Holiday Cocktails Get Dressed Up—With Tea!
Catered work parties. Marathon baking sessions and festive gift exchanges. Aggressive home decorating, one-season-a-year Spotify playlists and turkey—lots and lots of turkey.
The holiday season is upon us. We festoon tables with gourds and colored leaves for the first patch, and then switch to evergreen garlands and red bows for the second. Gravy, mashed potatoes and roast breasts and legs of the bird bookend the two-month stretch of atmosphere for many of us.
Cocktails, too, often get passed around for the sake of conviviality. Even some of us who don’t often sip cocktails savor the season’s delicious drinks, which lean into traditional flavors: pumpkin spice, peppermint, chocolate, apple and plenty more.
Consider tea a valued partner from now until we turn the clock to 2025. It can figure into entree and appetizer recipes. It serves as a sipping balm while we’re rolling rugelach or toiling to nail the seasoning for the stuffing. And it also adds character and depth to cocktails, from punches to cold, ice-packed fizzy drinks to neat whiskey-rich elixirs.
Bartenders often embrace tea for the little touches that make good drinks into grand ones. It’s time for the rest of us to add our favorite plant botanical and beverage into our cocktail-making repertoire!
Holiday Tea Cocktails: Alpine Chai Old Fashioned
One of India’s principal tea gifts to the world, chai, covers a lot of ground during the entire holiday season. The dizzying array of custom blends can complement Halloween with just as much on-point savvy as Thanksgiving, the spice-heavy December holidays and even New Year’s Eve. We can’t think of any other tea that captures the spirit of November and December with as much versatility as chai. And we carry a LOT of custom chai blends at Ku Cha!
This drink is a nod to License No. 1, the superb bar in the Hotel Boulderado. This favorite haunt uses Ku Cha chai in one of its cocktails, called Chai Hard. That’s the photo above—captivating!
We’ll let these pros craft this drink for you. For our recipe, we’ll run with a Chai Old Fashioned, using our bespoke Alpine Chai. The blend includes Keemun Monkey black tea, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg—and boy is it wonderful.
Ingredients:
• 2 oz bourbon or rye whiskey
• 1 oz strong brewed Alpine Chai tea, cooled
• ½ oz simple syrup (adjust to taste)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• Orange peel and cinnamon stick for garnish
Instructions:
1. Brew a strong cup of chai tea, allowing it to cool.
2. In a mixing glass, combine the bourbon, chai tea, simple syrup, and bitters with ice.
3. Stir well and strain into a rocks glass with a large ice cube.
4. Garnish with an orange peel and a cinnamon stick for a warm, aromatic touch.
Holiday Tea Cocktails: Lady Earl Grey & Fig Martini
A long time ago a martini meant one drink: cold gin, a little vermouth and an olive. That was then. During the past 20 years, the concept of the martini expanded dramatically, incorporating just about every flavor combination imaginable. Here’s one we favor—blending gin with fig, lemon juice and the key: Lady Earl Grey tea. We adore all good Earl Grey tea, including all of the styles we carry. Lady Earl Grey adds lavender to the Earl Grey formula, which always includes oil from the bergamot fruit. We cherish the whisper of lavender in Lady Earl Grey, and think it makes a lovely martini. In addition, the incorporation of fig adds velvety and complex sweet notes to the gorgeous drink. Cheers to this one!
Ingredients:
• 1½ oz gin
• 1 oz Earl Grey tea (strongly brewed and cooled)
• ½ oz fig syrup (or muddled fig with ½ oz simple syrup)
• ½ oz fresh lemon juice
• Ice
• Lemon twist and dried fig for garnish
Instructions:
1. Brew Earl Grey tea, then allow it to cool.
2. In a shaker, combine gin, Earl Grey tea, fig syrup, and lemon juice.
3. Shake well with ice until chilled, then strain into a martini glass.
4. Garnish with a lemon twist and a dried fig on the rim for a refined holiday touch.
Holiday Tea Cocktails: Colibri Hibiscus Cranberry Sparkler
Bring Mexico into the holiday season with a tea that honors a classic Mexican tea—colibri. The traditional tea happens to include classic holiday flavors like cinnamon and ginger. To this we add another seasonal standard—cranberry. When mixed with sparkling wine and honey, this beautiful drink tantalizes. It also works quite well without alcohol—just skip the booze, and run with the rest of the ingredients.
Ingredients:
• 1 oz vodka or gin (optional, for a low-ABV version, skip the spirit)
• 1 oz cranberry juice
• 2 oz Colibri tea (strongly brewed and cooled)
• ½ oz honey syrup (1:1 honey and warm water)
• Prosecco or sparkling water, to top
• Fresh cranberries and a sprig of rosemary for garnish
Instructions:
1. Brew hibiscus tea and let it cool.
2. In a shaker, combine vodka or gin, cranberry juice, hibiscus tea, and honey syrup with ice. Shake to chill.
3. Strain into a flute or tall glass and top with Prosecco or sparkling water.
4. Garnish with a few cranberries and a rosemary sprig for a festive pop of color.
