Cocktails With a Twist

By Marilyn Kitzes

Sparkling Negroni

Celebrating its 100th birthday this year, the Negroni has been heralded as the perfect cocktail for 2019. Made from gin, vermouth, and Campari, the Negroni was purportedly invented in Florence in 1919 by a certain Count Camillo Negroni, who asked his bartender to strengthen his favorite cocktail, an Americano, with gin. To celebrate this classic apértif, we created a sous vide Campari infusion that includes a ½ cup dried bitter orange peel that’s mixed with sparkling champagne. Delizioso!

Charcoal Limoncello Spritzer

Activated charcoal is a cool-looking additive that’s worked its way onto the menus of many of today’s hottest bars and restaurants. For this, we created a sous vide limoncello made with 10 organic lemons (along with their peels), sugar, honey, water, and vodka, and mixed it with white wine, sparkling water, and activated charcoal powder. It’s our take on the traditional sunny limoncello spritzer—that’s perfect after the sun goes down.

Sous Vide Gin and Tonic

The classic G&T is one of summer’s go-to cocktails. But long before it became a country club staple, it was imbibed by British officers in the 1820s who added gin to a mix of quinine, sugar, and water (a “tonic” that purportedly warded off malaria). In fact, according to Winston Churchill, “the gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than the doctors in the Empire.” We think our version, with a sous vide tonic syrup—made with the juice and zest of one lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit—is just the elixir for our time.

Long Island Iced Tea

Known as a potent one-and-done drink, this take on the Long Island Iced Tea enjoys an injection of sweet sophistication thanks to honeycomb. Mixing orange zest, bay leaves, and three honeycombs with vanilla vodka, tequila, rum, apricot brandy, and gin—and then giving it the sous vide treatment—this drink might be the best boozy toast to summer yet.