Theater people will know about the superstition around saying the title of a certain Shakespearian tragedy set in Scotland. Scotch gets along very well with honey, ginger and floral flavors. Add a touch of smokiness and this hot toddy riff really shines.

In my research on drinks with links to the theater, I found the “Up in Mabel’s Room” cocktail named for the play (and silent film, and later, talkie) of the same name. A 1919 production staged at the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre starred Hazel Dawn in the title role. She had left her Mormon family in Utah for the bright lights of Broadway when she was young.

Keeping the equal parts structure of a classic Negroni, this version reduces the pour per ingredient and adds a fourth spirit. The addition of French brandy provides a counterpoint to the gin, which amplifies its pine notes, which are further bolstered by the rosemary-infused Campari.

Combining the traditions of espresso con panna ("with cream") and caffé corretto, this after-dinner drink offers both a digestif effect from the French brandy while also acting as a dessert.

This unusual drink is essentially a reverse Martini that swaps dry vermouth for Riesling, and is then poured over a frozen dome (or cube) of citrus-Campari granita. I named it for a well-turned-out waiter who I envision skiing up to perform a tableside service of the drink for your Alpine après-ski.

The Americano began as a fizzy version of the elemental Milano-Torino, which mixes Campari (from Milan) with sweet vermouth (from Torino, or Turin). It got its name from the American tourists and expats who took to it with enthusiasm, especially during Prohibition.

This punch royale is named for the beachside retreat in Brighton commissioned by George, the spoiled young Prince of Wales. Based on the prince’s preferred drink, Regent’s Punch, this one balances tropical rum with green tea and lemon, all topped off with Champagne.

This punch was loosely inspired by one Charles Dickens described in a letter to a friend back in 1847. The original involves fire and has slightly different ingredients, but I like the vaguely tropical thing this version has going and like to imagine Ebenezer Scrooge drinking it to celebrate his newfound love of Christmas.

Wassail is a very old beverage originally tied to the blessing of the new year’s apple harvest. Here, we’ve reduced the drink to just a few ingredients, but capturing the spirit of the thing quite well, I think.

This drink translates a famous hot port-and-claret classic into a pared-down single serving that’s stirred and chilled. The Bishop appeared in Oxford Nightcaps in 1827, by which time it was already an institution; Scrooge also mentions it to Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol.

This is third in my Lords of Misrule series: the Abbot of Unreason, which the Scottish title for the Lord of Misrule. I’m very interested in a couple of aspects of this drink as broader themes in cocktail history and drink development. 1. Fizzy drinks that have a stirred, rather than shaken, base; a subgenre for which it’s far less easy to find examples in the Olde Books 2. How we can take frequently-used flavor combinations (orange and chocolate, banana-nut, apple and cinnamon, etc.) and use them as subtle underpinnings for complex cocktails.

“Capitaine of Mischeefe” was another term for the Lord of Misrule, who presided over festivities from Christmas Day through Twelfth Night, and sometimes all the way through Candlemas (in early February). This is the second in my Lords of Misrule series: a punch that tells the story of the expansion of products due to colonization by European nations that occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries.

This was the eponymous cocktail from my Lords of Misrule series (December 2020). It celebrates old-fashioned flavors of the season and, by extension, references the late medieval / early modern English and Scottish Christmas traditions. This batch recipe is meant to be divided into small bottles and adorned with little tags, or to be mixed and kept on your bar so that anyone who comes into your home during the holiday season may partake in a festive cocktail.

This Manhattan variant is inspired by Harry Johnson’s Manhattan from the 1900 edition of his book. The original features the addition of Curaçao or absinthe, so I plugged crème de cacao into that slot, which gives the cocktail a luscious texture. I’ve stuck with Johnson’s choice of garnish, a simple expressed lemon twist, which plays off the deep base notes of the chocolate and quinquina.

This cocktail is based on the Commodore No. 2 from The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book, a Sour comprised of bourbon, crème de cacao, lemon and grenadine. We kept the general makeup of the cocktail, choosing rye over bourbon, lime over lemon, and demerara syrup for the grenadine. A very good variation, I think.

Based on two great drinks of the early twentieth century ― the Elk's (Club) Fizz from the Hoffman House book and the Chicago Fizz, which made its way to the Waldorf-Astoria Bar sometime before Prohibition. In both, the basic fizz template is at play, with the great addition of some aromatized, fortified wine working in concert with aged spirit, citrus, sugar, egg white and soda.

A riff on the Fox River Toddy from the Hoffman House bartender guide (1905). This cold-weather sipper is perfect for November, presaging the holidays with flavors of rich chocolate, malt and nutmeg.

This imagined Julep is one I think could have existed in the 1860s in New England, where October brings Concord grapes, and sage and apples are abundant.

Adapted from Jerry Thomas’s 1862 Fancy Brandy Cocktail recipe, this variation on an Old-Fashioned puts boiled cider in the role of sweetener, which lends a certain dimension to the whole.

Even back in the 1860s, not all drinks were simply iterations on the major templates --- there were one-offs, too. This liqueur-laced sour is inspired by a Jerry Thomas original called the Knickerbocker, wherein we swap out rum and raspberry syrup in favor of autumnal apple brandy and Concord grenadine.