Drinks

Holiday Smoke

November 20, 2020 by Jennifer

As you all know when the weather gets cold I switch my liquor gears from gin and vodka to bourbon and brandy. I just think the darker liquors work well during the darker, dreary months of winter. But just because that’s my preference doesn’t mean that’s all I drink. While the gin and vodka may get pushed to the back of the shelf, they don’t disappear. I still pull them down for the occasional mule or martini.

Well, last year I was introduced to Infuse Spirits. A local distillery created by Seth Benhaim, that makes vodka and then infuses it with a variety of different flavors. While they have the plain, classic vodka, they also have a lemon, a mango habanero, and peach as well as several other flavors. All are amazing and don’t taste artificial in any way thanks to the fact that they only use real ingredients for their infusions. How do I know they only use the real thing? The ingredients are actually in each and every bottle. A bottle of lemon vodka has the rind of 1 whole lemon in it. The Mango Habanero has both pieces of mango and a whole little habanero pepper. There are no mysteries or chemicals or wondering why the liquor has a certain color. That color comes from the fruits and spices that are inside and nothing else.  It’s such a wonderful tasting experience, I own a few different bottles.

Because I’m such a fan, I recently joined their team as a Grambassador. That means you’ll be seeing a lot of them on my Instagram since you can’t currently go to bars and pitch their product or do in person tastings. As part of this grambassadorship, Infuse sent me a bottle of their Apple Cinnamon Vodka. Remember how I said I put away the vodka and gin once the weather turns cold? Well, that’s no longer the case thanks to this flavored vodka that’s literally the holidays in a glass. The smell alone makes me want to have a glass in a snow-covered cabin in front of roaring fire. It’s amazing! While this vodka is delicious on its own over ice, I wouldn’t be me, if I didn’t try and create a cocktail with it.

So, I started thinking… what kind of cocktail could I make? I thought a riff on an Old Fashioned was the perfect choice. While a classic Old Fashioned is just made with whiskey, bitters and sugar, there are so many riffs these days, I figured one with vodka, especially this flavored vodka, would be the perfect choice.

Now that I knew what drink I wanted to make, I had to figure out what would blend nicely with it? Cinnamon syrup and a peated whiskey came to mind. While you could go with a nice blended scotch. I went with something a little more subtle: Broken Barrel’s Isle of Peat. Broken Barrel is Benhaim’s other liquor brand. Why not keep it all in the family, right? He used the same process with Broken Barrel as he does with Infuse, but instead of fruits and spices, Benhaim uses broken barrel staves to infuse flavor into his whiskeys. For the Isle of Peat, Benhaim used staves from Islay Scotch barrels for that subtle peat that compliments the Apple Cinnamon in his vodka. But that subtle peatiness wasn’t enough smoke for me.

See, I love a good smoked cocktail. I know smoking cocktails is the hot new thing, but I adore it. I love burning the wood with my torch, the smell of the smoke that wafts off the wood and then adding that wonderful smelling smoke to my cocktails. I didn’t actually burn any wood for this drink though. Instead, I burned a cinnamon stick. I got an incredible cinnamon scent, and by extinguishing the burning cinnamon stick in the cocktail, not only do you get a stunning garnish, you get a wonderful cinnamon smoke that only heightens the drink, making this a great option this holiday season.