This recipe illustrates a few aspects of twenty-first-century cocktail culture that have had an effect on this month’s iconic cocktail, namely the rise of Mezcal as a base, the spicy Margarita craze, and the introduction of other fruit as supporting characters in Margarita variations. The use of a shrub also reflects popular methodologies of today’s cocktail culture.

Spirit-forward drinks were stars of the Cocktail Renaissance–and they haven’t strayed much from the formula that was set over 200 years ago. This recipe reflects the resurgence of “old-world” spirits like Cognac and genever as well as the return of rye as a base for cocktails. The bitters in this Old-Fashioned come in the form of amaro, a darling of contemporary American cocktail culture. This drink harkens back to my Al-Pino Old-Fashioned recipe, which I developed in 2018 (original) and 2021 (2.0) respectively.