Four Peel (Cranberry) Collins
How to spruce up your holiday cocktail
BY: JOSHUA GANDEE
Beverage Director, Watershed Kitchen & Bar
Check this out, I’m going to say something and I just want you to sit with it for a moment…
Just because it’s the holidays, it doesn’t mean you have to drink egg nog.
There, I said it. It’s out there. Some of you are going to be offended by that and will probably stop reading now. I hope you have fun with your hand blender and your recipe that’s so old, it’s from when Presidents of the United States were appearing in cigarette ads. The truth of the matter is, that just because it gets cold and, “don we now our gay apparel,” it doesn’t mean we have to drink milky, frothy, “noggy” cocktails. As the temperatures begin to drop, a nice warm cup of cocoa or a hot toddy sounds nice, but that doesn’t mean they should replace crisp and cool cocktails altogether.
I often throw cocktails into two camps when helping a guest behind the bar decide which direction they want to travel: 1) Bold and Boozy or 2) Shaken and Refreshing. That way you can drink for the weather you have, or for the weather you want. The Four Peel Cranberry Collins allows you to do both. It’s crisp, it’s refreshing, and it’s seasonal. Just like when you are tearing into the turkey and, slightly out of sight, you catch a glimmer of cranberry sauce knowing full well the brightness it’s about to bring to your plate—a little bit of cranberry in a collins plays the same role.
The Four Peel Collins on its own contains Four Peel Gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and soda water. All you have to do to tie into the seasonal appeal of cranberry is add half an ounce of juice into the mix. You will be rewarded with a light pink holiday cooler sure to keep you from sweating in your ugly sweater as you stand directly next to the fireplace while someone asks you what you’ve been up to the past year and you scan your brain trying to think about where you even start answering that question. You can also scale up the recipe to serve from a pitcher, that way you can make your rounds topping off drinks and, whenever you need to hide in the kitchen or by the bar for a minute, just politely tell your guests you’re heading off for a refill.
Good luck out there.
