Just Add Water

Helpful cocktail tips for your holiday entertaining.

Bar guests are an inquisitive lot. In the darkest hour of my evening, as the espresso martini tickets are piling up, one of my cherished patrons who wouldn’t even think to touch an amaro with a ten foot pole will invariably NEED to know what that bottle was that I just pulled off the shelf, and immediately!!! This pre-holiday weekend, however, I noticed that the usual inane questions were replaced with more substantive inquiries. Private citizens were preparing to probe the arcana of mixology in their own homes, and they sought a bit of tutelage from their friendly neighborhood barmaid. Examining the common thread of these queries, the necessity of elucidating an oft overlooked cocktail ingredient became evident.

That ingredient is… drum roll, please!!… WATER!!! The layman may misguidedly protest, “Well who wants a watered down cocktail?” To which I’d respond that any properly made cocktail is indeed “watered down.” Shaking and stirring don’t just serve to chill your beverage, but also to introduce the appropriate amount of dilution to make a drink feel smooth, balanced, and delicious to your palate at the first sip. One of my regulars asked me this weekend why he can never make his Old Fashioneds taste as good as mine. An Old Fashioned is a pretty unfuckupable combination of whiskey, sugar, and bitters, so I figured the issue lay in his technique. I asked if he stirred the ingredients over ice before serving, and, as I suspected, he did not. Rookie mistake, but fortunately a very easy one to fix with the simple purchase of a mixing glass and spoon! So if you’re planning to impress your holiday guests with some Manhattans or Negronis, please, please, please I beg of you stir them first.

Perhaps you’re expecting a fairly large gathering and the thought of playing bartender all night seems a bit daunting. Batching a pitcher or punch bowl of a cocktail is a great option to efficiently serve a crowd of revelers, but, you guessed it, don’t forget the water. You may be tempted to combine the cocktail ingredients and just add ice to take care of both dilution and chilling, but this method is suboptimal. It is harder to precisely measure the quantity of ice, the first drinks as guests arrive will not yet be adequately diluted, and the drink will eventually warm up once the ice has melted and it sits for hours. My preferred method of serving a batched cocktail is to assemble the ingredients and water in your chosen vessel the morning of the function and then refrigerate. To serve, set out a generously filled ice bucket alongside your libation and encourage guests to pour it over fresh cubes.

But how much water should you add? There’s an old Caribbean adage for rum punch that famously instructs: one of sour, two of sweet, 3 of strong (booze), 4 of weak (water). For the modern palate I think that ratio is a bit off, so I would suggest using 1 part of water for every 3 parts of cocktail ingredients. If you take nothing else from this, remember that!! Thus if you would like to batch a Negroni (a helpful example given it simplistic equal parts recipe) you would add 1 bottle of gin, 1 bottle of your chosen red bitter, 1 bottle of sweet vermouth, and 1 bottle of water. It may seem like a lot, but just trust me. If the vibe is more punch-y and you’re using ingredients like bubbly, tea, or juice you can dial back the water a bit, but I would still always splash a healthy cup or two of H2O in the mix. You’ll thank me later when Aunt Deborah doesn’t need to be carried to her car this year.

I hope if you’re entertaining this week this little blurb finds you in time to help make your celebration spectacular. Remember, just add water :)