Holiday party drinks can take many forms: punch bowls, batched cocktails, a bathtub of bubbles, a tray of shots. What unifies them is a festal shared experience for guests to gather around. This year, keep the communal theme, but drop the one-drink-fits-all approach.
“To me, hosting parties is really about making everyone happy,” said Estelle Bossy, the beverage director at Le Rock in New York City. “Rather than tell everyone what I think is delicious, I like to empower people to find their own version of their favorite thing,” she added.
To maintain a through line among different drinks, you need a deeply flavorful base. Making a batch of a single base and placing it on the table, alongside a bucket of ice and a few different spirited and nonalcoholic bottles, lets drinkers choose their own holiday cheers.
One of Ms. Bossy’s favorite bases for holiday drinks is a shrub, and while early versions in the 18th century leaned closer to a concentrated punch — an intense combination of citrus, sugar and either rum or brandy, made in advance — the modern shrub, or drinking vinegar, is more of a sweet-tart, fruit- and vinegar-based syrup.
During the holidays, she often makes cranberry shrub by combining equal weights fresh cranberries, sugar and apple cider vinegar in a food processor. She blends them to a chunky purée and combines that with equal parts filtered water before refrigerating it for 24 hours and straining. Since the shrub has plenty of acid, you don’t need to add fresh citrus to the drinks you make with it. Combine the final shrub with ginger beer or Prosecco.
Another workhorse base is oleo-saccharum, which is classically made by muddling citrus peels with sugar before setting the combination aside overnight. In this flavorful base, the sugar slowly extracts the oils from the peels and the sticky-sweet mixture adds dimension and texture to drinks. “The theme here is that sugar is a great flavor extractor,” Ms. Bossy said.
While oleo-saccharum is often used to build traditional large-format punches, use it instead to create a flavorful base to make this spiced holiday punch, a modern variation served individually rather than from a flowing bowl. The prep work is done by the host in advance so that assembling can happen on demand by drinkers.
“Guests get to play bartender,” Ms. Bossy said. “They get to choose what they’re going to have. You see people making drinks for each other. There’s something very hospitable and communal about it.”
Prepare the drink’s base before the party, then combine the spice-laden slurry with citrus juice the day after it’s made. When you’re ready to serve, tuck a dish towel nearby on the table and, for guests who want to be exact, a handful of jiggers.
Still, the elements and proportions are simple and forgiving enough to eyeball. “There’s the precision that is a cocktail for a restaurant, and then there’s a looseness of having a party,” Ms. Bossy said.
To facilitate easeful drink-making all night long, write or print out the general cocktail recipes. Ms. Bossy also suggests hosts greet as many guests as possible and walk them to the drink table. “Then as more and more people arrive, I let them do the same thing for all the new arrivals,” she said.
In the case of this spiced holiday punch, guests start by choosing if they want to drink alcohol at all. If not, an ounce or so of the base can be combined with soda, tonic water and a few optional dashes of Angostura bitters. (Bitters contain a small amount of alcohol.) The final drink is bright, bubbly and lightly bitter.
If an alcoholic route is preferred, guests can mix that same ounce of base with their chosen spirit, along with bitters, soda water and sparkling wine. The addition of gin leans the drink toward the botanical, while whiskey plays nicely off the warm spices. Whichever route is taken, garnish with a citrus wheel.
For glassware, a mix is ideal: lowballs, antique crystal, teacups, wine glasses or small jars — anything you have in the house. “Not everyone gets the same glass, so people don’t get as confused as to whose glass is whose,” Ms. Bossy said. “Plus, I like that it’s a little bit mixed, and I get to see all of my beautiful things being used.”
This season, for crowd-pleasing drinks that serve every type of drinker, make a flavorful base then open your door — and bar.
