What To Drink Now: March Shoulder Season Cocktail Recipes That Are Wonderfully Rich (& Easy!)

How to power up your seasonal happy hours by switching up some magic ingredients. With winter waning in these parts but still very much bearing down on the calendar, I thought you’d enjoy a few simple, easy-to-shake-up cocktail recipes to carry you through the spring shoulder season and toast to March madness. 

After all, there’s lots to celebrate this month: Women’s History Month, The Oscars, World Wildlife Day, Music in Our Schools, St. Patrick’s Day, and more.  Here’s some delicious, rich, garden-to-glass cocktails that will make you a favorite, accomplished mixologist.  

And they are easy to make (Shhhhh ~ no one has to know!) 

From my Art of the Garnish cocktail book is the heart-warming drink as constructed by guest mixologist, Calum O’Flynn bartender at The Botanist at Sloane Square, London.

While you can expand the page to see the full description of this delicious, richly flavored cocktail boasting sweet vermouth and bergamot and sparkling prosecco, here is the recipe: Followed by my tweaked recipe 

Ingredients:

• ¼ oz. vodka

• ½ oz. amaro

• ½ oz. red vermouth ~ I recommend Dolin Rouge ~ it’s made with alpine herbs, plants, and spices

• 1 oz. Earl Grey tea (at room temperature)

• 2 drops of Earl Grey Bitters

• 3 ½ oz. prosecco

Method:

Place all of the ingredients, except for the prosecco, in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled. 

Strain into a coupe and top with prosecco.

Finishing Touches:

Garnish by fashioning an orange peel ~ or lemon or lime ~ flower and then burn the edges with a match or lighter.

Float the flower in the cocktail or rest it on the rim of the glass.

And if you’re swinging past the florist before the party, an actual rose ~ orange or red ~ will also do the trick!

My Deconstructed Earl 

By swapping out a few ingredients in the original recipe found in the Art of the Garnish book, you can create an equally magnificent masterpiece of cocktail. Easy~sneezy, too. 

You sub in Fishers Island Lemonade’s (FIL) Spiked Tea for the Earl Grey and the vodka, amaro. You could add a wee bit of vermouth but it’s not really needed in the mix.  The FIL Spike Tea is artfully blended with ripe lemons ~ similar to a bergamot flavor, vodka, whiskey and sweet tea.  

Just add a few drops of bitters ~ orange bitters are great ~ and top with prosecco.

If you are in the mood for more of a Hot Toddy, skip the prosecco. 

(photo: FIL)

PS. Bronya Shillo, CEO and founder of FIL, the woman who launched the canned cocktail category was my special Ladies Who Lunch Conversations guest last fall.  If you missed it or want to view again, click here.   It is a very inspiring conversation about following your dream, working hard, becoming successful and balancing life and work…

For an added cocktail switch up: alternatively, you can use Italicus Bergamont liquor in the drink. I love everything about this elixir ~ from the bottle to the mix of bergamot’s citrus, lemons, chamomile, lavender, gentian, yellow roses, and Melissa balm. 

You can use the Italicus in place of the recipe’s call for vodka.  

And garnish with either a lime as per the Finishing Touches directions. 

And you can add some sparkle.  Line the coupe glass by rubbing the rim in some simple syrup and then dip in green sugar sparkles. It’s pretty and tasty. 

Cheers to March.  It’s so glamorous, isn’t it?

And so is the opening photo captured by Angie Lambert Photography.