Cocktail Secrets: Making Your Signature Drink

1. Introduction: Hi. My name's Ivy Mix. I'm the co-owner and head bartender here at Leyenda in Brooklyn, New York. I also am the co-founder of Speed Rack. which is an all-female bartending competition and a breast cancer charity. I got into this industry when I was about 19. I moved to Guatemala to do some volunteer work and learn some Spanish, and ended up walking into a bar down there and discovering bar culture. I got to realize the community that were in bars. I got to realize the culture and the clashing of culture sometimes, and the blending of cultures other times, and I got to experience the family that can exist in a bar. I ended up racking up a barbell so high over the subsequent month and a half I lived there that I had to work to pay it off, and that is how I started bartending. It is possible to work in this industry and not necessarily go to school for it. There is, in my personal opinion, no accident that the rising cocktail culture in this country was simultaneous with the economic collapse. So, the really interesting thing is that you get all these people from all these different professions that couldn't do their profession who, all of a sudden, are finding a new outlet to be creative, and that's kind of what I want to talk to you guys about today. This class is going to be about how to make a signature cocktail. The purpose of it is going to be how do we go beyond the normal and expand into something that's a little bit more unique both for you and for whoever you're serving and for the world at large. There is a book that's out there called The Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan, and he kind of ingeniously groups together classic cocktails. He says things like, "Have you ever noticed that the Margarita is slightly like a side car?" and you're like, "Huh, that's true." "They both have a base spirit, Tequila and Cognac. They both have Cointreau as their sweetener, and then one has lemon and one has lime, and the recipe is exactly the same." You're like, "Oh, I get it." All of a sudden you start to realize that there's a formula that works, and once you understand it's formula, you can branch out from this formula. So that's what we're really going to focus on today. I'm going to give an example of a cocktail that I've made, the inspiration of which was two separate portions that I want to bring together. In thinking of this, I want to make sure that everyone remembers that the best cocktails are the ones with the best inspiration. It can, again, be something as simple as a spirit you tasted into two things you want to bring together to maybe a memory, your grandmother's Christmas cookies, your Kool-Aid from your lunch box when you're in middle school. There's all these different things you can bring, and the only way you can get there is in your head thinking up unique concepts that can puzzle-piece together to give you the drink that you want, and that's what we're going to give an example of today. 2. Working with Tasting Notes: When you're starting to make your cocktail, I personally find it to be beneficial just to sit down and write it out. You can write it out after tasting a bunch of things, you can write it out after just having an idea, but you want to have a goal and you want to write that out. For me, it was purpose out tequila, and then I knew I wanted to pair Mexico with Spain and I want to do Sherry. Now, I've tasted a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of everything. This is my job. I can in my head think, that'd be really good. That's a good idea. You should try this. The only way you will get there is if you taste a bunch of things. But even if you don't have an incredibly vast knowledge of spirits and all the rest of it, you can probably think of what you want to draw out and then with a little bit of research, find the appropriate thing that will do that for you. So for me, it was the Palo Cortado Sherry. So, what I did is I sat down. I thought of tasting notes. What do I want taste? What bring these two things together? Is there a pairing? What's the link? The Reposado Tequila is a little bit rich. There's caramel. There's a little bit of black pepper. There is a agave. That's the easiest thing. You taste gin, it tastes like a Christmas tree. You taste tequila, it's going to taste like tequila. There is a taste known to that, but we want to get in the nuances of what that is. It's a little bit like honey. So, I put down honey. Also, because of the caramelization in the molasses that happens with the charred barrels if the tequila was aided in, you get tequila with a little bit of molasses. Then we want to tie these things together. So, then I realize I want to use Palo Cortado Sherry. So, what does that taste like? You get a little bit of nuts, a little bit of salinity. You get a richness and also a molasses and a honey. So, I have these things, and these are like the fact this tequila and the fact there's sherry are the big building blocks. These are the puzzle pieces. All these flavor notes are what's going to link them together. Actually make the puzzle work. So for this one, I was like okay, I think this is the tying factor. I need something. I need a bridge to bridge these things together and whatever that bridge is has to go through this molasses. With doing all this, I tried a whole bunch of different things. I tried honey. No. I tried actual caramel. No. I tried all these things and I realized I need a more complex bridge than just that's flavor profiles I may have gotten in both sides. So, I started to think to myself okay, what is molassesy and rich that's not molasses? What's honey like that's not honey? What is another thing that has similar profile notes to this that I can plug in that brings out the main character that I realize is the molasses. Try a little bit of this, a little bit of that, the thing that worked out the best for me was as Black Strap Rum. This bridge, what it did was create a little thing using that molasses as the point of the two other points, as a third point brought in another favorite profile and made it a little bit more rich and that's what tied it together. So, it was really the star of the show. From there I had my base, and from this, I just wanted to take on a few more things for complexity and nuance. I knew I wanted an orange twist. So I have orange oils over here. I needed, somehow to get all of this, Palo Cortado Sherry, there's tequila and there's Black Strap Rum to work together with these orange oils, and how I did that was the Grand Marnier which is an orange Cognac liqueur. Basically, that richness of it pairs well with a sherry and of the tequila and the Black Strap Rum while pairing in those orange oils they're going to lighten it up and have it be not such a one dimensional dark drink experience. This is a stirred, rich, dark drink. When someone asks me or asks someone at my bar what are you in the mood for? They're like I don't know, God. I was sliding off so I came at the beach. I'm not going to give them this drink. If they're like oh I want to think or I want complex sit down and sipping a drink, this is what I'm going to go for. So, you also have to understand your audience. So, I do some Grand Marnier which in the bar base we call grandma. Then for mouth feel just to give a little of that richness, because the rest of it would have- it was a little bit flat, and in order to make it more full and able to actually have the mind and palate connect and you need a little bit more sweetness and richness, we put in some a little bit of sugar, demerara sugar, just to give it body. Literally just to give a body. Then all of this thing ties to this, ties to that, and while it doesn't make a lot of sense, that's how it came together. I think as you're tasting things, the real important thing to do is to make these lists and try to find the different bridges that perhaps are not the most obvious path. Yes, gin tastes like gin. Yes, Mezcal tastes like Mezcal, but all of these things have sub flavors and those are what you want to draw together and that's what's going to make an inappropriate and a successful cocktail. 3. Prepping Your Cocktail: Building a cocktail's first and foremost about balance, and making sure that all the ingredients are working harmoniously together. There's a certain skeletal system that we want to think about and use as a backbone and that's inspiration, but in the end of the day, you can modify and add on and create something new and original. Today, we're going to focus in a little bit more on the creative. Taking this skeletal structure and adding things bit by bit by bit on to make a really great conceptual piece, and also delicious cocktail. The backbone of the drink that I'm making today, because I am a believer that everything from once has come a classic, is probably the Manhattan. I did not start off with this drink thinking, ''I'm going to make a Manhattan-style drink.'' I started off with this drink thinking, ''I really want to make a drink featuring this valley reposado tequila." It's very peppery, a little bit caramely, and I want to tie it to Spain. Mexico and Spain are my two favorite places on earth. The inspiration of the cocktail was to tie those two things together, and that was my starting point. I decided that I wanted to focus in on a sherry, a Palo Cortado Sherry, which in and of itself is a very special sherry. It's kind of the outlier of sherries and tends to be just special. It's a little bit more of a rich sherry, but still has a little bit of funk to it, and that was my starting place. I put some together in the glass and added some bitters, à la Manhattan, and it was horrible. So, I had to think to myself, ''Where do I go from here? How do I bridge these two things together?'' That was the beginning of my skeletal system. This is just one example of how a drink is made. Another good example is I had a bartender here who was just like, ''I want to make a cantaloupe drink,'' and I was like, ''Okay. Easy enough. Make a cantaloupe drink.'' But the questions are, what about the cantaloupe do you want to bring out? What features of cantaloupe do you want to bring out and how are you going to build these building blocks up to support those flavor profiles that you want to make the drink all about? It's not just about cantaloupe, it's about the floralness of cantaloupe, the salinity of cantaloupe, maybe even the color of cantaloupe. Colored cocktails can be a very important thing. He built up this cocktail with the aim of making it about the cantaloupe, but he didn't go and buy Midori, for instance, and add a melon liqueur. He didn't add strawberries, he didn't add all this stuff. He was very creative about the way he went around it to try to get the building blocks to go together where the story was about the cantaloupe, but the history is about the building blocks that make it and that's what sells the drink, that's what makes the drink unique, and that's what makes it special to everyone who has it. He used sherry again, because we love sherry at Landa. He used a fantastic Manzanilla sherry, that brings together the salinity almost of honeydew. Honeydew can be a little bit salty in its sweetness and also a little bit floral. He used a clover honey to bring out the floral notes rather than doing a bunch of Maraschino or something. Just this subtle, subtle honey, I mean, honeydew, honey perhaps. A little obvious but really truly worked out. Then used a lovely Highlands blanco tequila. Highland tequilas tend to have floral notes, they're a little bit more citrusy, a little bit more bright, and he was able to bring it all together. The result being just a delicious cocktail. So, again, I think the key to all of this is is how are you fitting this puzzle piece together and not taking the most obvious route. The goal is really to spread out one flavor here, maybe brighten one here, all with the common goal of creating a very special and complex drink. Without an end goal, you won't have the right place to start from, and use these building blocks to get to that goal with the aim of being complex. So, don't take the obvious path. Use the ingredients that perhaps are not as obvious but have similar tasting notes, to puzzle piece together, to come to the end to gain complexity. That's the way you're going to make an interesting drink and a drink that will be able to show up and compete with any of the drinks on the menus from any of the best bars in the world. 4. Mixing Your Cocktail: I'm going to walk through an example cocktail of how I made one of the most complex, and one of the most popular drinks on my menu, which is the Palo Negro. I started off with the goal of connecting two of my favorite places, one of which being Mexico, the other of which being, Spain. The real starting point for me was a reptile tequila from the valley. Very peppery, a little bit caramelly, a pretty poppy tequila that I want to make with Sherry, because Sherry is from Spain, and that's where I started off. This is where you might be starting off with anything at all, it could be, "I tasted this bourbon I really like, and I liked that, it tasted like, a little bit more funky or maybe a little more peppery," or it could be," I have to make a cocktail for my holiday party of some sort. And I am using inspiration of the cookies my aunt used to make." When you're like, okay, clove, cinnamon, a little bit rich, and you start writing down all these ideas. What are the flavors that I'm really going for? Or in my case, because I knew I had the flavors of this tequila, and I knew I wanted to pair it kind of conceptually with Spain, I did take some notes on both sides, so I said," Okay. Here I have my tequila, here are all these notes. Here I have." I think just based on experience, I think a palo cortado Sherry we'll go very well, and because it's a little red, it's a little bit caramelly you got that tie, and also has a whole bunch of different nuance. Sherry's a great ingredient to work with, because it has many many many tasting notes, and can aid, many many many drinks, because it had a little bit of salinity, it has a little bit of sweetness, it has some nutty flavors, all of these things can really help. Because the more flavor profile you have in an ingredient, the better puzzle piece it can be to aid you in your cocktail making. So, the goal of the string again is to pair Spain and Mexico. The real goal actually was this was supposed to be a Sherry drink. So, one might think if it's supposed to be a Sherry drink, it should have mostly Sherry in it, but, I went the other way around. Accidentally, or perhaps because all things once come from classics, this really does resemble at some point a Manhattan. So, I use two ounces of Reposado tequila, the notes in this are peppery, robust, caramelly because it has that nice aging in a bourbon barrel, and pretty strong. Some tequilas can be very light, and airy, and this is a strong tequila. And my goal was, how do I, as a really strong backbone to build your skeleton off of. So, how do I pick the ingredients to go with this tequila. The second ingredient, which was the goal to pair mine from Spain with Sherry. This Palo Cortado Sherry has awesome notes to it. A little bit saline, a little bit caramel, so that was the real inspiration, Caramel, Caramel, I know those fit together. But then I got a lot of nuance because it's very muddy, you get some almonds, you get some walnuts, and this became something that I wanted to bring out in the tequila. Maybe not the first thing you tasted when you tasted the tequila, but what I really wanted to bring out in it. So I had one ounce of the Palo Cortado Sherry to try to bring these things together. But, just having these two pieces together were not enough, I have a strong skeletal backbone of my tequila. I have a good pair of flavor profiles as a huge flavor profile character in the Sherry, but I need something to bring them together. I tried many things, I was like, "Okay. Like the nuts in the Sherry, let's try to add some walnut like here? No." Tried, oh, I like the salinity, maybe we can do a little bit of slt tincture? No. The purpose of the story being that, there are many, many paths to get to many different drinks, as happened to be the path that I took, but I recommend trying a few. Taking these tasting notes and realizing how you want to get to where you're going to go, because there could be many options, and, at first you don't succeed, and you try again, you can get there. The real bridge to my cocktail to bridge this Sherry and the tequila, is actually rum, which was not at all the first place I would have gone, and it's around that I'm using as a modifier. In cocktail, culture, and recipes, you have the start the show, which is usually your base spirit, then everything else is considered to be a modifier. So, it's called a modifier, because it's modifying the taste of your base spirit, or in my case, bridging two things together. I use half an ounce Black Strap Rum. Black Strap Rum is incredibly Molassesy. It Is like a bull in China shop honestly. While that can be very intimidating as a base spirit, as a modifier, it can be very useful, and the real key in it, is that it's so rich and robust, and Molassesy that tied in those barrel notes, the inside of barrels are charged, molasses. Which is the tequila, the repasado tequila and the pepperyness of that with the Sherry, because I had this nuttyness, and its richness, and this molasses flavor that you really get from the Sherrys. You have this rum that's kind of funky funky and robust, but the flavor profiles of that, one of which is a little nutty, one of which is a little Molassesy, make the whole puzzle piece fits together, and that was my bridge. But I knew I needed some lightness to this. I want it to be a stirred cocktail, but I knew I needed some brightness. So, I knew I wanted to put some sort of twist on top, some oils on top of the drink to brighten it up slightly without adding juice to it. So, I thought okay how can I tie this thing together, because I know I knew this brightness of the oils, how do I tie these things together? The answer was using just a little bit of Grand Marnier. An orange liqueur that's also has its own flavor profiles in it, that actually appeared very well with the orange notes, and floral notes of a tequila, as well as, again, the salinity of the Sherrys. I knew that this drink without a little bit of acid and the brightness of the oils, would become one-dimensional. Even with all this complexity here, it needs something to wake you up when you went into the drink. The nice thing about using a twist, is that, your brain expects something different when you go into the drink. It smells like an orange, it smells fresh, it smells most juicy, you'd take a sip out of it, and it's rich, and it's full, and you have this brain game that can add to a very successful drink. Just general rule of thumb, put a twist on it, and it's probably going to be better. Or just, trick of the trade behavior. So, to tie in the, what I knew I needed to make this drink and not just a dark cloud, but like a little bit more approachable and refreshing. So, I went with Grand Manier, a pretty rich orange cognac liqueur, bringing in some of the old world flavors, kind of old brandy which goes well with sherry, but also the orange I really needed it to bring out the end, I need it to be in the drink, or else it didn't make any sense there. 5. Mastering Presentation: Lastly, it's about what it feels like in your mouth. This mouth feels a very important part of cocktails. This is why we shake certain drinks and we stir other drinks. Why you add soda to some drinks and not to other drinks. It's a real balance of, "Hey, this tastes great." But for some reason, my brain is telling me it's not right in my palate, so how do I just give it a little bit more richness? You can use this in a bunch of ways, usually it's with a sweetener. For me, I used demerara sugar. It's a more rich sugar. It doesn't taste just like nothing but sweet, add a little bit of flavor profile to it. Again, the complexity went very well with the cherry and it helped tie everything together while giving it a little bit more backbone. The tequila with all the other ingredients was missing its background, so this gave that support block and build it back up. Other things that can build a little bit more mouthfeel, a little bit more robustness, things like honey, things like agave nectar, things like cane syrup, things like maple syrup. These are all sweeteners for sure but that's how we give it a little bit more roundness. Without it, it can lie flat and when a cocktail lies flat, even if the ingredients are great, it doesn't taste good in the tongue. So, we need to make sure that it hits the different parts of your tongue on the way back and generally speaking, deaths could be from a sweetener. If you're lucky, you can get that sweetener to aid in your flavor profile well. For me, the demerara sugar, the complexity of that sugar really helped my cocktail. There have been cocktails in the past where all I need, really need is a little bit more volume, I use cane sugar or maybe even just normal simple syrup to give it a little bit more backbone and a little bit more roundness so that the flavor profiles go together. This cocktail is going to be stirred. I won't go into the differences between stirring and shaking but I will give a slight how to. We stir cocktails that don't have citrus in them, and we shake cocktails that do. The reason behind this being that it's all about the mouthfeel. If I shook this drink it's almost like putting a blender into something. You get all these air bubbles, right? The ice is moving back and forth in the shaker, it's creating all these foam and in a citrusy drink, this is delicious, it's like a sparkly lemonade, right? Add some sugar, add some lemon, and shaken up and it's lively like, "Oh this is delicious. " But for a drink like mine, it's really about the silky smoothness and when you store a cocktail deaths the goal. So, there are of course exceptions every rule, there's a general rule of them, if there's no citrus, you stir, and if there is citrus, you shake. I add ice tear shaker. Stirring can be a tricky thing. The whole reason why we're stirring though, is to not integrate as much air into the cocktails. So, if you see someone stirring and they're making lots of noise, and they're churning up there ice, this is not the goal. We want to stir really as silently as possible. Stirring is not necessarily as easy as it looks, but you want to make sure when you're stirring that you are integrating as little air into the cocktail is possible. So, we can tell that because it's quiet. Give it a stir 15, 20, 30 seconds depending on the quality of ice you use. I'm a big fan of going out and buying those silicone trays and making big ice cubes in them. The reason being that you can get maximum chill with minimal dilution. The ice out the automatic thing in your refrigerator is not the right choice. Just because it's hard to integrate all the flavors together with that much water being introduced into your drink, so if you go and you buy the cubes and they come out big like this and you stir with them, the colder it gets the less water you get in your drink and all that work you just did to make the mouthfeel correct isn't gonna go out the window because you're ice isn't good. It's delicious. So equally as important, you didn't just stir this drink to integrate no air to then pour it from six feet above and create all these air bubbles. So, try to pour close integrating as little air as possible. I serve my drinks here at Leyenda in a tiny is it's called a nick ignore glass. We are in the era of the nine ounce martini glass, and that glass is not great for many reasons. One of them being practical, when you have a glass that's this big and all the top heaviness it's going to fall over and it's not good for anybody. The second of which being, no drink tastes good warm. That's another reason why ice is important, you should get ice as big so we chill it. If you have a huge martini glass and he poured nine ounces of whatever in there, it's going to taste pretty bad after about two ounces in warm, not together, are not integrated, everything starts to kind of fall apart, chilling is a very important part making cocktails. So, I serve mine in a small glass. A small Nicanor glass here, with a little side car in the side. If you go antique shopping, which is also a very awesome thing to do and I think the best way to serve cocktails, because if you're doing them at home it's more beautiful, they are cheap, and they are well made and you can go to any yard sale and you can get them. They're all going to be about this size, because back in the day of the three martini lunch, martini were three ounces. The goal is to use a glass that's a little bit smaller. I purposely didn't put this drink on ice, I purposely put it up. This is a decision that's going to be totally up to you. Generally speaking, the cocktails that need a little bit of time to be on ice and really stay cold, are going to be the ones you want to put in the rocks. This one, I found to be better serve up also because at the end of my journey I made the realization that this really is kind of from the family of a Manhattan. So, I want to pay homage to that and put it up. Separating these things side-by-side again, this will say cold for you, you can put into your glass of wine before already chill because this is cold. It just makes it from our pleasurable drinking experience for you and for everybody else. 6. The Finishing Touch: You finish it off with just a little Orange Oil. This brightens it up for your nose. It makes it a little bit counter-intuitive for your brain to figure out and brings in that Grand Marnier which was kind of the final portion of all of the skeletal system that brought the cocktail together. We use little circles here. If you use a big, big, big twist, that bitterness from the oils is really going to stay and integrate into your drink over time that can either be a really good thing or it can be a really bad thing. So just remember that the longer something stays in your glass, the longer it's going to taste like that. For this particular cocktail, I aim fore doing something very, very small. It's also aesthetically pleasing. You have to think about that when you're making a drink. I find that this coming to your table is a little bit more attractive than a huge martini glass with a scraggly orange twists coming off of it because we see and taste with their eyes first and after you've done all this work for your cocktail, you cannot forget to make it beautiful. So garnishing is a really important process of cocktail making. If you've done this whole thing, you've shaken it with the right ice or stirred it with the right ice, you figured out how to make the mouth feel exactly as you want it, you've decided, maybe I should use an ounce of lemon juice instead of three cores of an ounce of lemon juice because it makes it just right for you. The way you present it and how you're using a garnish to accentuate just those last things is very important. For me, I used the orange oils of orange skin. So I just peeled with peeler, a little bit of orange zest. Laid it out, I punched my apple with a cookie cutter because it just makes it beautiful and I think aesthetically pleasing, but you could just use a twist as well, I think it's appropriate for your drink and when you spritz it onto the drink, it releases the oils which are the same oils you have on your hand after you peel an orange. When you smell them, it smells like orange, that's what's going to happen to your drink. But it could be different for you, it could be, you want something else to be on your nose like mint. Mint goes very well for instance, with gin because you have that Juniper. And mint and Juniper tend to go very well together, or maybe it has Absinthe in it because Absinthe and mint also go very well together. You would take your Mint and rather than just putting a little Mint on top, you would hit your Mint on your hand, on something and what that does is it releases the oils which is what you smell and you put that in your glass. So, when you go into it, the first thing you get is the smell and your brain's expecting something and then when you go in and taste the drink, it's going to get something else. It just makes it more complex experience and the garnish should never go without thought. Now that you've read just the liquid, that last thing can be what pushes it over the edge both for your senses and for your aesthetics. If you just give it a taste, the first thing that you get is orange, as I said. Right on your nose you get that orange, and when you put the, if you noticed, I took the twist and I expressed it around the rim of the glass and what that does is that the oils look first thing it hits your mouth, It's the first thing that you smell. Then, when you get into the drink, the best part of a complex drink is you haven't lost your skeleton. I can still pick out the bones, right? Otherwise you just have a muddy drink and that's not a successful drink. So I taste it and the first thing I taste is almost like a salted orange caramel. It's what I taste. I'm like, okay, but if I look into it further I'm I say, "Lindy, oh that's polar kutala Sherry." And I'm like, "Oh, then you have a little bit of black pepper and some Caramel." "Oh, that's a tequila." Then, you have that a little bit more richness and a little bit more orange, and that caramel and that's that Rum that I use and I can pick out the bones. No pun intended or no analogy intended, I guess but you can literally see the structure of how you got there. That's the most of the successful complex cocktails. If you have a bunch of ingredients together at the end of your experience getting there, you cannot pick them out. It means you have a muddied cocktail which is not successful cocktail. You need to think about how you can really let those characters in your show shine. In this cocktail, we had almost two mains, right? We had the Sherry and we had the Tequila. What ended up happening was because all things stem from classics, the Manhattan history came out and we had a heavier poor base spirit than we did of our modifying fortified wine which was the Sherry. So, the star is the Tequila, theoretically. The supporting, number one supporting to make the drink a drink is going to be the polar kutala sherry and the little bridges linking them together. The number one is the black strap from follows a slightly by the Grand Marnier, a little bit of Demerara Sugar and then finalize with a little bit of Orange Oils on top, and that's how you get a clear story line but with all the support bringing them together. It's important that when you go off to make your own cocktails, you have written down who you want to be the star. The whole goal is that you can pick out the players, have them have their role and you can select them at the end of the day. 7. Wrapping Up: So, now, that you understand how this skeletal structure works, I challenge you guys to go out and try to make your cocktails a little more complex and try to make them a little bit more personal. I will say that the more personal you make them, the more luck you will have in the complexity because the goal will be greater. As you're working on this, again, take these ingredients, take your inspiration and build up this structure. You want to have your star of your show, you want to have the building blocks to bring that up, and the number one thing is, you don't want to lose it all at the end of the day. So, you won't be able to bring out the stars of the show, bring up the complexity because complexity without structure is just a muddy mess. It can be difficult. It can be confusing. It can be frustrating. Really the number one way is to taste your way through and once you get those notes and can tie those puzzle pieces together, I'm confident you'll be able to have a complex, structured, and fantastic cocktail. So, I wish you the best of luck and I think you can do it too, so enjoy it. 8. Hungry for More?: