5 Simple Cranberry Cocktails to Make This Holiday Season and Beyond
What's not to love about a sweet, tart drink that also looks festive?
Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Oset Babür-Winter
Cranberries get plenty of play on our dinner tables during the fall and winter months. Whether we're making variations on cranberry sauce, whipping up some cranberry pavlovas, or making a weeknight-friendly pot of cranberry-glazed turkey meatballs, this sweet, tart seasonal mainstay is one of the best ways to get excited about shorter days and chillier temps. We often find ourselves reaching for fresh cranberries to add a festive garnish to big-batch cocktails, like this Sparkling Cranberry-Ginger Punch with Toasted Spices, and prefer cranberry juice when making one of our favorite nonalcoholic seasonal cocktails, the Cherry Red. Here's how to incorporate cranberry juice as well as fresh and frozen cranberries into seasonal cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks.
Sparkling Cranberry-Ginger Punch with Toasted Spices
This low-alcohol punch leans on tart cranberry juice and spicy ginger ale for a big punch of flavor, allowing the booze to take a back seat. Frozen cranberries stand in for a traditional punch ring, keeping this fizzy drink nice and cold. Have an extra bottle of cold sparkling wine on hand for guests to top off their cups.
Cosmopolitan
Matt Taylor-Gross
Typically garnished with a lemon twist or wedge, the Cosmopolitan is a drink for all seasons that feels especially perfect around the November and December holidays, when fresh cranberries are easy to find and make for a perfect additional garnish; the Cosmo also lends itself nicely to a sugar rim and is easy to batch for a large group. If you're seeking out a tart, crisp version, opt for unsweetened cranberry juice, which will underscore the sour profile of citron vodka and lime juice.
Frozmopolitan
Cocktail savant Toby Cecchini is credited with inventing the internationally recognized version of the Cosmopolitan — a drink he codified while bartending at the Odeon. Fruity and citrusy, Cecchini's "froze-mopolitan" (a portmanteau of "Frozen" and "Cosmopolitan'') tastes so much like a delicious fruit punch that you might not notice there's alcohol in it. Serving the drink in well-chilled glasses straight from the freezer helps it stay frozen a little longer.
Cherry Red
Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Oset Babür-Winter
Sweet, tart, and a little spicy, the Cherry Red is sure to become one of your favorite nonalcoholic cocktails for dinner parties, happy hour, and casual sipping at home when you don't feel like adding booze into the mix. When shopping for cranberry juice, be sure to look for 100% real juice as opposed to cranberry juice cocktail, which can add unwanted sugars that throw off the balance in this drink.
Cranberry-Spice Cocktail
© Johnny Valiant
The numerous cranberries in this delicious concoction (including homemade cranberry-anise bitters) perfectly complement the hard cider and the Aperol.
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