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Today: The punch that will cure your holiday cocktail party fatigue -- and why you should make it for the rest of the year and beyond.
December leans hard on punch like prom leans on Top 40 hits, and if this holiday season is progressing on its rightful course, you’ve had no shortage of booze ladled from large, trough-sized bowls. Punch fatigue is setting in. Just like tracks 1, 2, 9, 11, and 12 on Taylor Swift’s new album, it’s starting to feel played out.
But here’s one that will keep you interested.
Anyone who’s ever thrown a holiday party can attest that it creates a very delicate ecosystem of drinkers. Guests inevitably divide into two very distinct cocktail camps. The first is the group who wants to drink something lighter, something that smacks pleasantly with citrus and doesn’t show off any difficult flavors or bull-headed brashness. Maybe it has bubbles. The second? They want strong, dark, brown, stirred. They want a pit bull in a rocks glass. Like some paragon game of red rover, those in camp 1 hardly ever succeed at passing through the linked arms of those in camp 2. And unless you want to risk having a lame party, you must please them both.
The Bowery Punch in action at our Holiday Market cocktail class.
More: Want to go off-script a little more? Here's how to make any punch, without a recipe.
Since standing behind a bar all night mixing boulevardiers for camp 2 and French 75s for camp 1 is clearly not an option -- as host, it is your Martha Stewart-given right to have just as much fun as your guests -- you should serve them Bowery Punch.
The gin -- think of it as vodka with character -- is where camp 1 and camp 2 will first meet in the middle. The Cappelletti and grapefruit are just bitter enough to head off complaints from camp 2 at the pass. The bitters zip the whole thing up, and keep it from skewing into sugary sweet pop song territory. It’s interesting enough for those who care, and submissive enough for those who just want to get in the holiday spirit. It’s refreshing for everyone involved.
Now shake it off -- it’s the holidays. You have more punch to drink yet.
Serves 6
12 white sugar cubes
8 ounces club soda
6 ounces Tanqueray gin
2 ounces Cappelletti, or other similar bitter apertif
2 ounces grapefruit juice
2 ounces lemon juice
4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
Grapefruit slices for garnish
See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.
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Written by: Kenzi Wilbur
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