A Weekend of Local Liqueur Cocktails

Little Z associates me with good cocktails. It started when I had an internship in Washington, D.C. over the summer about five years ago, and Little Z invited me to live with her in her studio apartment. It was a bit tight, but we had a ton of fun. Early on in my internship, my manager gave me permission to leave the office after eight or so hours rather than continuing in the office for another hour or two. So I started to use my bonus free time after work to go grocery shopping at the local Harris Teeter and to start preparing dinner. At one point, Little Z and I talked about an arrangement where I would make our dinner and she would make our drinks. However, she also often had after work appointments, so I started making our drinks as well.

Of course, over the past twelve months, I’ve done nothing to tarnish my reputation. When I was at her parents’ house with some of her friends late last December, I brought a set of Mason jar cocktails and mixed some drinks on the fly using what I could find in her parents’ cabinets. A few months later, when we did a girls’ weekend down south to visit the terracotta warriors, I brought a fresh set of Mason jar cocktails to share with everyone. Little Z also challenged me to mix something delightful using the odd assortment of liquors leftover from cleaning out her apartment, and whatever I could find in her friends’ house. Hence the Amaretto Lady Killer was born!

So it was no small wonder that, when Little Z came up to visit me this past weekend, fun cocktails were on the agenda.

Friday

My time with Little Z began on Friday afternoon, when I picked her up at the train station. Naturally, we were both starving, so we wasted no time finding one of my favorite places in the city for a late lunch. Even though the restaurant offered some tiki drinks that sounded pretty amazing, we stuck with water. Little Z was feeling dehydrated from the long train ride, and I had a work teleconference in about an hour.

After doing some shopping in the city, we headed back to the house. And within a few hours, Little Z announced that she was ready for a cocktail. So I pulled the Mason jar of Rose, Cucumber, and Gin base that was leftover from my Summer Solstice Party. The base was a combination of two liqueurs from the local distillery and some good gin that I scaled up from the single serving recipe to fill a pitcher. I evenly divided the leftover base into two separate wine glasses, split a small bottle of tonic water into the glasses, and swirled gently to stir. The drink was lightly sweet, slightly fizzy, and just what Little Z was in the mood for.

Saturday

After croissant class on Saturday morning, Little Z and I went to lunch at my favorite Mediterranean restaurant west of the Capitol. She was feeling cold because the weather was turning, so she ordered a hot toddy. I was feeling adventurous and ordered the daily specialty drink, which was cold chai tea, bourbon, and almond milk served on the rocks. Both were quite good, although I really couldn’t put a finger on what exactly was in mine.

For dinner Saturday night, Little Z and I met Bea and her crew at a nice restaurant two towns over from my house. I had suggested the place because they were participating in the statewide restaurant week with a three course prix fixe dinner. I also knew that they had good food because I had been there when they were participating in the Taste of the Suburbs a month or two earlier. After our entire table was cleared - including the water glasses! - we got the hint that they wanted to turn our table, so I suggested that we go across the parking lot to the coffee shop, where we could continue to chat. Which we did until closing time!

When we got home from dinner and coffee, Little Z announced that her decaf latte was making her too hyper to sleep well, and asked me to make her a drink. For some reason, I was thinking about mixing us a Birch and Bourbon, using one of the bottles of liqueur that I had turned into the local distillery over Memorial Day. Little Z was concerned about the birch liqueur, so I pulled out both the bottle of birch liqueur and the bottle of chai spice liqueur for her to sniff and sip. She liked the chai spice better than the birch, which was much sweeter than she had expected. So Birch and Bourbon went out the window. Instead, I looked up recipes for the chai spice liqueur and found one for a hot toddy made from chai spice liqueur, Irish whiskey, lemon juice, and hot water. Despite my turning the heat on in the house, Little Z was still cold, so the warm beverage strongly appealed to her. And it was a delicious little treat! I substituted bourbon for the Irish whiskey, and skipped the honey and the clove studded orange peel garnish, but none of that seemed to do any damage to the drink.

Sunday

After a decent night’s sleep, I asked Little Z if she was interested in a Bloody Mary with her breakfast. Of course, she was up for it! Again, I used the Serious Eats recipe, with equal parts of gluten free vodka and local cucumber liqueur, which basically made the drink 1:1 liquor to V8. This time the drink turned out on the spicy side: I remembered to add the cayenne pepper and measured in a dash of sriracha because I couldn’t find the regular hot sauce. I did, however, skip the celery seed; I thought it only went on the rim and forgot that last time I just threw it into the glass with the rest of the mess. Despite the extra bit of spiciness, we both agreed that the addition of the sweeter cucumber liqueur nicely balanced out the drink. It is definitely a recipe that I am going to keep in my repertoire.

As a special treat for Little Z, I registered us for a two hour myofascial release yoga workshop early Sunday afternoon. She was so excited about it - and actually took notes so she could do the exercises at home. To me, the myofascial release exercises actually hurt. And I didn’t find the yin yoga practice afterward to be all that relaxing. So my mind started to wander as we did a guided meditation during shavasana. Since I had already introduced Little Z to a number of the local liqueurs over the past two days, I started to think about taking her to the distillery, which was about ten minutes east of the studio. Thinking about how to get from the studio to the distillery reminded me that there was a little pub-like restaurant on the corner of the main street, about two blocks away from the distillery. And that made me want nachos. So when Little Z came out of the class all ebullient about how amazing she felt, I abruptly asked her whether she was interested in a distillery tour, fancy distillery cocktails, and nachos. Fortunately, she was up for it all!

And so we spent late Sunday afternoon at the local liqueur distillery. We took the tour, we tried samples of their entire line, and then I asked Little Z to pick two cocktails off their fall menu. Of course, I gently guided her away from the ones that I could make with the four or five liqueurs that I had at home. Personally, I was hoping that she would pick a cocktail with lavender liqueur and another one with the R&D sage liqueur. Instead she picked the Scarlett Woman, which used chai spice liqueur, and the Fastrak, which used lime liqueur. Even though I had bottles of both liqueurs at home, I couldn’t make either of those cocktails. The first one had beet juice in it and the other had ginger kombucha in it. We each drank about half of the drink in front of us before we switched. I drank about another quarter of the Scarlett Woman before I turned it over to Little Z to finish because it was her preferred of the two. I also let her finish the Fastrak because, as it turns out, I’m not a fan of kombucha. And then we went up the street for nachos!

Monday

Since I had to drive Little Z to the train station on Monday morning and work on Monday afternoon, there were no fun drinks with breakfast. Although, as I was packing Little Z a lunch to take on the train, I noticed the bottle of homemade Irish cream liqueur leftover from the dinner that I hosted for my North Carolina friends earlier in the month. I asked Little Z if she wanted some to take with her to her aunt’s house the following day. After a brief Q&A session about what was in the liqueur, she agreed to take some. She asked me to add it to her lunch bag so she wouldn’t have to find a safe place for it. So I filled an eight ounce Mason jar to the top and placed it in the bottom of her lunch bag. Sure enough, after about two hours in the office, I got a photo text from Little Z on the train: she had broken into the homemade Irish cream liqueur!

The Verdict

Even though Little Z and I had an action-packed weekend, I think our best times together were when we were just hanging out chatting about life - or about nothing at all - late into the evening. And if we had a cocktail - or a cup of coffee - in our hands while chatting, so much the better. It was a lot of fun to introduce Little Z to the odd local liqueurs at my house and at the distillery; she’s so openminded that she’ll try a little bit of anything once. We didn’t have time for her to try a classic Negroni - or even an Aperol Negroni - but there is always next visit!