Affinity Cocktail

If you want homemade buttermilk, this recipe is for you! Learn how from scratch, using only plain milk and one other ingredient.

During his glory days, golfer Arnold Palmer drank a blend of iced tea and lemonade, a drink that became known, aptly, as the Arnold Palmer. This spiked version given to us by author and former Gramercy Tavern managing partner Nick Mautone substitutes citrus-flavored rum and limoncello, an Italian lemon liqueur, for the lemonade. What to buy: If you don’t have citrus-flavored rum, you can use unflavored light rum, add freshly squeezed lemon juice and lime juice as desired.

Shrubs, a.k.a. drinking vinegars, were popular in Colonial America. At their most basic, shrubs are infusions of fruit in vinegar, sweetened to soften the tart edges. This one combines two quintessentially autumnal fruits—apples and cranberries—in a shrub that can be used as the base for various celebratory drinks. Game plan: Use this to make a refreshing, nonalcoholic Cranberry Shrub Spritz. For something stiffer, try a Rum-Cranberry Shrub Cocktail.

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I first tried a version of this cocktail at Audrey Saunders’s Pegu Club in Manhattan. A sip later, I was hooked. If you are a Manhattan Cocktail drinker and want to change things up a bit, try this recipe. Angostura, traditionally used in a Manhattan, is replaced with cynar. What to buy: Cynar is an Italian bitter apéritif made from about 13 herbs and plants, the most predominant of which is artichoke. It can be purchased at most liquor stores or online.

Agua fresca means “fresh water” in Spanish, and that’s exactly what this drink is: a refreshing water-based beverage. Made up of little more than fresh fruit, citrus juice, and water, aguas frescas are the perfect way to cool down when it’s hot outside. Pair it with a Horchata for your Cinco de Mayo menu. What to buy: Look for the ripest melons available in the produce section—the riper the melons, the less sugar you’ll have to add to the recipe.

It's always nice to have a digestive drink to round off the meal. In Italy it is common to drink limoncello, a recipe that lightens the intense lemon peel flavour with some sugar and balances perfectly with a dessert.

A pre-Prohibition cocktail with a kick, the Frisco turns two ingredients into classic cocktail-lounge glamour. Bénédictine D.O.M., an ancient herbal liqueur originally made by monks and infused with a long, secret formula of aromatics, tempers rye whiskey with just the right amount of sweetness and mystery. The lemon-peel garnish adds a subtle blast of freshness. If you add a squeeze of lemon juice, too, this becomes a Frisco Sour.