Often derided as sugar-laden and artificially-flavored, blended drinks have gotten a bad rap with the cocktail crowd over the years. Bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler argues for their place among the classics and offers a 101 on making the perfect blended drink.
Try this little experiment: Walk into your local craft cocktail bar, ask for a blended Margarita and see what sort of look the bartender gives you. Let’s face it, the blender is the most widely detested tool in the bar world, and mostly by bartenders who have never worked a blender station.
But blended cocktails are no different than any other classic cocktail with a rich history: They’ve enjoyed a heyday, seen a resurgence, suffered a dark period and are poised on the brink of another comeback (if you’ve consumed an Aperol Spritz or Negroni slushy lately, you know what I’m talking about).
