Walking into a bar and ordering a bottled cocktail can feel incongruous to the natural order of things. It doesn’t let you lean seductively over the bar and say scotch, neat. And it doesn’t allow for watching a cast of bartenders perform something like well-rehearsed play—there’s no shaking, no stirring, no straining. You go to a bar | Read More

Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean every cocktail from now until April has to be mulled or toddied. Booze is inherently bone warming, and one can only drink so many possets before sugar ossification creeps in. Behold, five drinks that make us want to slip into some long underwear. What does that mean? It means Perfect Manhattans—drier and | Read More

The top cocktail lounges, retooled salons, and neo-speakeasies that are raising the bar on how we drink. In this era of hand-carved ice, house-made bitters, and $50 shots of microbatch bourbon, it’s hard to get anything approaching a bad drink. We’re thrilled about that, but the downside of the cocktail revolution is too many cookie-cutter | Read More

The top 14 cocktail-making secrets bartenders don’t want you to know. But we got the best ones to spill. While the state of the American cocktail is better than ever, you’d think yo need an advanced degree in mixology to decipher the drinks menus at some of the more pretentious lounges. You know, places where | Read More

Barrel-Aged Cocktail Kit: Aging cocktails like the Boulevardier mellows them to a deep deliciousness. This kit from New York’s Tuthilltown Spirits features a charred-oak honeycomb stave for wood-aged flavor. $12.50; tuthilltown.com “We age drinks that have a wine component, such as vermouth or Sherry, because the wine will oxidize a little bit. That brings out a lot of nutty, | Read More

What to eat, drink, and cook in 2013. #14: What Your Bartender is Drinking “It’s weird, it’s black and bitter, it’s minty and strange, and, quite frankly, it tastes like burning,” says Jeffrey Morgenthaler, bar manager at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon. The Italian digestivo Fernet-Branca is the after-work shot of choice among those who | Read More

Just a couple blocks away from Teardrop Lounge in Portland, Clyde Common is tucked into the Ace Hotel, home to flannel and beard sporting locavores who look like they’ve just come back from cutting their own Christmas tree year-round. Head barman and avid cocktail blogger Jeffrey Morgenthaler soothes the Portlandia set with his eminently balanced, seasonally inspired concoctions; his surprise ace in | Read More

Aging cocktails in wood barrels can soften harsh edges and add layers of flavor. Plus, the results make a remarkable holiday gift. Here’s why to get started right now. I usually keep files on the shelf behind my desk. But recently I made room for a few cute little wooden casks filled with cocktails. It | Read More

A guide to stirring, experimenting with and drinking up the leanest, meanest and jazziest of classic cocktails. Scottish Breakfast: The saltiness of the Scotch cuts perfectly through the perfume-y, dessert-sweet Sherry. A cask-strength Speyside Scotch like Glenfarclas 105 works best… From Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Clyde Common, Portland, Ore.

Fruit preserves have always been a reminder during colder months of the previous summer’s bounty, and there’s no quicker or lovelier path to those memories than with a cocktail. [Morgenthaler] combines tequila and black currant jam, mix rum and fig jelly, and, best of all, shake orange marmalade into a whiskey sour where it adds | Read More

Award-winning mixologist and bar manager at Portland, Oregon’s Clyde Common, Jeffrey Morgenthaler likes to get more conceptual with his sherry cocktails. For the Andalusian Buck, he was “riffing on what I thought would be a very popular drink in Spain,” says Morgenthaler. “Most people don’t know this but Spain is one of the biggest gin-drinking | Read More

Try this! 2012 is the year of Italian aperitifs, according to Jeffrey Morgenthaler, bar manager of Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon. “I like to call them European café cocktails,” he says. “They’re light-bodied and low in alcohol. It’s a drink you can have at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and not be stumbling out | Read More

#2: Black Pepper and Grapefruit Soda For a cool crowd, Jeffrey Morgenthaler, bar manager at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon, created this mocktail with black pepper syrup. (Boil 1tbsp black peppercorns with 1 cup water for 5 minutes, remove from heat and stir in 1 cup sugar. Chill and strain before using.) Mix 1 oz | Read More

The steel briefcase arrived inside two other boxes, Russian doll-style. Its combination-lock latches flipped skyward with a gratifying snap. In the briefcase, snug inside custom-shaped foam, lay a device that looked like it was designed by a committee made of Steve Jobs, Q from James Bond lore and a sex therapist. My therapy, however, would be | Read More

We’ve heard about the history of eggnog, but what’s the best recipe for making your own as well as all the equally tasty variations? In one corner: my favorite recipe for eggnog. Cocktail blogger and ace bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s recipe is simple, fairly light in texture and has an intense, eggy flavor tempered with brandy | Read More