Seasonal ingredients like crandberries and apples pair beautifully with ginger beer, white wine and hard cider to create delicious drinks. Whether you're looking for a somforting hot toddy or a tart pear sour, we've got your fall cocktail needs covered.
HARD CIDER SANGRIA
Photo: Christina Holmes
Instead of wine, this juicy sangria is made with hard cider spiked with lemon juice and apple brandy.
According to the Irish-born Sean Muldoon, Irish people often drink whiskey mixed with ginger, honey and lemon to treat colds. This is a version of that potion. "With a bit of hot water," he says, "it becomes a terrific toddy."
Ken Oringer preheats the Thermos he uses to transport his deliciously spiced cider by filling it with boiling water and letting it sit for a few minutes. Pouring the mulled cider into a Thermos that's already warm helps keep the drink hot.
Mixing beer like the apple lambic here into a cocktail may sound like a new trick, but old cocktail books are filled with beer concoctions. Lambics are Belgian beers that are fermented with wild yeasts.
A hot toddy is basically a shot or two of any potent spirit added to a cup of hot water. Bartender Suzanne Bozarth puts a French spin on this warming drink with a slug of apple brandy, such as Calvados.
Mixologist Ryan Fitzgerald felt inspired to create this fall cocktail after eating apples with peanut butter—a combination he loves but that wouldn't quite work in a drink. His solution was to mix almond syrup with apple juice and fiery apple brandy.
This spicy-sweet highball, developed as an alternative to the ubiquitous apple martini, is made with citrus vodka, apple liqueur and a healthy splash of ginger beer.
This strong but not overly sweet sangria is nicely spiced with cinnamon, anise and cloves and it has just enough crushed red pepper to give it a tiny kick.
Marcus Samuelsson shares his recipe for a traditional Brazilian Caipirinha and with an African flare. He muddles cranberries along with the usual lime and replaces the Brazilian spirit cachaça (made from sugarcane juice) with Scandinavian aquavit
When naming this pear-flavored cocktail, Todd Thrasher turned to a French quote that roughly translates as: "The savage man eats out of necessity; the civilized man eats out of desire."
This Manhattan reflects the recipe in America's first cocktail book, 1862's The Bon Vivant's Companion, by Jerry Thomas. It calls for more vermouth than rye—the opposite of the modern Manhattan.
Mixologist Jacques Bezuindenhout's sour, which references the iconic firearm wielded by Prohibition-era gangsters, gets its zing from spicy fresh ginger and a generous pour of Irish whiskey.
This creamy, spiced drink honors an Irish Halloween bread called barm brack, which contains currants and raisins. Traditionally, various objects—a coin, a ring, a pea—were baked inside the loaf as a kind of fortune-telling game.
Inspired by a punch that Bill Norris made for Thanksgiving one year, the Turkey's Wattle gets its wonderful autumnal flavor from apple cider, ginger beer and a bit of allspice liqueur.
