Cool down with a trio of warm-weather cocktails at Shady Lady
With the weather heating up and Midtown Cocktail Week in full swing, cool down with a new iced drink from Shady Lady Saloon, which was recently named one of the 25 best bars in America by Esquire. The bar makes a splash with these three new summer sippers.
Seasonal Punch
Describing it as the quintessential summer beverage, Shady Lady GM and cocktail master Carl Wenger created the cooler using botanical and mandarin vodkas, lemon, simple syrup and water. His secret ingredient: chrysanthemum flowers for an earthy, herbal twist. “It’s a very attractive, easy-to-enjoy drink,” he says. “If I were going to be sitting out in the sun, I’d probably be drinking this.”
Recipe (makes 1 cocktail)
¾ oz. Square One Botanical vodka
¾ oz. Hanson of Sonoma
mandarin vodka
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp chrysanthemum tea flowers
lemon wheel for garnish (optional)
Place a heaping spoonful of chrysanthemum tea flowers inside a mug, steep in hot water for five minutes and strain. Combine all ingredients—including the rehydrated tea flowers—in a cocktail shaker. Fill a tall glass with ice, then pour the ice into the shaker. Gently roll the cocktail back and forth in the shaker—shaking will break the flowers. Pour the cocktail and ice used for mixing back into the glass, top with more ice and a splash of water. Stir and garnish with a lemon wheel.
The Perfect Sunday
This “smash hit of the season” created by Shady Lady’s Satori Dewitt entices the taste buds with Aperol, an Italian aperitif, which adds a little bitterness to balance the otherwise tart and sweet flavors of lemon, sugar and muddled raspberries mixed with gin and sparkling wine. “Using Aperol in a cocktail like The Perfect Sunday is great because you really want to feature bright stuff, but you don’t want to be blown away by the acid,” Wenger says. “We want to be featuring fresh fruit and things, but you don’t want it to be overly sweet.”
Recipe (makes 1 cocktail)
1½ oz. Gordon’s gin
¾ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. Aperol aperitif
sparkling wine for topping
raspberries, orange peel
In a cocktail shaker, muddle 2 raspberries with the simple syrup. Add the remaining ingredients, fill the shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Double strain the drink over ice in a tall glass and top with sparkling wine. Garnish with an orange peel and a raspberry.
The Courage Cooler
This refreshing cocktail is named for its use of thyme—the spiny sprig was once associated with courage in ancient Greece. “This herb really improves the aromatic and gives the drink a little bit more depth than if you were to just make a blackberry sour—you get those extra layers of flavor,” Wenger says of this fruit-infused concoction created by Shady Lady’s Travis Kavanaugh featuring lemon, bourbon, St-Germaine, blackberries, thyme and house-made blackberry-thyme syrup.
Recipe (makes 1 cocktail)
1½ oz. Bulleit Bourbon
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. St-Germain elderberry liqueur
soda water for topping
blackberries, fresh thyme, lemon peel
In a cocktail shaker, muddle 2 blackberries with a sprig of thyme and the simple syrup. Add the remaining ingredients, fill the shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Double-strain the drink over ice in a tall glass and top with soda water to taste. Garnish with a sprig of thyme, lemon peel and blackberry.
