes even travels with it her (like on a trip to Branson, MO a few years back). Here is her quick pitch for this recipe: "I have a great summer pre-BBQ cocktail for this summer.  My guest enjoyed them as our featured cocktail during appetizers at our Summer Solstice neighborhood cookout last night.   Even those who professed to not like Bourbon admitted that this drink goes down verrrrrry easily."

So there you go! Why not make one at home if you have the freezer space? Note: the recipe is for a batch, as freezing individual drinks is a foolish venture (and since breaking up the slush with a spoon is half the fun of making these drinks):

Ingredients: 6 cups *strong Constant Comment tea, 1 cup sugar, 12 oz frozen lemonade concentrate, 12 oz frozen orange juice concentrate, 2 cups bourbon

Preparation: Brew the tea using 4 tea bags per six cups of boiling water. Allow the tea to cool to room temperature with the tea bags still steeping. Let sit for 1-2 hours. Remove tea bags, pour the tea into a gallon pitcher, and add sugar. Stir to combine. Add lemonade & orange juice concentrates, and stir to mix. Refrigerate for one hour. Add bourbon, and place in freezer overnight. To serve, remover from freezer for 30 minutes to begin thaw. Attack with a wooden spoon, and place "crunchy layers" into a old fashioned glass. Garnish with a brandied cherry.

June Drink of the Month - Sharon's Desert Rose

This month's drink was part of the same creative outburst that produced the Pomme de Feu last month. Friend of the blog Zack brought over a bottle of Sotol, an emerging agave-adjacent spirit that originated in the deserts of Chihuahua, Mexico. Sotol is somewhere between tequila and mezcal, but the plant that is roasted and fermented to produce sotol (dasylirion, once believed to be a member of the agave family, but since reclassified) grows in the wild, and is much more influenced by terrior than the agave plants. The drink itself is slightly smoky (not quite so smoky as mezcal), but also has grassy notes that produce something distinct from its agave-based cousins.

When deciding on what to do with the Sotol, we borrowed from some of our old favorite recipes. I had just made a batch of hibiscus-habanero syrup for a frozen watermelon cocktail a few days before. The heat from the syrup and the sweet and floral hibiscus complimented the smoke and vegital notes in the Sotol, similar to the way the hibiscus and Signani play in the Blade. Add a little lime, and we were fairly well satisfied with our initial attempt. However, for the sake of science, we played a bit. Remembering one of our favorite original drinks, the Smoke on the Water...Melon, we tweaked the drink by adding a pinch of sea salt. The salt livened up the flavors nicely, but we were still having trouble finding the hibiscus (the syrup I made was admittedly on the spicy side, but I liked it!). Zack had recently acquired a few "Fruitlab" bottles from Greenbar Distillery in LA, including a hibiscus liqueur. We added just enough to make the hibiscus stand out, and declared ourselves satisfied.

Before "going to market," as it were, we decided to make the same drink with tequila, to make sure that Sotol was the proper application for this mix. The tequila drink was enjoyable (and a very clean sip), but we found ourselves missing the smoky finish that the Sotol provided. Without the smoke at the back of our throats, the heat from the habanero became much more pronounced (whereas with the Sotol, the heat mingled deliciously with the smoky aftertaste). We felt confident we had crafted something to make the Sotol shine, and we are happy to share it with you!

Ingredients: 2 oz sotol, 0.5 oz lime juice, 0.5 oz hibiscus/habanero syrup*, 0.25 oz hibiscus liqueur, generous pinch of sea salt.

Preparation: In a Boston shaker, combine all ingredients, including salt. Shake over ice, and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a lime wheel and/or hibiscus flower. 

*To make the hibiscus/habanero syrup, combine 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Add 0.5 cups of dried hibiscus flowers and three habanero peppers, sliced long-ways. Stir until sugar is fully dissolved, and allow to steep over medium-low heat for 20 minutes. Allow mixture to cool, and then strain through a cheesecloth and bottle. Syrup will keep for 3 weeks.

Notes: The name comes from the common name for the dasylirion plant - the "Desert Spoon," and the common name for hibiscus - the "Rose of Sharon." We could have just gone with "Desert Rose," but there are like 50 different desert rose cocktails on the internet. Plus, Rose of Sharon makes me think of high school English class, and who doesn't want to contemplate that mess while drinking (aah!).

May Drink of the Month - Pomme de Feu

The past week was a productive time for cocktail exploration. Frequent collaborator and friend of the blog Zack brought over a few new and unusual spirits to sample, and we debuted a new method of drink building that seems super obvious, but was incredibly fun and fruitful. Occasionally, when trying to replicate a bar-made cocktail that we enjoy, we "scientifically" sit down and make multiple iterations of the same drink, swapping one ingredient at a time, or changing one ratio, to control the variables of our drink. Surprisingly, we rarely used this method when creating original cocktails. But this past week, we applied this methodical process to make a few new drinks, which I will feature for May and June. The refrain of "for science" rang out often, as I would run down to the bar to collect a new ingredient, so we could taste the difference between using Aperol or Campari, tequila or sotol, or apple brandy or apple jack. This method produced better cocktails, as we could more definitely say what exactly we liked about each formulation, instead of just declaring a drink to be "good" or "bad."

The first success story from this process began with a bottle of Wood Smoked Apple Spirit (called Fumus Pumila) from the Baltimore Spirits Co. We both enjoyed the apple brandy, and it lived up to the name - it was smoky as heck! Almost to the point where you could lose the apple flavor, but that was more of a problem from me than it was for Zack. We added ginger liqueur to the mix (who doesn't love apple and ginger?), lime juice, sparkling cider, and a little simple syrup (stuck on flavor combinations? I've been using the Flavor Bible more to help me with ideas). The result was tasty, but very smoky - and not terribly "apple-y," despite the addition of the cider.

From this initial formulation, the scientific method took over. I ransacked my back bar for all of the apple spirits I could find. I had a nice aged apple brandy from Blackstar Farms in Traverse City, MI. as well as a bottle of Laird's Applejack. We repeated our recipe with the new base spirits, to see what each brought to the table. The consensus was that applejack fell flat, but that the "Spirit of Apple" from Blackstar shined - and produced a really pleasant apple flavor. As to which drink was superior between the Fumus Pumila and Spirit of Apple, we were split. Zack loved the smoke (as did I), whereas I really loved the strong apple flavors. Zack could live without the more pronounced apple notes, and I was just fine without the bite from the wood. Each drink has its own nuance, but we decided that we didn't need to make a definitive pronouncement. Below is the recipe for our finished product - choose your spirit wisely, depending on your taste.

Ingredients: 2 oz apple brandy*, 0.5 oz lime juice, 0.5 oz ginger liqueur, 0.25 oz simple syrup, 2 oz sparkling cider

Preparation: Combine all ingredients except cider in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, strain into an ice filled Collins glass**. Top with sparkling cider, garnish with a lime wheel.

Notes: *use an aged apple brandy, unless you'd like to make Zack's drink with the Fumus Pumila

**If using Fumus Pumila, serve neat in a chilled coupe glass instead (without ice).

April Drink of the Month - Schwifty Swizzle

I was the host for cocktail club last month, a role that comes with added responsibility. We've had enough go-rounds now with our little group that we all feel the need to step up our game a little with our offerings. This month, "Crusher" is hosting, and he had promised that we will experiment with smoking cocktails (which is not surprising, given Crusher's love for all things wood), and the month before that, Jason burned all his knuckle hair off charring grapefruit for a mezcal drink. There were plenty of inventive syrups or tinctures I could have made, but the early signs of spring meant that I really wanted to make some swizzle drinks, which meant that I went off the rails and developed my own quasi-"ice program" for the evening instead.

Swizzles are defined by their method of preparation, not by the alcohol used in the beverage. Native to the Caribbean, swizzles are made up of spirit, sweet, maybe some bitter, and crushed ice. The drink is built in the glass, and mixed by plunging a swizzle stick down into the drink and rolling the shaft of the stick between your two hands. This agitates the drink and creates a frosty rime on the outside of the glass as the liquid cools. Swizzle sticks were originally branches of a Caribbean evergreen, but plastic models now dominate. A plastic stirring stick works in a pinch, but to get the best effect, go find one with the crows foot/branch end that really works the ice.

Since the drink is defined by the ice used in preparation, I had to get this right! I inherited a late-60s era ice crushing machine from Ann's grandfather, and I debated breaking out that bad boy for the project... but the last time I brought this particular model to the club, it was mocked pretty substantially (it still works, but VERY slowly). I also have a Lewis bag, which is a canvas bag used in conjunction with a mallet to crush ice - but the resulting crushed ice is fairly inconsistently sized. Instead of settling on any of these options, I decided to go for maximum uniformity, and did something silly - I went to my favorite gas station and bought five 44 oz Styrofoam cups full of "pebble ice" for the reasonable sum of $2.50 (50 cents a cup). Pebble ice is perfect for swizzles, as it is consistent in size and results in a dense fill. It is also fun to eat, if that is you jam (and it is very much my jam). My giant Styrofoam cups ended up being mocked just as much as Ann's grandpa's ancient ice machine, but no one was disappointed with the finished product, a swizzle recipe from Imbibe called the Schwifty Swizzle that combines mezcal, falernum, lime, and Green Chartreuse. Try the recipe below, and let me know if you splurge on the ice - it is worth it!

Ingredients: 1 oz mezcal, 1 oz lime juice, 0.5 oz falernum, 0.5 oz Green Chartreuse, 3 dashes Peychaud's bitters to top.

Preparation:Fill a cocktail glass or Moscow Mule mug half full with crushed ice. Add first four ingredients, swizzle for 6-10 seconds. Add more ice to fill glass, and swizzle again for another 6 seconds, until frost appears on glass/mug. Top with bitters, allowing them to form a red "dome" on the top of the ice.

March Drink of the Month - the D'Angelo

For Christmas this year, I decided to go back through six years of Bar Kiley posts and assemble the best of the best into a little book for friends and family. I'm still figuring out how best to produce said book, so it hasn't hit shelves yet (my parents and sister got galleys in their stockings), but the process of revisiting and tweaking 60+ recipes was a lot of fun. It also reminded me that I am really bad at naming original drinks, as is evidenced by the except below from the entry for the "Blade":

There is an old axiom: never let your idiot friends name your drinks when they are sleep deprived and watching old Marvel movies. Blade is made from hibiscus syrup (more on that in a moment), so it has a really pretty ruby hue. Hypothetically, if you and your friend are both sleep deprived because of travel and small children AND you happen to be watching the 1998 super hero/horror classic Blade, you may be tempted to imagine your drink as a goblet of blood, and name the tipple in honor of the movie. But that would be an incredibly dumb name, so no matter what you do, you should probably never promise your friend that they can name the drink you’ve handed them. Otherwise you’ll end up writing a 150 word essay in a cocktail book on why your drink has such a dumb name…. hypothetically.

I intensely dislike naming drinks because my naming conventions often come down to terrible puns, and no one needs more of those in their lives. With that as a given, I'm going to leave the name of the D'Angelo shrouded in mystery. I will say that it is an homage to one of the worst professors I ever had at Notre Dame, but the drink has nothing to do with her personality, subject matter expertise, or dress. It was a name association/pun, which I had better keep to myself in order to continue to project an aura of mystique.

The drink for this month began as a recreation of a tasty happy hour beverage I enjoyed at LatinicityRosa Maria from Latinicity became a sweet and sour porch sipper called the D'Angelo, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of our tinkering!
in downtown Chicago. It was a sweet and syrup-y (and likely spiked with soda-y) vodka drink made with lime, passion fruit, and rosemary. Down in the basement lab, we tweaked it into a passion fruit daiquiri riff with added notes of rosemary for complexity. The

Ingredients: 2 oz white rum, 1.5 oz lime juice, 1 oz passion fruit syrup, 0.75 oz rosemary simple syrup

Preparation: For the rosemary simple syrup: combine 0.5 cups water and 0.5 cups granulated sugar in a saucepot over medium heat. Stir until combined, add in 3 large sprigs of rosemary. Steep rosemary over medium heat for 10-15 minutes. Allow to cool, then strain and store for up to 3 weeks. For the cocktail: combine all ingredients in a Boston Shaker, shake over ice and strain into an ice filled goblet. Garnish with a rosemary sprig.

February(-ish) Drink of the Month - The Viking Fog Cutter

The first encountered auqavit when I was living in Minnesota, which makes sense. A clear grain spirit, usually flavored with caraway, Aquavit is native to Scandinavia. As any lutefisk or hot dish enthusiast could tell you, Minnesota is home to a large population of Swedish immigrants, so naturally I would find aquavit in the great North. Surprisingly, Minneapolis and Saint Paul don't list any "sister cities" in Sweden or Norway, but travel outside of the big towns and you'll find places like Elbow Lake (sister city: Flekkefjord, Norway) and Chisago Lake/Lindstrom, where all the signs in town are posted both in English and Swedish (sister cities are Algutsboda and Tingsryd, Sweden, respectively).

I had the pleasure of living with a few Swedes during my childhood, when we hosted au pairs to help with my brother's physical and occupational therapy. One thing I learned from the Swedes (and Danes) that lived with us was their great love for black licorice. One Dane (Christian) was very upset with the quality of American black licorice, and had me try some he had brought from home. He told me some of the ingredients would be classified as cleaning products here in the states, so it was "illegal" to import. I'm not a great lover of straight anise myself, so I found Christian's licorice abhorrent. But those Nords - they love the stuff! And so it makes sense that they would flavor their drinks with as much anise as they could.

While I will never be one to buy a bag of "all black" jelly beans, anise does do wonders to boost and compliment other flavors. It actually plays nicely with citrus/tropical flavors, as well as the vanillin in oak aged spirits. While aquavit is mostly drunk straight (in Norway, where it is usually aged in oak before serving) or as a shot during festive occasions (Sweden, where it remains unaged), it has begun showing up in cocktails. Our drink for this month takes a classic tiki drink and adds a aquavit float to give it depth and complexity. While using a clear liquid for a float doesn't do much for visual appeal, aquavit lends the drink spicy/earthy notes that transform the sweet/cirtus-y drink into something all together different. 

Ingredients: 1 oz light rum, 0.5 oz gin, 0.5 oz brandy, 0.5 oz orgeat, 2 oz orange juice, 1 oz lemon juice, 0.5 oz aquavit float

Preparation: Combine all ingredients except aquavit in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, strain into a red wine goblet filled with crushed ice. Using a barspoon, float aquavit on top, serve ungarnished.

January Drink of the Month - the Kiley Royale

The newest craze I saw on all the morning talk shows this year was to celebrate the New Year with a "bubbly bar." I love the idea of allowing guests to spruce up their NYE champagne with fresh fruit and syrups, but most of the offerings on the Today show and other were pretty boring. Of course a fresh strawberry slice would be nice in my champagne, but where is the creativity in that? If I had hosted NYE (instead of building IKEA furniture and falling asleep on the couch watching Life of the Party), my bubbly bar would have had a little more style and flair! Add some Chambord or creme de casis to the table so guests can make a Kir Royale. Add some bitters and gin or brandy for a French 75. Citrus is a must if you are adding more sweetness, so make sure to have some lemon or lime juice out for guests. And add in a curve ball for giggles - some Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur for sweet/spicy or some evergreen liqueur for herbaciousness. Surprise your guest, and encourage them to sample something unique, instead of adding a boring blueberry or three.

While my NYE plans were not the most epic, I was inspired to try my hand at a sparkling cocktail for the evening - yes, you can still drink bubbly on NYE, even if your plans consist of sitting in sweatpants and trying really hard not to fall asleep. I was inspired by the Kir Royale, which is traditionally made with champagne and creme de cassis, which is made from blackcurrants. The Kir Royale is named after it's creator (a Mr. Kir), who first created the Kir Cocktail (cassis and white wine), and then made it "royale" by swapping out the still wine for sparkling. My take (named the Kiley Royale, because if Mr. Kir can have an eponymous drink, then so can I!) adds raspberry syrup, brandy, and lemon juice (to balance the sweet with some acid), while upping the alcohol content to give it some punch. Brandy and champagne are natural pairings, but make sure to avoid other grape distillates - the first batch I made used pisco, and I can confirm that brandy is the far superior fermented grape product to use in this application.

Ingredients: 1 oz brandy, 1 oz raspberry syrup, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 2 dashes cherry bitters, 3 oz prosecco to top.

Preparation: For the raspberry syrup: combine 0.5 cups water and 0.5 cups granulated sugar in a saucepot over medium heat. Stir until combined, add in 6 oz of raspberries. Bring to a boil, and reduce to simmer for 5 minutes. Allow to cool, then strain and store for up to 3 weeks. For the cocktail: combine the first four ingredients in a Boston Shaker, shake over ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with prosecco, garnish with a whole raspberry.