Mix Up Your Entertaining with Food-Friendly Cocktails
Savour these seasonal cocktail and snack pairings
Treat your palate, and your friends and loved ones, to inventive pairings of food-friendly cocktails and flavour-packed seasonal snacks. After a summer of bubbly toasts, barbecue reds and rosé days, the delights of perfectly chilled cocktails, kissed with the tastes of sunny fruit and fresh herbs, make a welcome change. Using just a few seasonal market ingredients, along with premium spirits, makes crafting original cocktails as simple as shaking and stirring together some inspiration. Start with these bright and tasty drinks, which each contain the just-right amount of bright citrus, juicy fruit and savoury botanicals to pair perfectly with casual, snacky foods. Add a dash of something bubbly, something tart, plus a juicy or fruity element to any of these premium spirits over ice, to make them shine in tall, cool cocktails — ideal for the dog days of summer and to welcome more lingering, warm days to come.
Mix with these premium spirits
Market-fresh, easy cocktail and snack pairings
Limonada
1 1/2 oz Don Julio Blanco Tequila
1 lemon, cut into pieces
1/2 oz agave syrup
Small handful of mint sprigs, divided
1 1/2 oz sparkling water
Add all ingredients except sparkling water and 1 mint sprig to cocktail shaker and muddle until fragrant and juicy. Add ice and shake until thoroughly chilled (around 15 to 30 seconds) and pour into rocks glass. Top with sparkling water and garnish with mint sprig.
Makes 1 drink
Fresh citrus-mint notes in this drink pair with this Grilled Watermelon, Halloumi and Mint Skewers Food & Drink recipe.
Ketel Soda with Strawberry Basil
1-2 strawberries, sliced
2 fresh basil leaves
1 1/2 oz Ketel One Vodka
3 oz club soda
Add strawberry slices and 1 basil leaf to a highball glass and muddle gently. Fill with ice, add vodka and soda and stir gently. Garnish with more strawberry slices and basil leaf.
Makes 1 drink
End a late-summer meal by pairing this drink with Strawberries Jubilee with Vanilla-Rosewater Yogurt and Pistachio Dust, from the Summer 2024 edition of Food & Drink.
BLT
1 1/3 oz Bulleit Bourbon
4 oz tonic water
Wedge of lemon
Combine Bourbon and tonic over ice in a highball glass. Stir gently and garnish with lemon wedge.
Makes 1 drink
A tart whisky highball tames the fire of this Grilled Chicken Wings with Spiced Barbecue Sauce recipe from Food & Drink.
