The lovechild of a mai tai and a Negroni, this fruity orgeat and Campari cocktail is a sweet and summery thirst-quencher.

Featured in: “21 Cocktails for our 21st Birthday“

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Muddled strawberries, fresh mint, and Lillet star in this refreshing, lightly sweet cocktail recipe, which former digital producer Michellina Jones considers the perfect drink for a muggy late summer day. She prefers using a navy strength gin (which has a minimum of 57.1% ABV) with a balanced, restrained flavor profile that won’t overwhelm the other ingredients, while ensuring the boozy flavor doesn’t get lost. Lillet refers to Bordeaux wine that’s been infused with aromatics and spices; the Blanc variety of the aperitif offers citrusy, floral notes with a dry finish. Here, the quintessential summer beverage, with its delicate sweetness, plays well with the gin and berries. Make your own syrup at home with our simple syrup recipe. 

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There are few things more American than grilling. And as it happens, there are few inventions more American (and ingenious) than the cocktail. So it’s only fitting that we, as headstrong and curious citizens of this great country, would think to marry the two. When juiced or muddled into the base of a drink, grilled fruits and vegetables weave in a layer of rich, smoky, summery flavor, not unlike the comforting scent of an early evening campfire.

How does one grill a cocktail, you ask? Situate anything and everything that isn’t booze, right onto the grill: whole citrus halves, sweet pineapple rounds, slices of serrano pepper, grapefruit wedges, and fat slices of stone fruit. And keep these tips in mind while grilling:

• Make sure your grill is hot, but the coals are lightly layered and not flaming, so ingredients don’t become too charred. If using a gas grill, turn the burners down to low. Check ingredients every 30 seconds or so, until they have distinct grill marks but are not ashy.
• Use long tongs and a heavy-duty grill glove to pick up and take off ingredients, which are smaller and trickier to handle than meat or fish.
• Instead of muddling fruit directly into a drink, you can use it to infuse simple syrups for a more subtle flavor.
• Using a mini-smoke box like this one from Weber, you can smoke herbs, berries, and even a cocktail glass by setting the woodchip-filled box atop your grill and letting your ingredients hang out while you flip burgers.

Grilled Pineapple Margarita

The margarita is essential to America’s canon of summertime drinks, and adding a grilled element makes it that much more festive. Burnished pineapple adds a rich layer of fruitiness while mezcal lends a veil of smoke and spice. Get the recipe >

Seared Apricot-Ginger Cooler

Unlike other stone fruit, apricots stay resilient when ripe and stand up to a quick sear on the grill with aplomb. Once the flesh warms through and its juices bake a bit, the apricot takes on deeper flavors that pair nicely with a spicy bourbon or rye and an equally spicy ginger beer. Get the recipe >

Smoked Lemon-Lime-Ade

This lemonade is rendered smoky-sweet with the juice of grilled lemons and limes and toasted simple syrup, which has a mild caramel flavor that does a lot to complement the grilled fruit. Get the recipe >

Charred Chile Daiquiri

The daiquiri is an adaptable creature, and it welcomes new companions in the form of bitters, infused simple syrups, or salty-sweet rims. This version keeps the classic’s sour formula, but adds a veil of smoky spice lent from charred serrano- and jalapeño-infused sugar syrup. Get the recipe >

Smoky Grapefruit Gin and Tonic

Meant for long afternoons overlooking lakes, porches, and thick novels, gin and tonics are the balm of summer. Add a slice of salt-sprinkled grilled grapefruit, and cut the tonic with soda, and the highball grows not only more aromatically complex, but even more refreshing. Get the recipe >

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Equal parts gin, chartreuse, Maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice, The Last Word cocktail is a foolproof classic that goes down as easily as it is to make. This recipe takes well to scaling: Quadruple it for four, or for a party, make a pitcher for guests to pour over ice. It can also be adapted to individual tastes; for a less sweet result, up the gin to 1¼ ounces.

WATCH: How to Shake a Cocktail

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This smooth and sweet vintage cocktail is a cream-based variation on the vodka and coffee liqueur libation that became known as the Black Russian in the late ’40s. Some credit the White Russian’s resurgence in popularity to 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski, in which the lead character “The Dude” consumes little else.

Get the recipe for Homemade Coffee Liqueur »

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Charleston bartender Fabiana Pinillos created a spicy, passion fruit-flavored version of the mezcalita, the margarita’s smokey mezcal-laced cousin, a bold cocktail made for sipping alongside lively conversation. In fact, it was created for SAVEUR’s inaugural SAVEUR Salon celebrating women founders in food. Tropical passion fruit syrup gets a zing of flavor with Red Clay’s Habanero Hot sauce, and Spicy Peach Hot Honey. Pinillos used Doce Mezcal.

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Canon Félix Kir, a French Résistance hero and later mayor of Dijon, lent his name to this simple wine cocktail traditionally made with the rustic Burgundian variety called aligoté. When Champagne is used instead of white wine, the drink becomes a kir royale. Don’t be tempted to stint on the amount of crème de cassis—Burgundy’s famed blackcurrant liqueur—to yield a faint pink drink; both common and royal iterations should properly have a dark rosy hue.

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The most basic simple syrup recipe combines equal parts sugar and water to make a bartenders’ staple perfect for sweetening everything from cocktails to iced coffee and tea. An essential ingredient in many classic drinks, the neutral syrup can also be infused with herbs, spices, or other seasonings. Find a few variations from our archives here. 

*Note: This basic simple syrup recipe can be adapted to make a thicker and more concentrated “rich simple syrup” by doubling the quantity of sugar.

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The pisco sour was one of the first drinks to be codified during the “Golden Age of Cocktails.” In fact, the recipe emerged as a result of a confluence of factors far from the South American spirit’s birthplace. 

California boasts a history of wine and brandy production dating back to the 17th century, as well as a deep connection to South and Central American territories once controlled by the Spanish Crown. Gold Rush era San Francisco was a hotbed for cocktail culture, by virtue of the glut of unattached men looking for ways to distract themselves from their arduous work in the mining industry. While the Conquistadors invested in California wine production, spirit distillation was much less widespread; for local high rollers who wished to imbibe, high-quality options were slim. 

Pisco—a grape-based distillate whose origins are a topic of debate between Peru and Chile—was suited perfectly to the late 19th century’s emerging “fancy drinks” trend. At turns aromatic and dry, the spirit pairs nicely with various fruits and acids, and was a natural choice for the era’s elevated serves. San Francisco’s Bank Exchange and Billiard Saloon popularized pisco in the 1880s by mixing it with pineapple, lime, and syrup for the enormously popular pisco punch, inspiring imitators throughout the city. Then in the 1920s, the South American liquor garnered its international fame when Victor Vaughn Morris, an American bar owner who’d immigrated to Lima, began serving a pisco-based riff on the whisky sour.  Made luxuriously silky via the addition of egg white (like the Ramos gin fizz popularized in New Orleans shortly before), and highly aromatic courtesy of Angostura bitters, a drink this good is virtually impossible to improve upon, which explains why the recipe hasn’t changed in over a century.

*Note: It is important to point out that Chilean pisco is generally more floral, while Peruvian versions can display more earthy and vegetal notes which I find more suitable for cocktailing. There are four broad styles of Peruvian Pisco: Puro, Aromatico, Acholado, and Mosto Verde. I prefer Acholado for its drier profile, while others may prefer the sweetness of Mosto Verde. The brands Barsol, Porton, and Macchu Pisco will all work nicely in this recipe.

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Various conflicting origin stories surround the classic sidecar recipe, which only adds to the throwback cocktail’s mystery and charm. It’s fairly certain that the bright and citrusy drink is a descendent of the brandy crusta, a groundbreaking 19th century classic that was one of the first to leverage techniques now considered commonplace. It incorporated a liqueur as a sweetener; it juxtaposed that sweetness with bitters; it wielded citrus peel as a means for opening up the olfactories; and it featured a sugared rim. Do these elements sound familiar? The crusta is also a precursor to the daisy cocktail, from which the hugely popular margarita was derived. 

These days, Cognac- and other brandy-based drinks are comparatively rare, but in a way, the sidecar is positioned squarely in its own sort of zeitgeist: The drink was created in the 1920s, when the popularity of rich, brandy-based cocktails was on the wane in favor of trendier gin drinks. With its crisp and refreshing flavor profile, the sidecar bucked expectations set by its sweeter and heavier ancestors, proving the grape-based spirit’s versatility once and for all. 
For best results, be sure to start with fresh citrus. And make your own simple syrup; stored in the fridge, it keeps well for up to a month.

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