The 10 Best Cozy Cocktails to Make This Fall
Let's get autumnal.
Chelsea Kyle / Food Styling by Drew Aichele
Fall, more than any other season, seems to invoke visceral, specific sense memories around the food flavors that emerge during this period — baked apples with warming spices, sweet potatoes and candied pecans, tender figs and tart cranberries. It’s harvest season for everything from walnuts and almonds to figs, pears, and pumpkins, and the autumnal yield is rich and abundant.
Related: 11 Warming Drinks to Make This Fall
Naturally, the drinks we favor take these flavor cues as well. The shorter days and longer nights usher in more brown spirits, with spicy whiskeys, brandies, and aged rums taking center stage. Ingredients like coffee, maple syrup, apple cider and bitter walnut liqueur start to sneak into our Whiskey Sours and Margaritas and Old Fashioneds. These are layered, complex cocktails meant to be savored when the world gets a little more cozy.
Here are our favorite fall cocktails to help guide you into cooler, crisper days and cozy, spice-filled nights.
Smoky Mezcal-Fig Sour
This spicy, agave forward cocktail with fig-ginger syrup, smoky mezcal and bright lemon juice from bartender and activist Ashtin Berry has a kick in more ways than one. Make the fig-ginger syrup ahead of time and save the spicy sweet solids to puree as a spread. A garnish of fresh, ground nutmeg make this batched sour cocktail especially autumnal.
Maple-Bourbon Smash
Julia Hartbeck
Bourbon and maple syrup are complementary flavors that are frequently combined in fall cocktails. This fruit-forward Old Fashioned variation comes from Robb Turner, the owner of New York State-based maple syrup brand, Crown Maple. Turner combines bourbon with a muddled orange wheel, freshly squeezed lemon juice and Angostura bitters alongside a Grade A dark amber syrup, which is deeper in color and flavor compared to lighter grades.
Brooklyn Cocktail
Food & Wine / Tim Nusog
This pre-Prohibition Manhattan variation combines a spicy rye whiskey, with dry vermouth, maraschino liqueur, and Amer Picon, a bittersweet French liqueur notoriously difficult to source in the U.S. Substitutions with similar flavor profiles that will hold up in this full-bodied classic are Bigallet China-China Amaro, Amaro Ciociaro, or Ramazzotti.
Alpine Brew
Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Merlyn Miller
This spirit forward and highly caffeinated fall to winter cocktail combines bourbon, with coffee liqueur, maple syrup, cold brew concentrate, and walnut bitters. Serve the intense, bittersweet Alpine Brew over a single clear ice cube with a few coffee beans, for garnish.
Apple Cider Margarita
Chelsea Kyle / Food Styling by Drew Aichele
Give your Margarita an autumnal upgrade with a heavy dose of apple cider and cinnamon spice. Tequila, orange liqueur, Cointreau, fresh lime juice and apple cider makes this a perfect post-apple-picking sipper or Thanksgiving pre-gamer. Rim your Margarita glass with a sugar cinnamon mixture and garnish with a fresh apple slice and cinnamon sticks.
Nocino Sour
Nocino, a walnut liqueur made from unripe nuts and spices like star anise, cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla beans, takes this Cognac-based sour cocktail into cozy weather territory. Lemon juice, simple syrup and Angostura bitters balance out the nutty and floral notes, resulting in a flavor rich cocktail primed for sweater weather.
Pomegranate Tequila Punch
Frederick Hardy II / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Risha Carnes
Pomegranates are ideal fall fruits that work especially well in agave-based cocktails. This punch from Vancouver-based bartender Kaitlyn Stewart, combines blanco tequila and pomegranate and lime juices with ginger tea and maple syrup. The crisp, unaged tequila complements the bright pomegranate juice and the sweet maple syrup lends a warming element. Stewart recommends serving this cocktail in tea cups for a festive flourish.
Vermouth Preparado
Food & Wine / Photo by Brie Goldman / Food Styling by Kelsey Moylan / Prop Styling by Gabriel Greco
Looking for a pre-dinner cocktail that will whet your guest’s appetites without knocking them out? Opt for this traditional Basque Country aperitivo that looks similar to a Negroni but with half the alcohol. Spanish vermouth provides the base, with smaller portions of gin and Campari supplying a sturdy backbone and a bittersweet kick.
Newark Cocktail
Inspired by the Brooklyn cocktail, Jim Meehan and John Deragon created the Newark in 2007 for the fall cocktail menu at the iconic New York City bar PDT. This modified version of the classic swaps rye whiskey for overproof apple brandy, dry vermouth for sweet, and replaces the hard-to-find Amer Picon for the inkier and even more bitter Fernet-Branca.
Champs-Élysées
Food & Wine
This obscure classic is an herbaceous riff on a Sidecar by swapping out orange liqueur for Green Chartreuse. Freshly squeezed lemon juice, simple syrup, and aromatic bitters round out this sour cocktail named after one of the most famous avenues in the world in Paris' 8th arrondissement.
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