Sometimes simplicity is best. That certainly rings true for our recent top cocktails: a three-ingredient modern classic from Tokyo, a low-proof Spanish aperitif that’s as easy to make as it is to drink and a highball concealing layers of flavor with just two parts. As we emerge from winter, these recipes are ideal to keep in the rotation—there’s no reason to overcomplicate the start of outdoor drinking season. Here are the most popular cocktails of March.
Pantheon
Daisuke Ito, owner of Tokyo’s Land Bar Artisan, created the Pantheon specifically so others could take it and play with it. At a time when invention so often means novel syrups, cordials or distillates and an appliance or two, a three-ingredient, easy-to-replicate formula seems to have struck a chord with its simplicity, making it onto menus as far away as Thailand and Germany in just five years.
Read More →Media Combinación
One of the earliest recorded recipes for the Combinación comes from Pedro Chicote, one of Spain’s most famous bartenders, in his 1927 book, El Bar Americano en España. His formula calls for dry gin and vermouth in equal proportions, plus a small measure of red Curaçao and Angostura bitters. Fast-forward almost a century and Cabrera has reimagined the classic with minor tweaks, calling it the Media Combinación, as the drink is better known in Madrid.
Read More →Kiss the Boys Goodbye
Three years ago, Alessandro “Alex” Pisi took an online class with David Wondrich, where he first heard about the Kiss the Boys Goodbye, a drink dating to the World War II era that was originally published in Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts (1949). Pisi brought the spec from the class to The Wells in Washington, D.C., where he’s the lead bartender. Pisi loves the split base of Cognac and sloe gin, along with the smooth and frothy one-two punch of the simple syrup and egg white. “It’s like laying on a bed with silk sheets, but on top you have a goose-feather duvet.”
Read More →White Mezcal Negroni
The wine-based gentian liqueur used in this recipe in lieu of Suze adds an extra-bitter element that complements the base spirit and blanc vermouth for a drink that has far more depth than its three ingredients would suggest: It’s minerally, herbal and bitter, but not all at once, creating layers of flavor that evolve with each sip.
Read More →Sherry Colada Highball
Low-proof and easy-drinking, the Sherry Colada Highball served upstairs at the bilevel New York City bar Sip & Guzzle is like a Rebujito on a tropical vacation, the sort of unfussy, deeply satisfying drink that works any time of day or night. For the drink’s creator, Steve Schneider, it’s as perfect in a bar setting as it is lounging at home. “It’s what I drink when playing video games,” he says. “I can get a buzz, but still see the bad guys.”
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