What happens when you combine chai-like ingredients and a tres leches cake? This recipe! (Minus one of the leches 😊.) There is a sweet, caffeinated punch to this drink, almost like that of a liquid dessert, which calls for a slow, intentional sip. This recipe gives White Russian cocktail vibes but makes it millennial.

What if a Paloma and a Radler had a love child? Meet that drink. Isn’t it darling? The former is a combination of agave spirit and grapefruit juice, and the latter is a beer cocktail that typically pairs light-and medium-bodied beers with citrus juice, often lemonade. The center of their Venn diagram is a combination of smoky, savory mezcal and citrus ale.

The Dogfish Head bottling recommended here is practically a Radler on its own—juicy with lots of grapefruit-peel zing, making it a believable stand-in for citrus. This is a drink that backyard barbecues didn’t know they needed.

As an American expat living in London, I’d be remiss not to include a James Bond–inspired cocktail in this book. The Vesper Martini, named after Bond’s love interest, double agent Vesper Lynd, first appeared in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale in 1953.
 

My Casino Royale draws the line at shaking the martini—proper martini drinkers would never. Instead, I stir a premium Konik’s Tail vodka with a quintessential London dry gin, a pair of vermouths for balanced sweetness, a dash of orange bitters, and a dash of florality and citrus notes from a barspoon of the luxurious Italicus Rosolio di Bergamotto aperitif. Embrace your inner bontvivant and raise a glass to Bond as you enjoy this little luxury.

This recipe is a great way to fancy up a bag of salted kettle chips. The cast of fresh, herby, tangy, salty, and creamy characters might seem odd, but they add just the right balance of flavors to plain crunchy chips. It’s perfect for putting out as an appetizer as your friends arrive or during a friendly game of cribbage or cards.

You know when you’re in the height of summer and you’re coming back home after a long day of fun? You can see a bit of haze in the sky from the heat, and you just plop on your couch exhausted but full of bliss? My favorite kind of feeling! I tried to recreate that blissful “just gonna plop on the couch after a hot, fun day” vibe with this drink. It’s a slow sipper, so take your time and enjoy.

This twist on New York City bartender Joaquín Simó’s Naked & Famous stays true to the classic formula, with just two main adjustments. The first is Hibiscus-Infused Mezcal instead of standard mezcal, and the second is Bénédictine to replace the yellow, Chartreuse. The latter is, for all intents and purposes, a like-for-like swap—I just dial back the volume as Bénédictine is a touch sweeter than yellow Chartreuse. The infused mezcal adds tannins to the cocktail, which helps maintain its structure and balance, and it deepens the drink’s reddish-pink hue, adding to its visual appeal. For agave spirit lovers, this is one hell of a welcome drink, and a relatively straight forward one to whip up, at that.

Taste a glass of bona fide rosé and a glass of this cider side by side, and I honestly think you’d be hard-pressed to tell which one was the real deal. This fizzy pink cider is satisfyingly crisp and dry, but with a sweet fruitiness from the strawberries that lingers after each sip. Make it sparkling or still (just leave out the corn sugar at bottling), and serve it well chilled.