As you know, punch is one of my favorite things to make and this one takes inspiration from a couple of nineteenth-century recipes that are lovely fruit medleys! I have always wanted to develop a recipe inspired by Punch à la Romaine for many years and, thus I have taken it as my main source recipe, especially the whipped meringue topping!

It's no surprise that brandies have often been used in cocktails royale and these two drinks are excellent examples of the form. They have the same basic underlying concept: a champagne cocktail with absinthe and bitters and a bit of brandy (apple for the Deauville, grape for the Casino). I also give the option here of using pineapple syrup, which is a nod to the 1925 drink, Train Bleu, as well as Harry Johnson's Gilded-Age Saratoga spec.

I knew I really wanted to have a gin drink in the mix for our Parisian Cocktails Royale theme, and I found this one in a lesser known book called Recette des Cocktails pour 1929 by E. Milhorat and J. Alimbau. Its combination of London dry gin and cherry liqueur, plus Angostura bitters, makes for a spiced fruit-and-pine base upon which to layer dry, bubbly wine. It’s my favorite this month!

The I.B.F. Pick-Me-Up comes from Harry MacElhone’s book Barflies and Cocktails (1927). Its base resembles an Improved Cocktail of sorts, with Cognac as the main spirit and layers of orange, menthol, and eucalyptus from the combination of Curaçao and Fernet-Branca. I chose to put this one over a big ice cube as the base is quite strong—but very delicious.

Something I love about looking at Paris in the ‘20s and ‘30s is the parallels with Italian aperitivo culture. So when I found the Alfonso in Harry’s ABCs of Mixing Drinks, I took it in an aperitivo direction, choosing to style it as an early Negroni Sbagliato-type drink. The combination of rouge quinquina and now-defunct Secrestat Bitter looked too close for me to resist!

This is an exceedingly refreshing beer cocktail that’s absolutely perfect for summer. I took inspiration from several templates: the Paloma (tequila, lime, grapefruit, sugar, soda), Radlers (beer, grapefruit), the Spaghett (domestic lager, Aperol, lemon), and the Michelada (Mexican lager, salt, lime, spice sometimes tomato juice, Clamato and other ingredients).

This is a catch-all term for a group of amaro that is grouped in my mind! They all feature an unchallenging bittersweet profile and have these soda fountain-esque flavors that reflect their long-ago past as patent medicines. I have chosen three examples that are easy to find and make for good starter amari.

Ernest Hemingway is associated with a fair few drinks, but this is one that he invented, or at least was the first to publish a recipe for. The simple mix of absinthe and Champagne was featured in a 1935 book of writers’ favorite cocktails called So Red the Nose, or, Breath in the Afternoon. Many modern variations add a little simple syrup, which I like for texture here; bitters and a lemon twist push it pleasantly into Champagne Cocktail territory.

With just a few supplies, you can set your guests up to enjoy a variety of aperitivo classics. Batching the base of rabarbaro amaro and blanc vermouth makes it easy to make a Milano-Torino, Americano, or Negroni Sbagliato with a decidedly springy vibe. After the party, if you’ve got leftover batched base, mix two parts base with 1 part gin or Mezcal for a nice Negroni variation.

The very first cocktail recipe in William Schmidt’s sprawling entertaining and drinks manual is the Jack Frost Whiskey Sour. It calls for “apple whiskey,” cream, a whole egg, sugar, lemon, and soda. In actuality, it’s a Fizz and our version plays that up and splits the spirit and sweetener elements across a few different spirits and liqueurs. Juniper, apple, fig, and honey come through in this creamy, Flip-adjacent Fizz.

The Stone Fence is a much-mythologized olde Yankee drink consisting of aged rum and hard cider. Supposedly Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys drank a ton of Stone Fences before storming Ticonderoga. In this simple mix of ingredients, I saw the opportunity to play with a bit of anachronism and apply a nineteenth-century template (the Collins) to this eighteenth-century classic.

Ever since I wrote a piece for PUNCH about the Roffignac, I’ve wanted to develop my own spec. Though we’re taking a bit of a shortcut with this method and not making our own shrub, the à la minute “shrub” works and I love the way the plum and Cognac go together. A great drink for September that straddles summer and fall.

The Bellini was invented in the years just after World War II at Harry’s Bar in Venice. The simple mixture of peach puree and prosecco is typically served in short glasses bearing the bar’s logo. Our version is a little more complex because of our Campari- and peach liqueur-spiked puree and the use of Cocchi Americano and soda in place of prosecco–a move I took from another classic Italian drink, the Bicicletta.

In developing a drink appropriate for ringing in the new year, I looked to the legacy of “Cups,” a genre of drink popular in the nineteenth century. Typically a mix of wine and/or spirits, fruit, sweetener in the form of sugar and/or liqueur, and carbonation, these cocktails are often presented with opulent garnish. Ours is inspired specifically by Claret Cups, which were a popular expression of this template built on French red wine (traditionally from Bordeaux).

I’m doing a yearlong series for Keap, a maker of fine candles based in Kingston, NY. It’s been a really fun project to work on, especially because they let me design the drinks around the Labors of the Month, a cycle common in medieval art that I’ve long been obsessed with. Here’s the recipe for January 2022, a stirred Cognac and amaro cocktail topped with Champagne.

Here’s a nice little aperitif with multiple inspirations behind it. It’s an ode to the apple brandy highballs from The Savoy Cocktail Book, but also pays tribute to the Norman tradition of Calva-Tonic. We double up the quinine in this version, which gets its tannic baseline from rouge quinquina.

Last year I had the good fortune of connecting with Zac Overman, who sent me a copy of Cocktails a L’Américaine, a compilation of L’Oursin’s house cocktails. The book is full of complex drinks rooted in American mixology that utilize the best of French and alpine spirits, wines, and liqueurs. But because of our August theme, I chose to feature this elegant bitter highball, which showcases the style of French drinking we’re celebrating this month. It’s named after the Corsican cheesemonger who supplies L’Oursin.

My friend Rebekah Peppler has a talent for transporting her readers to France. Her books, Apéritif and À Table give us a window into her life in Paris and highlight traditional French food and beverage. When I was perusing her books for this month’s programming, I noticed that her collection of Kir variations is like a mini road trip through France, from Normandy and Brittany to Burgundy, Paris, Champagne, and beyond. So, grab a bottle of crème de cassis, choose your variation(s), and be transported!

This one’s basically a sparkling sling with a little pop of acidity from the cordial. The combination of cherries and baking spices reminds me of eating cherry cobbler (or pie!) outside toward the end of a long summer’s evening.

Tom Bullock features quite a few fizzy cocktails in his book, but I particularly love the Twilight Cocktail, which is an unsweetened mixture of Bourbon, Italian vermouth, lime and seltzer. I take the edge off the sour notes with our cordial, sink the vermouth to the bottom, and insist on Club soda over seltzer here—the hint of salt is just what this drink needs.