How to Make Layered Cocktails and Drink the Rainbow

Al Sotack
·7 min read

Photo by Elizabeth Coetzee, Food styling by Rebecca Jurkevich

Bartenders pride themselves on the ability to incorporate multiple ingredients into seamless, singular concoctions—drinks that are greater than the sum of their parts. Blending flavors, both complementary and disparate, is so fundamental to making cocktails that it puts the “mix” into the word “mixologist.” When it works, those individual spirits, liqueurs, and fortified wines get so entangled that they become hard to distinguish. Well, usually.

There exists a unique subset of cocktails that depends on keeping ingredients distinct: the layered drink. Sometimes a less-dense liquid is poured carefully so that it sits on top of an otherwise normal drink—perhaps you’ve seen the iconic New York sour, where red wine “floats” at the top of a relatively standard whiskey sour. Other times, these drinks are displays of dexterity and skill, where nothing is shaken or mixed, and the glass is filled with layer after layer of cautiously poured liquid, left to sit unmingled. It’s like a magic trick. And it all comes down to physics and technique. The pousse-café is the epitome of cocktail form over flavor.

This New York Sour is an easy first layered drink to try.

Literally translating to “coffee pusher,” the pousse-café has existed as a family of drinks at least as long as we’ve had cocktail books. In his 1862 The Bar-Tender’s Guide, Jerry Thomas lists several versions under the heading of “Fancy Drinks.” With names like the Parisian Pousse Cafe and Pousse l’Amour, the ingredients range widely, but each depends on a drink-maker taking the time to carefully layer several ingredients into a rainbow of liquid stripes in a small glass.

Thomas made his fame bartending across the United States and gathering recipes—including layered drinks—from far flung corners of the map. In The Bar-Tender’s Guide, we find the Faivre’s Pousse Cafe, hailing from a popular France-inspired New York bar, as well as a drink Thomas calls Santina’s Pousse Cafe, representing a city that would help keep the obscure style alive for more than a century. Italian bartender Joseph Santini’s Jewel of the South was an iconic New Orleans bar—a place impressive enough to warrant a name-check by Thomas, who didn’t always go to the trouble to credit his sources. And while he spells Santini’s name wrong and erroneously describes the bartender as “Spanish,” the carefully layered drink of brandy, maraschino, and curaçao no doubt lived on at least in part thanks to Thomas’s inclusion.

“For us,” says modern-day bar legend Chris Hannah, Santini “was a hero because he was mentioned by name in Jerry Thomas and also mentioned in Mark Twain.” Hannah is proprietor of New Orleans’s present Jewel of the South, which draws its name and inspiration from the historic bar. But while some in New Orleans credit Santini as the creator of the pousse-café, Hannah believes the 19th century Italian bartender was instead responsible for its longevity, because he made it a staple of the city.

Hannah says New Orleans drinkers have always gravitated to the flamboyant. It is a city known for the Café Brûlot—a coffee drink always made with brandy lit afire—and the Ramos Gin Fizz—the classic cocktail that calls for a famously long shake to create its luxuriously foamy texture. “A pousse-café,” Hannah says, “is the most elegant way to end a meal or have a digestivo. It’s really fun and very annoying to have ordered.”

Other famous New Orleans bars have featured layered drinks ever since Santini began spreading the word. Nick Castrogiovanni of the quirkily named Nick’s Original Big Train became famous for the style, and where it could still be ordered until the iconic bar was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. Legend claims that Castrogiovanni’s version was an eye-popping 34 layers, winning accolades as the most elaborate pousse-café of the time, though Hannah suggests that Santini doctored the booze to make his over-the-top layers. While the style of drink hasn’t exactly stayed in fashion or on menus, Hannah hints that there are still bartenders in New Orleans who pride themselves on keeping the old ways, and will make one if you ask nicely.

It’s fitting, perhaps, that I learned about the concentration and care needed to create layered drinks from another New Orleans bartender early in my career. Behind the bar at Franklin Mortgage and Investment Co. in Philadelphia, Nicholas Jarrett handed me a copy of Gaz Reagan’s The Joy of Mixology. He directed me to the chart of relative densities of common bar ingredients, a bit of trivia that’s pretty much only useful if you’re skipping the shaker and trying to create a drink with visibly separated layers. I remember practicing on slow shifts, until my hands and pour were steady enough that the spirits fell into tight lines. In a profession that focuses so much on flavor and integration, it was a thrill to recreate these anachronistic recipes that elevated technique and form so highly.

“It’s about presentation and visual impact. It’s why the Queen’s Park Swizzle sells. People like the idea of a layered drink. They like it in the Bramble and in the New York Sour,” says Jarrett, who today is the proprietor of Holy Diver in New Orleans. He points out the DNA of the pousse café lived on in the layered shots that were popular in the ’80s. The B-52 layered Irish cream, orange liqueur, and coffee liqueur. The Patriot Shooter floated grenadine, blue curaçao, and vodka. Were they tasty? Well, taste is subjective.

“It makes sense you’d do them as a shot. They weren’t about flavors, but about the visuals,” Jarrett says. “Layering remains a thing regularly taught at bartending and hospitality schools. It continues on as a vestigial thing in those layered shots.”

No matter whether you’re constructing a historic 19th-century recipe or a modern rainbow, the technique is the same. First, you need to know the relative densities (sometimes called “gravities”) of each ingredient. Grenadine is among the heaviest; vodka is lighter than water. You’ll pour the heaviest element at the bottom, and continue adding each layer, working from heavy to light and carefully pouring over some tool (usually a barspoon) to help the liquids disperse rather than mix. It sounds easier than it is.

The necessary delicacy of hand has driven great bartenders mad over the years, and sometimes the spirits and liqueurs on the market change recipes—and thus density—suddenly. No one is going to give you a heads up.

Many advise tilting your spoon at an angle, with the rounded bottom facing up, but I sometimes use the spoon right side up as well. The important thing is to pour each layer very, very slowly. You may see some pros using the top of a big cube of ice to float the booze, but I’d leave that to folks who’ve had a lot of practice. Some prefer pouring pousse-cafés with a speed pourer, but that requires learning to measure by count rather than the trusty jigger. There is no real hack apart from practice. One gets good at layering because one wants to, and that means suffering through a few failed attempts.

Botching the job along the way is part of the process—part of refining your craft—but if you succeed, it’s a triumph of technique that’s worth showing off.

The Pousse-Café No 1

Tom Sandham

Originally Appeared on Epicurious

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