Tag Archive for: suppressor drinks

Travel + Leisure: Atlanta’s Best Spots for Sipping Low-Proof Cocktails

Cocktails made with low-alcohol booze have become increasingly popular, and Atlanta’s at the forefront of the trend. So-called suppressor drinks—the antithesis of ultra- potent “revivers”— swap hard liquor for fortified or sparkling wines, layering them with liqueurs, juices, sodas, and fruit for a complex beverage that won’t have you stumbling home.

Barkeeps around the city have followed Best’s lead, adding a low-proof cocktail or two to their own menus. At Ration & Dram, bartender Andy Minchow’s Suppressor #7— Pommeau de Normandie, Cynar, and sparkling wine—is a perennial favorite, as is Cooks & Soldiers’ La Lorea, a zippy concoction of Casoni 1814, Cocchi Rosa, lemon, honey, and cava. Some choose suppressors because they’re less intimidating than, say, a high-octane martini. But they’re also true drinkers’ drinks, showing what a bartender can do when he doesn’t have the harder stuff to fall back on.

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AJC: Where to drink like the pros during Atlanta Food and Wine Festival

The Atlanta Food and Wine Festival (AFWF) invades Midtown today and runs through June 5. Now in its sixth year, the festival has become one of the city’s premier events, showcasing the South’s finest chefs, wine and spirits producers and artisan food makers.

Atlanta will have its fair share of industry talent at the festival teaching and preaching Southern culinary culture at classes, tasting tents, dinners and even at a temporary vineyard. Where will Atlanta’s cocktail, wine and beer elite drink around town when taking a break from the festival? The city’s star bartenders and beverage experts shared their favorite swilling spots, which means you, too, can drink like a pro.

Cocktails

Ticonderoga Club partners and Atlanta cocktail forefathers Paul Calvert and Greg Best will be back leading sessions on historically-based drinks and ingredients–subjects they love to share with guests at The Club’s bar. When they’re not slinging colonial-style drinks or proselytizing the cocktail masses to their clever imbibes, the boys can be found sipping at some of their favorite bars around town, including Decatur’s Kimball House, The Mercury at Ponce City Market, Kirkwood’s Ration and Dram, Westside’s Little Trouble and Edgewood Avenue’s Noni’s Deli. For post-festival cocktails, you’ll find them tippling at, where else, Empire State South.

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AJC: Bars bring winter cheer with warm cocktails

Winter is coming, Atlanta.

Generally, we prepare for this season the only way Southerners know how: with bread, milk and booze. But, forget the run to the grocery store. Head to bars around town, where you can find everything from wassail to toddies that will light a fire in your belly on a cold day.

Here are five hot mugs of good cheer to help bide the time until our patios and porches wake from their winter slumbers.

Hot buttered rum

A well-made hot buttered rum is surprisingly light, despite using butter and brown sugar. Ration and Dram’s rendition is downright addictive — and charming, served in a dainty gold-rimmed tea cup. The batter is the typical mixture of brown sugar, unsalted butter, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg dissolved in hot water in a preheated mug. But that’s where tradition ends and crafting a cocktail begins. Rather than simply pouring a rich, dark rum into the drink, possibly putting it out of reach of imbibers who are turned off by sweetness, Ration combines the smooth, caramel-forward Jamaican Blackwell rum and Bitter Truth’s pimento dram (allspice berries soaked in rum), which mellows the sugary batter with a hint of bitterness. You may find yourself ordering another, and still another, while you read a book and nibble on the daily popcorn offered at the bar.

Ration and Dram, 130 Arizona Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 678-974-8380

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PUNCH: Suppressor #7. Low Proof Cocktail.

Andy Minchow, Ration & Dram | Atlanta

Ration & Dram’s Andy Minchow tackles the low-proof cocktail in his #7, which sees Pommeau de Normandie punched up by the herbaceous notes of Cynar and the fizz and acidity of sparkling wine—proving that less booze doesn’t mean less complexity.

INGREDIENTS

Serving: 1

  • 1 ounce Pommeau de Normandie
  • 1 ounce Cynar
  • 1 ounce sparkling wine

Garnish: lemon peel

DIRECTIONS
  1. Stir Cynar and Pommeau with ice and strain into a tulip glass.
  2. Top with Sparkling Wine and express and discard a lemon peel over the top of the drink.