Best Christmas Cocktails Aged EgNog

ggnog is a hard sell because most people have only had the bad kind, those boring and occasionally gross cartons that line the dairy section of the supermarket every December.

Not to overstate it, but this is a tragedy. Eggnog is an aged spirit mixed with eggs, cream, sugar and spices.

Honestly the only substantial difference between rum ice cream and Eggnog is that the Eggnog has too much alcohol to freeze.

It’s liquid dessert. It’s the physical manifestation of treating yourself to, ounce-for-ounce, one of the most outrageously delicious things you can drink.

It’s the kind of double-barrel decadence that, one month from now when your New Year’s resolutions have you mainlining adaptogens and doing YouTube yoga, you can look back with a satisfied smile, knowing that you made the most of your Holidays.

So enjoy the season and make one now.

• 12 egg yolks
• 18 oz. white sugar
• 36 oz. whole milk
• 24 oz. heavy cream
• 12 oz. aged rum
• 12 oz. Cognac
• 8 oz. bourbon
• ½ tsp. salt

Separate the eggs and keep the whites to use somewhere else—like a merengue or your Whiskey Sour.

Using an immersion blender or mixer, beat the yolks with the sugar in a large mixing bowl until the mixture lightens in color.

Add dairy to a large bowl, then add the liquor and salt, then slowly beat in the egg mixture.

Pour into glass jar or bottle and store in the fridge indefinitely.

To serve, pour about 5 oz. into a small glass and garnish with some freshly grated nutmeg. Serves 24.

Best Christmas Cocktails Palo Santo

The problem with adding smoke to your cocktails is that it’s a blunt tool that’s so easy to use wrong.

When you’re out at a bar and see the glass cloche filled with smoke lifted to reveal a drink inside, it’s a pretty safe bet that the cocktail will not be good.

Smoking a cocktail like that is far too imprecise. But there is a better way to smoke your cocktail and in an episode of our Cocktails for Grown Ups, we show you how to do it.

• 2 oz. Buffalo Trace Bourbon
• 0.25 oz. cinnamon syrup
• 0.125 oz. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
• 3-4 dashes Fee Brothers Aztec Chocolate Bitters

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir for 10 to 25 seconds (shorter for small ice, longer for big ice). Then, put a piece of palo santo wood on a non-reactive surface (stainless steel, a cast iron pan, or just a larger piece of different wood) and burn it with a blowtorch until it starts to smoke.

Invert your glass over the smoke and let it infuse there for eight to 10 seconds, then flip the glass right-side-up, allowing the smoke to escape.

Then add ice to a rocks glass and strain the drink over that fresh ice, and garnish with an orange peel.

Spiced Tequila Punch

In the world of tequila, it’s the raw brightness of the blancos that garners most of the attention, but when you get into the añejos—tequilas that have slumbered in oak barrels for a few years—you open up a whole new world of potential.

You could have a lovely time just drinking Manhattan variations with añejos and sherry instead of whiskey and vermouth, but add some fresh citrus and cinnamon in a large format, and introduce your guests to the deeply spiced luxuriousness of aged agave spirits. 

• 6 oz. spiced syrup
• 18 oz. añejo tequila
• 6 oz. Amontillado sherry
• 6 oz. lemon juice
• 30 oz. chilled cinnamon tea 

To make the spiced syrup take 1⁄2 cup sugar, 4 oz. water, four to six cloves, two to four allspice berries and one star anise pod, and combine in a small pot over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Reduce to simmer, covered, for five minutes, then remove from heat and let cool.

Once the spiced syrup has been off heat for about five to 10 minutes, peel six lemons and add the peels to spiced syrup, then stir briefly.

Let cool to room temperature, then strain out solids.

Combine spiced syrup with the rest of the liquids and chill.

When it’s time to serve, pour mixture into a large serving bowl and add a very large piece of ice.

Garnish with cinnamon sticks, star anise pods and orange wheels.

Best Christmas Cocktails Espresso Martini

One of the biggest problems with an Espresso Martini has been that so few restaurants (let alone homes) have espresso, and aren’t going to get it.

But the past decade has done us two favors: It has given us better liqueurs and made cold brew (ice coffee’s stronger big brother) universally available.

Suddenly, it’s easy to make the Espresso Martini great, as cold brew has a much longer shelf life than espresso, and is incalculably easier to procure.

This has allowed the Espresso Martini—the version that isn’t bad—to be democratized and modernized at the same time.

This updated take has an arching dynamic complexity, a deep coffee richness and a sweetness held very much in check.

It’s a delightful little drink to have with dessert, if you’d like something stiffer than just a cappuccino with your pie.

• 1 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. Mr. Black Cold Brew Liqueur
• 1 oz. cold brew concentrate
• 0.25 oz. simple syrup 

Add ingredients to shaker tin, and shake well over ice.

Strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with three coffee beans. 

Best Christmas Cocktails Mulled Apple Cider

The Hot Mulled Apple Cider cocktail is the most labor-intensive on this list, but even in this august company, it might be the tastiest.

It’s also pure fall: Apples are at their very best right now, and we insist that juicing them, mulling the juice with spices and spiking it with Irish whiskey warms you from the inside.

It seems like everyone on the internet has a Mulled Apple Cider recipe and a lot of them get the main points wrong, so check out the instructions here, and then do yourself a favor and make it

Designed for an 8 oz. mug—scale up as needed

• 1.5 oz. Irish whiskey
• 4.5 oz. hot mulled apple cider
• 1 oz. unsweetened half-whipped heavy cream

Pour whiskey and cider into a pre-heated mug, leaving a little less than one inch of room from the rim.

Gently pour half-whipped unsweetened cream so it layers on top. Garnish with a pinch of ground cinnamon.

Best Christmas Cocktails Boozy Hot Chocolate

You could just add a shot of whatever’s closest in reach to microwaved Swiss Miss and it would still be pretty good, but here’s how you can really make it shine.

• 6 oz. milk or cream
• 45 g semi-sweet chocolate chips (weight is a much more accurate measure in this instance)
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1.5 oz. reposado or añejo tequila

Pre-warm your mug with some hot water.

Add all ingredients (except alcohol) to a small saucepan over low heat and stir, taking care not to scald the milk.

Empty the hot water from your mug and add 1.5 oz. alcohol.

Once all the chocolate is dissolved and the temperature is where you want it (usually about 150 degrees—milk scalds at 170), pour hot chocolate into mug, stir briefly to combine and garnish with as many baby marshmallows as will fit.

Best Christmas Cocktails Brandy Alexander

Consider the Brandy Alexander, a cocktail so old the mere mention of it invites the images of grandparents and gramophones.

The Brandy Alexander is brandy (Cognac, usually, that most celebrated type of brandy), crème de cacao, and cream. Almost as early as you can find it mentioned you can find it insulted and dismissed—in 1930’s host guide Shake Em Up, authors Virginia Elliot and Phil D.

Strong lump it into a category for “tender young things who have just been taken off stick candy,” and offer that you can use crème de cacao to “make them up some kind of [drink] and push them under the piano to suck on it.”

The reliably grumpy David Embury, in 1948, calls it “deadly” because it “taste[s] harmless,” and waves it off as “a futile waste of good liquor.”

If you have actually tasted a Brandy Alexander, you’d already know that the Brandy Alexander is not just worth your time but is in fact shockingly delicious, and one of the best things you can have after a meal.

There is, of course, a way to make it too sweet, but increase the measure of Cognac just a touch and the drink becomes locked into balance, a decadent delight, the chocolate and cream round and deeply satisfying, all driven by the Cognac’s powerful oak and fruit.

• 1.5 oz. Cognac or brandy
• 1 oz. cream
• 1 oz. crème de cacao

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for eight to 10 seconds.

Strain off the ice into a cocktail or coupe glass, and garnish with a shave of fresh nutmeg.

Best Christmas Cocktails Hot Toddy

The Hot Toddy is the ultimate winter drink.

Some Hot Toddys are like Whiskey Sours (whiskey, citrus, sweetener and hot water) and some are like Old Fashioneds (whiskey, sweetness, spice and hot water), but either way, the Hot Toddy is like whiskey chicken soup, the perfect drink to displace any physical or emotional chill.

• 2 oz. whiskey
• 0.75 oz. lemon juice
• 0.75 oz. honey/ginger
• 4-6 oz. boiling water

Boil water.

Pour boiling water into a mug, to pre-warm it.

After a minute, empty water, add ingredients, top with boiling water and garnish with a lemon or orange slice studded with cloves and/or a cinnamon stick.

Old Cuban

The Old Cuban—aged rum, lime, simple syrup, and mint, with Angostura Bitters and Champagne—is very often described as a combination of a French 75 and a Mojito.

Both of those latter cocktails are pure brightness, while the vanilla from the aged rum and the spice from the bitters in the Old Cuban moves it from poolside to inside as if under a slowly twisting ceiling fan in a smoky room, long narrow beams of light through the wooden shutters.

• 1.5 oz. aged rum
• 0.75 oz. lime juice
• 0.75 oz. simple syrup
• 6-8 mint leaves
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
• 2 oz. sparkling wine

Add all ingredients except wine to a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well for 10 to 12 seconds and strain into a flute or stemmed cocktail glass.

Top with wine and garnish with a mint leaf or sprig.