Like many of the Black culinarians we’re learning about this month, Thomas Downing was not considered a bartender, but a restaurateur who ran an oyster cellar and catering business. But we know he served drinks at his establishment and, as Cobblers were the order of the day, I opted to create one with Madeira and brandy which were en vogue in New York City during Downing’s heyday.

John Dabney was so famous for his Mint Juleps that his obituary claimed that he “concocted more mint juleps than any man in the country.” His were rye-based, piled high with crushed ice and garnished with abandon. One description of a Dabney Julep listed mint, a strawberry, cherry, a slice of pineapple, and a pink rose as garnishes.

For this month’s theme, I took a look at the food menus at Borscht Belt resorts–drink menus are generally more ephemeral or nonexistent and hard to find–and even though the words “melon delight” didn’t appear, I thought they’d fit right in. This drink’s kind of an oddball as far as its construction, but it works and is exceedingly refreshing.

Say what you will about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but the episodes that take place in the Catskills are a feast for the eyes and a window into what these Borscht Belt resorts looked like. Though, as you know, I like my martinis with gin and a ratio of 2:1, I wanted to create a dry martini with a strong herbal quality… and a vodka base. The dill infusion works really well here.

After over two and half years of Al’s Cocktail Club, we’re finally making a Bloody Mary! As a veteran of New York brunch services, I am no stranger to this drink and know how beloved they are. I didn’t want to overcomplicate things and I kind of like the idea that one could build this bloody à la minute at their table with a can of tomato juice and condiments. I used the old Fort Defiance bloody mix recipe as my guide.

One of my favorite scenes in Dirty Dancing is when Baby goes to the party the resort staff are having; she enters awkwardly carrying a watermelon and leaves suddenly kind of able to dance?! This simple vodka sour drinks like a Daiquiri, which is exactly what I want when I’ve worked up a sweat dancing to “Cry to Me” by Solomon Burke.

The Mai Tai didn’t originate in Hawaii, but in the archipelago’s postwar tourism boom, the drink was quickly adopted into its hotel and bar culture. The drink developed into a fruitier, less strictly-defined subgenre unto itself, with orange and pineapple popping up frequently. Our version opts for passionfruit (which I love), layered over my own Banana Mai Tai recipe.

I noticed this description under a Hawaiian Room drink called the Okoolehao Sling–“A zingy sling of gin and juice in a real coconut”–and took it as a prompt. I wanted to create a fruity coconutty flash-blended drink with a gin base and I couldn’t be happier with the results! Though it does appear in tiki drinks, I see coconut as belonging more to the non-tiki tropical canon we’re (mostly) focusing on this month.

The Halekulani–a whiskey-based sour with lemon, orange, pineapple, demerara sugar, grenadine, and bitters–has always intrigued me. Another non-rum tropical drink from Hawaiian hotel history, this one originated at the House Without a Key Lounge at Waikiki’s Halekulani Hotel. I decided to turn this into a stirred, spirit-forward drink–the result is a tropical Improved Cocktail with a nod to all of the original elements, plus our banana mix and a touch of absinthe.

This drink originated at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu and is a prime example of the non-tiki tropical canon. I wanted to improve the recipe while also playing up the pre-WWII orgeat sours that came before it, like the Cameron’s Kick and the Army & Navy. I did so with bitters and an absinthe rinse–the latter touch is reminiscent of the Corpse Reviver No. 2 and the Rattlesnake.

This drink appears in the 1938 book New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em. I chose it to kick off Margarita Month as an example of an early tequila sour. We had this on a classics menu at Gigantic, where Ned King and Kris Kirkland tweaked the spec to create this fantastic, slightly smoky riff on the original. It’s fun to do a tropical presentation with this drink (crushed ice, mint garnish, bitters dashed atop), as it’s akin to an agave-spirit Daiquiri.

The classic spec for a Margarita started firming up in the late 1930s, though not necessarily going by its now-famous name yet. The drink took hold of America in the 1950s on a grand scale and this classic version with orange liqueur served up reflects the drink’s aesthetic at the time. The sugar-salt rim sprang from my fascination with people who order sugar rims on their Margaritas, but trust me on this one–it works!

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.

Invented by Julio Bermejo at Tommy’s Mexican restaurant in San Francisco in 1990, this austere but extremely delicious (and my favorite!) variation on the classic gave the drink the Daiquiri treatment by using a sweetener produced from the same plant as the base spirit–agave. Though stunning with blanco tequila, I love this version even more with reposado. Rocks and salt are advised.

This is one of those great drinks that sprang from the unique mix of ingredients on this month’s supply list. The resulting cocktail is a delightful 2:1 mezcal-and-gin martini with blanc vermouth, saline, optional spicy note, and a touch of honey. Keep a bottle of these in the freezer for when an afternoon outdoor hang turned into an all-evening affair and you suddenly have several thirsty friends at your house.

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.

I developed this stirred cocktail recipe for a class I taught online back in March of 2022. Its flavor profile–smoky, honeyed, and bitter–was inspired by those first grilling sessions of spring. It’s strong enough to stand up to a cool evening but fits in well on a warm day, too.

This recipe is an offshoot of a cobbler I developed in 2022. I love this punch version that I adapted for a vernal equinox dance party at my dear friend Michael’s painting studio. It’s fresh and bright with herbal, vegetal, and tannic notes and plenty of botanicals, too, from the blanc vermouth and gin. And the color can’t be beat!

I got the idea for this odd-but-delightful deconstructed drink from “Cocktail Bill” Boothby’s 1890s book, American Bar-Tender. Though this source comes over forty years after the gold rush began, it’s a testament to how San Francisco remained a locus of cocktail culture and has remained so, though not necessarily continually, to this day. I based this on Boothby’s Dude Cocktail, which is a simple sweet soda or lemon soda laced with lime juice and crème de vanille.

The California gold rush created an incredible demand for all kinds of goods that the Bay area didn’t yet have the infrastructure and stock to provide. Coffee was one such commodity and its price skyrocketed as coffee merchants sought to make big profits off the miners’ newfound wealth. I imagine that the miners would have spiked their expensive coffee with a bit of whiskey and sweetened it with pricey sugar and vanilla, too.