It’s hot out there! We’re in the thick of it now. Wherever in the Northern Hemisphere you may read this, it’s likely that there’s no escape from the sweltering summer weather.
You know what helps? Quenching your thirst. Yes, hydration is vital, but we certainly don’t need to retire our favorite spirits just because of the heat. Instead, it helps to focus on drinks with lighter profiles, plenty of effervescence, and less alcohol.
Summer’s a great time to play with cocktails—such as the reverse martini, where the dry vermouth takes the lead and the base of gin or vodka becomes the background singer. Lower-ABV cocktail ingredients are ideal for cookouts and other daytime soirees, so partygoers can enjoy multiple drinks without getting too intoxicated too quickly. And while frozen cocktails may be all the rage for poolside, seaside, or lakeside fun, they’re also loaded with sugar that can obscure other flavors.
So, instead, let’s look at some interesting, easy-to-make, lower-ABV, refreshing cocktails to help each other beat the heat.
The Role Reversal
For the reverse martini, we flip the measurements, using only a half-ounce of gin or vodka instead of the usual 2.5 ounces, resulting in less total alcohol. Because the vermouth is the star of the show, you’ll want top quality. Thank goodness we have more and more American vermouth coming to the market.
Vermouth, an aromatized wine, comes in many styles and flavors. Whether sweet, dry, or rosé, you can drink vermouth of all types neat and chilled. French vermouth has its own distinct profile, different from Italian vermouth; likewise, American vermouth also is unique. A fine example is Rockwell Vermouth out of California, with its distinctive profile that evokes the state’s grape-growing, winemaking terroir. They describe their Classic Sweet Vermouth as “bursting with fig, caramel, and citrus with a perfect balance of bitterness.”
The gin here comes from Astraea Spirits in Seattle. Master distiller and Heriot-Watt graduate Danielle Leavell is exceptionally creative in the flavors she creates in her gin offerings. Astraea Meadow is full of floral notes such as honeysuckle, with a slightly sweet and earthy flavor of chamomile and bursts of citrus. It’s a perfect companion to the vermouth.
A fun aspect of working with lower-ABV cocktails is that you can layer flavors differently from the way you would in stronger ones. For a summertime martini-esque cocktail, layer the flavors to hit the palate on as many points as possible, with refreshing notes and plenty of effervescence. To accentuate some of the subtler elements in the spirit, use a tea blend to uplift the nuances. A gentle blend with chamomile, lemon verbena, and orange blossom won’t overshadow the spirit’s flavors.
Both Rockwell’s and Astraea’s spirits are available online. Alternatively, look for a craft vermouth and a botanical gin that offer bright flavors.
Summer Nights
- 2 oz Rockwell Sweet Vermouth
- ½ oz Astraea Meadow Gin
- ½ oz herbal tea blend, chilled
- 1 splash Fentemans Pink Grapefruit Tonic Water
Add all ingredients except the tonic water to a mixing glass with cubed ice. Stir well and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Top with a splash of tonic and garnish with a fresh lemon peel expressed over the drink.
Lean into Modifiers
In a cocktail, modifiers are basically anything besides the base spirit. They can be alcoholic or not. Not all alcoholic modifiers are low in ABV, so be sure to check your bottles first if you want something lower-proof. Making good use of modifiers is pretty much the entire approach for making lighter, more refreshing cocktails to beat the heat.
One notable new spirit is Aradia from As Above, So Below Distillery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Caley Shoemaker, formerly of Denver’s Stranahan’s and Hangar 1 Vodka, leads the way at As Above, So Below, infusing her own creativity into spirits by experimenting with botanicals and creating unexpected profiles.
Shoemaker says that when she set out to make Aradia, an aperitivo liqueur, she knew she wanted to create a bitter ruby spirit. She wanted a unique bitter liqueur with a desert-inspired twist, incorporating sage and smoke for a truly distinct flavor. As a bonus, it’s only 24 percent ABV, leaving us some room to play. Meanwhile, the pineapple in this cocktail brings both sweetness and acidity to accompany the prosecco.
If you can’t find Aradia or have it shipped to you, choose a well-crafted aperitivo that’s light on sweetness.
Desert Queen
- 1.5 oz Aradia Aperitivo
- ½ oz Roasted Pineapple and Thyme Syrup (below)
- 1 oz chilled prosecco
Add Aradia and syrup to a mixing glass with cubed ice, stir well, then strain into a cocktail glass. Top with chilled prosecco. Garnish with a fire-roasted pineapple chunk.
Roasted Pineapple and Thyme Syrup
To accentuate the flavor of the Aradia, we want to keep the hints of smoke—think more barbecue char than acrid smoke—yet the smokiness shouldn’t take over, or it could hinder the refreshing, cooling profile. To roast the pineapple, skewer some chunks, pop them on the grill, and get them nice and charred. This will also caramelize their sugars and add a little more sweetness to the syrup without making it heavier. If you use frozen pineapple chunks, be sure to thaw and dry them out before grilling.
- 5–6 sprigs fresh thyme
- 5 roasted pineapple chunks, macerated
- 1½ cup water
- ½ cup of honey
In a warm saucepan, add the thyme and move it around to the bottom of the pan until you can smell it. Immediately add the macerated pineapple and water, stir well, and add the honey. Continue to stir until the honey has dissolved. With a fine-mesh strainer, strain out the thyme and any leftover pineapple pieces. Allow the syrup to cool and store it in a glass jar in your fridge.
Herbs for the Win!
Herbs can be wonderful in cocktails, and this time of the year they’re growing in abundance—a great opportunity to use them fresh or to dry and store them for later use. I designed this next cocktail to go with one of my favorite summer dishes, light yet satisfying—a traditional Greek (or horiatiki) salad. My grandmother’s recipe includes chunked cucumber, tomatoes, onions, olives, and feta cheese, dressed with fresh dill, thyme, mint, oregano, rosemary, and fennel fronds, with lemon, garlic salt, and extra-virgin olive oil. It’s that combination of herbs that makes it so darn delicious. No lettuce and, for her, no vinegar.
To pair with that salad, the cocktail needs to be herbal, earthy, and not too bold in flavor. Sticking with a light and refreshing profile, we’ll once again reach for a clear spirit. Sugarfield Spirits out of Gonzales, Louisiana, makes wine, cider, and spirits, including a butterfly pea flower vodka. They have a wide selection of small-batch, experimental, and standard offerings of gin, rum, vodka, and liqueurs using locally sourced ingredients.
The vodka’s subtle flavor lets the cocktail’s herbaceousness shine without being overpowered by the earthy overtones of the pea flower. It offers the benefit of the color with a very light profile. Because the salad doesn’t contain vinegar, it’s the perfect opportunity for a juxtaposition. To create that refreshing, herbaceous flavor, throw the whole “kitchen sink” of herbs into this cocktail. However, to be efficient, you can use the same herbs as in the salad, along with basil and rosemary.
Using vinegar in cocktails isn’t unusual. Shrubs—typically made by combining fruit, sugar, and vinegar with liquor—have been around for a very long time (with and without the liquor). Here, vinegar replaces citrus juice in the cocktail. Acetic acid is roughly three times more intense than its equivalent in citric acid, so it’s important to have the right measurements when working with vinegar in cocktails. About the vinegar in this recipe: American Vinegar Works’ small-batch vinegars are special and arguably deserve their own cocktail book. This cocktail features their Better Than Champagne Chardonnay Wine Vinegar—but their Tarragon Wine Vinegar is amazing, too. And if you see a bottle of the Ramp Wine Vinegar, grab it!
Sticking with the low-ABV approach, I reach for an amaro from Fast Penny Spirits in Seattle: Their Amaricano Bianca offers flavors of candied lemon, apricot, and dandelion. The dandelion is key. My grandmother used a lot of dandelions in her cooking, and she would tell me stories about walking the paths near her home in Greece and grabbing wild dandelions, oregano, and onions. She claimed that they grew wild everywhere.
Bubbles are also a good fit here. You can skip the bubbles and still love this drink—but on super-hot days and nights, the bubbles just seem to lighten things up and add a little magic. Besides being widely available, Topo Chico is a good option because of its weight and the extra earthiness that the seltzer’s minerals bring to the drink. The tangerine flavor, meanwhile, is not overpowering. The seltzer adds no extra sweetness, just a kiss of flavor that high fives with the amaro without knocking out the rest of the flavors.
Artemis’s Crown (pictured at top)
- 1 oz Sugarfield Butterfly Pea Flower Vodka
- 1 oz Fast Penny Amaricano Bianca
- 1 oz Lite Herb Syrup (below)
- ⅔ oz American Vinegar Works Chardonnay White Wine Vinegar
- Topo Chico Tangerine Seltzer
Add the first four ingredients to a mixing glass with cubed ice. Stir well and strain into a short glass over ice. Top with seltzer and garnish with herbs.
Lite Herb Syrup
I chose agave syrup because it has a more assertive sweetness than honey and brings a bit of fruity sweetness to the mix as well. It is a great complement to the herbs and the vinegar.
- 5–6 sprigs various herbs
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup agave syrup
Add five or six sprigs of herbs to a warm saucepan, moving them around with a spoon until they become aromatic. Add the water and stir well. Add the agave syrup and stir until the agave has dissolved into the liquid.
Create Your Own Cool Riffs
It’s hot out, but it won’t last forever. Use these recipes as jumping-off points for building your own refreshing, low-ABV cocktails that can deliver complex flavors and add interest, whether sipped alone or with light summer fare. Or, have fun reversing cocktail recipes such as the martini, Manhattan, or negroni. Focus on what’s growing around you and experiment with herbs and how herbal flavors add complexity to spirits.
Most importantly, reach beyond the usual corporate staples on liquor-store shelves and find out what artisans are making across the country and in your own backyard.