Toast to the season with these holiday bourbon cocktails

https://www.themanual.com/food-and-drink/holiday-bourbon-cocktails/



Winter is the season for sitting by the fire, for cozy sweaters and wool mittens, for the festive holiday time — and also for bourbon. This sweet, spicy, fruity take on whiskey is the ideal winter spirit, with its robust and warming flavors that are the ideal match for seasonal tastes like apple cider, sweet cherry, maple syrup, and cranberry. That makes winter the perfect time to try out classic bourbon cocktails like the Old Fashioned, the Paper Plane, the Boulevardier, and more. And, of course, plenty of people like to enjoy their bourbon neat or simply over ice. But if you’re looking to expand your cocktail-making skills and try something new, then you might want to consider some holiday bourbon cocktails as well. This selection of recipes is perfect for the festive season, whether you’re having a quiet Friendsgiving celebration with a few close pals or hosting your entire extended family for Christmas or Hanukkah — or if you even just need a quiet evening to yourself with a tasty drink to enjoy.

These drinks bring a festive air by using ingredients like cream, cherry and fig syrup, cinnamon sticks, and cranberry juice, all of which bring out different aspects of your bourbon. Most of these are shaken (not stirred) cocktails, meaning you’ll combine the ingredients with ice in a shaker tin and shake well to combine, dilute, and chill the drink, but you’ll also find options for a more classic stirred drink (where the ingredients are added to a stirring glass and gently stirred with ice to maintain a classy clear look) and some that involve making your own syrups or heating ingredients on the stove. That makes these recipes a little more involved than your typical spirit plus mixer-style drinks, but putting in some extra effort is well worth it to create complex and compelling flavors and to mark the special festive season as it arrives.




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