Are craft cocktails at their most complicated? Maybe. With a fully stocked bar to work with, bartenders can create (and exhaustively test) finely tuned, complex drinks _ and we're the better for it. Trying to create those same cocktails at home, though, might mean carting home a hundred bucks worth of spirits, such as Cynar or Pernod or creme de violette, that may consequently sit around "aging" from underuse.
"There has never been a time when what we've been drinking in bars has been further from what we're able to make at home," said Maggie Hoffman, author of the 2018 book "The One-Bottle Cocktail." Hoffman, the former drinks editor of the website Serious Eats, challenged some of the country's most talented bartenders to come up with drinks that use one spirit only. Instead of relying on Gran Classico or a Chartreuse float for verve, the drinks in "The One-Bottle Cocktail" instead call for flavors you may already have in your cabinets, or can easily find: Molasses, harissa, fig preserves, hazelnuts.
"(Bartenders) make these complex things with 10 ingredients, and it makes sense for them to do it in a bar. If you're home, you have spices, you have tea, you have honey, so those things make more sense as a purchase," Hoffman said.
This translates to vodka blended with jasmine tea, or tequila with grilled lemons, as with grilled margaritas _ easy to assemble and a super-smooth drink to boot.
