LIQUID
Living in New England, no stranger to the biting cold, you would think that heated alcoholic drinks would be an easy sell, but that's not always the case.
Living in New England, no stranger to the biting cold, you would think that heated alcoholic drinks would be an easy sell, but that's not always the case. Considering how many of us you see trudging through the snow with a large iced Dunkin's frozen into our fists, perhaps that's not so surprising after all. I happen to share the aversion, which is why I've gone looking for warm cocktails to break the ice, so to speak.
"I personally think they're just overlooked," says Julie Gibbons of the newly opened 75 on Liberty Wharf. "I don't think a lot of places have menus for them or don't market them well." Or perhaps they just don't have the right setting for them. At her bar, the fire-pit cocktail menu actually lives up to its name. "You'll see people out there with a hot coffee drink or a warm apple cider enjoying the fire and hanging out. It just goes along with the atmosphere to have a nice, warm, toasty drink."
They're trying to look beyond the standard Irish-coffee model with their mulled wine and pear brandy. They begin with a riesling, which they heat, combine with fresh ginger, cloves, and cardamom, and then top with a Pierre Ferrand cognac. "It gives it a cider taste, but it still has a wine feeling," she says. Plus, the riesling harkens to the days when they served mulled wine on the cold city streets of Germany.
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