“When I have unexpected happy hour guests or guests who unexpectedly stay very late into the night, I’m reminded of the virtues of the freezer door cocktail—a prebatched, prediluted cocktail that happily lives in a bottle in my freezer door indefinitely. I usually make it when I have an empty bourbon bottle (I save them just to make these), but you could also use a new 750-milliliter bottle and just pour off 9. ounces of the whiskey and reserve for another drink. Adding a tiny bit of water to the mix of bourbon, sweet vermouth (or try a split of dry and sweet vermouth), and bitters accounts for the subtle dilution you would normally achieve by shaking or stirring the drink with ice. All you need to do once guests roll in is divide the cocktail evenly among chilled glasses and top each one with a picture-perfect Maraschino cherry.” —Julianna McIntosh from Join Jules
—Food52
From “Pretty Simple Cocktails” Copyright © 2024 by Julianna McIntosh. Photographs copyright © 2024 by Lucianna McIntosh. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/ Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.” —The Editors
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