Tag: classic film

Classic Films · Holiday Films

Bachelor Mother

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: Bachelor Mother, 1939

Anyone who has read my book knows that I harbor deep fantasies of spending New Year’s Eve with David Niven. Always the life of the party, you know you’re in for a good time with this cheeky sophisticate. Lucky for us, if we time it just right, we’re able to ring in the New Year with Niv by watching him in the delightful classic holiday film Bachelor Mother (Disc/Download)!

This is one of those wonderful pictures like The Shop Around the Corner, or Christmas in Connecticut, that’s still able to resonate with modern audiences due to its sparkling script and screwball antics. Ginger Rogers is a terrific comedienne, playing a New York shopgirl who’s just been handed a pink slip for her temporary holiday gig in the toy section of a big department store. Devastated, she’s on her way home when she sees a baby left on the steps of an orphanage. She takes it inside out of the cold, and the employees mistake her for the baby’s mother. Despite her protests, they manage to find out where she works and convince her boss (David Niven) to keep her employed even after the holidays so she can support herself and the baby. Hijinx ensue as she tries again and again to give the baby back, but eventually she’s forced to accept this situation and make the best of it. Meanwhile, Niv (beginning the movie as a rich playboy) starts to develop a fondness for this woman, and their obvious chemistry at a swanky NYE party makes him realize he’s falling for her.

If you’re hoping for some iconic Ginger Rogers moves, then you’re in luck because she puts on quite the show in a dance contest at the Pink Slipper. An ironic name, given that she’s just been handed a pink slip and needs the prize money to make up for that lost paycheck! Since I happen to love pink cocktails and gimlets, let’s combine the two. While watching Bachelor Mother, I recommend drinking a Pink Slipper.

Pink Slipper

2 oz Gin (I used Tanqueray Rangpur Lime)

1 oz Cranberry Juice

1 oz Lime Juice

1 oz Simple Syrup

Fresh cranberries (garnish)

Combine all liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled, then strain into a glass. Garnish with fresh cranberries.

Clocking in at less than ninety-minutes, this is the perfect movie to watch when you need a little break over the holidays, but don’t have a ton of time. With its tinker toys and screwball comedy, this delightful rom-com will leave you feeling downright giddy. Cheers!

Classic Films · Holiday Films · Musicals

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

LizLocke2 Comments
Image credit: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964

During a recent conversation with a friend, the subject of 1960s Christmas movies came up. Trying to list my favorites, I quickly hit a wall. Seems the 1940s and the 1990s pretty much cornered the market on holiday flicks. Maybe that’s why I wrote such a lengthy Christmas section into my novel Follow the Sun—I wanted to create a stylish world of silver tinsel trees, Shiny Brite ornaments, and elaborate teased updos. A world of Henry Mancini albums on the hi-fi, fondue on the buffet table, and structured Saint Laurent evening gowns. Like my novel, Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Disc/Download) only has a brief stopover at Christmas, but it’s memorable enough for me to consider this a holiday film. And not just any holiday film, but the most glamorous one in existence.

Presented in operatic form, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has a straightforward (albeit tragic) plot. Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) are young, gorgeous, and madly in love. They consummate the relationship shortly before Guy leaves for war, and although Geneviève promises she’ll wait for him, her meddling mother forces her to doubt he’s ever coming back. Pregnant and alone, she marries someone else, leaving the father of her child heartbroken upon his return. Eventually, he moves on too, and years later they share a sad reunion under the backdrop of a snowy gas station. With stunning production design and more color than I’ve ever seen in a movie, Umbrellas manages to make a world papered in pink and orange damask impossibly sad and beautiful. As Catherine Deneueve trudges back to her car on that cold Christmas Eve, your heart just breaks for her. This is the definition of a Blue Christmas.

I covered this movie years ago for Moviejawn with a Crème de Violette cocktail, however this was before Empress 1908 gin came into my life. Distilled with butterfly pea flower, this gin has lately given rise to many colorful cocktail experiments. One of my favorite gin botanicals is cinnamon, so I’ll be using it for a holiday twist on a French ’75. While watching The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I recommend drinking a Cinnamon ‘75*.

Cinnamon ‘75

1 ½ oz Empress 1908 Gin

¾ oz Lemon Juice

½ oz Cinnamon Syrup

1 tsp. Maple Syrup

Champagne, to top

Cinnamon stick garnish

Combine gin, lemon juice, cinnamon syrup, and maple syrup in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled, then strain into a coupe glass. Top with champagne, and garnish with a cinnamon stick.

*Recipe adapted from Empress Gin website

I like to think the characters of Follow the Sun would have seen this movie upon its release in 1964, and maybe Caroline, drawn to the emotional music score, would have returned more than once. Perhaps Daphne narrowly missed out on the Catherine Deneuve role because of her lackluster singing voice, and she still holds a grudge against Jacques Demy. Maybe it caused them to realize (as it caused me to realize) that the holidays might be painful as we think about those we’ve loved and lost, but nevertheless, there’s still beauty and glamour all around. Joyeux Noël!

Classic Films

Cat People

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: Cat People, 1942

I confess: I am not a cat person. Frankly, they terrify me. So when I heard about Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 B-horror film Cat People (Disc/Download), I assumed I’d have to close my eyes through most of it. However, I was delighted to discover that it’s actually the perfect level of spooky, supernatural fun during this Halloween season. Really, the only scary thing is how long I waited to watch this charming classic!

Starring Simone Simon as a Serbian illustrator who believes she’s descended from a line of “cat people”, the movie takes place in a bustling Manhattan where the female characters have a surprising amount of agency for the time period. We see career gals instead of housewives, and indeed, even after Irena marries a nautical engineer, she’s still a fairly independent person (albeit a troubled one, under the care of a psychiatrist). You see, Irena believes that if she becomes aroused with strong emotion, she’ll turn into a jungle cat and attack. This becomes inconvenient for her husband, and it isn’t long before he’s looking at his female co-worker with straying eyes. Here is where the film becomes more domestic soap opera than supernatural horror, and probably why I enjoy it so much. Although we see plenty of zoo cats pacing in their cages, and hear frightening hisses from the shadows, the audience is spared any encounters with gore. The horror is achieved by building tension and fear, much like Rosemary’s Baby would do decades later.

One of my favorite lines is when Irena gets hissed at by a kitten and laments, “Cats just don’t like me.” Same girl, same. However, one “cat” I do get along with is of the cocktail variety! While watching Cat People, I recommend drinking a Black Cat.

Black Cat

1 oz Vodka

1 oz Cherry Brandy

3 oz Cranberry Juice

3 oz Cola

Maraschino cherry (garnish)

Fill a glass with ice, and top with vodka, cherry brandy, cranberry juice, and cola. Stir well to combine, and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

If you’re looking for sexy supernatural fun this week, I’d suggest doing a double feature of Cat People and I Married a Witch, the Veronica Lake classic from the same year. Both feature strong female leads, ancient curses, and glamorous costumes, and as an added bonus, neither one is frightening enough to keep you up at night. Cheers!

Classic Films · Dramas

The Misfits

LizLocke2 Comments
Image Credit: The Misfits, 1961

They had me at Thelma Ritter. I knew going into The Misfits (Disc/Download) that it would be the most depressing corner of Reno Divorce Month, but I pushed through for Thelma. A pure delight in every picture she graced, this character actress could make even the most difficult watch something to look forward to. She was the shining star who guided us home.

John Huston’s film about the decaying mythology of the west is a tough but important film. It was the last one for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, and knowing this fact makes every scene seem like a race against the clock. Those mythological creatures, the biggest box office stars of their day, just… gone. The sixties ushered in a period of revolution in cinema, where “dream factories” shuttered their doors and an actor or actress was only as popular as their last role. But then there was Thelma, like a bridge between worlds. She could exist in movies like All About Eve as well as Technicolor confections like Pillow Talk and A New Kind of Love without missing a beat. It made sense that she would be cast in the role of Isabelle Steers, the owner of a Reno boardinghouse, because Thelma was an actress who rolled with the times. Her character was there for the quickie marriages and quickie divorces, just as the actress was there for the rise and demise of the Hollywood studio system. A dependable presence in a world of fleeting dreams.

I love the scene where Thelma calls Nevada the “Leave It” state. As in, “Ya got money you want to gamble? Leave it here. You got a wife you want to get rid of? Get rid of her here. Extra Atom bomb you don’t need? Blow it up here. Nobody’s gonna mind in the slightest.” Taking inspiration from this quote, and the scent of sage as she and Marilyn are rolling through the desert, while watching The Misfits, I recommend drinking a “Leaf-it” State.

“Leaf-it” State

2 oz Blood Orange Juice

2-3 Fresh Sage Leaves

2 oz Bourbon

¾ oz Lime Juice

¾ oz Simple Syrup

1 Egg White

Muddle sage leaves with lime juice and simple syrup in a shaker. Add bourbon, blood orange juice, and egg white. Dry shake (without ice) for 30 seconds. Add ice to the shaker, and shake again until well-chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a sage leaf.

“Leaf-It” State

I can’t let this post go by without mentioning Eli Wallach, my favorite scroodily-doo, who is equal parts sweet and horrible in this movie. Out of the three men Marilyn accompanies on a mustang-hunting expedition, he’s the one I kind of want to rope up and leave in the desert by the end. Montgomery Clift, I just want to hug, and Clark—well, I guess I’d want to ask why his character was sweet on Marilyn when Thelma was there the whole time. Cheers!

Classic Films · Comedies

The Women

LizLocke2 Comments
Image credit: The Women, 1939

The d-i-v-o-r-c-e train chugs along this week with one of my all-time favorite classic film comedies, George Cukor’s The Women (Disc/Download)! Featuring an entirely female cast and adapted by screenwriters Anita Loos and Jane Murfin from Clare Boothe Luce’s play, this film is an incredibly clever take on the upper echelons of New York society. From the nail salon to the Reno boardinghouse, these ladies come with sharp claws, sharper tongues, and fabulous clothes. When “Gowns and Fashion Show by Adrian” appears in the opening credits, you know you’re in for a good time.

If you’re looking for a shining example of Golden Age star-power, look no further than The Women. The entire cast reads like a who’s who of the Max Factor appointment book. Frequent Cinema Sips readers know I love a soap opera, so naturally I adore this tale of unfaithful spouses and society gossip. Norma Shearer brings a tough elegance to the character of Mary, who finds herself at the center of a cheating scandal involving her husband and a perfume counter girl (Joan Crawford), but it’s the fast-talking Rosalind Russell who gets the great lines and even greater fashions. From a blouse covered in glittery eyes to headpieces that defy gravity, she’s the one to watch. Oddly, this black & white movie is interrupted by a long Technicolor fashion show sequence, which is jarring and fantastic all at the same time. I love the clothes, I just… don’t know what they’re doing there? I probably would have cut the scene in favor of more Reno time because Mary gains a terrific group of gal pals on the train to Nevada. I wanted more time with them, more lazy days on the ranch, more Marjorie Main as the salty boardinghouse owner- just more!

As Olga the loose-lipped manicurist will attest, Jungle Red is the color for nails. I decided to make a Spritz twist on the classic Jungle Bird cocktail because it’s appropriately named, appropriately colored, and good for those hot Reno days spent waiting for Buck Winston to call. While watching The Women, I recommend drinking a Jungle Cat.

Jungle Cat

1 ½ oz Campari

¾ oz Pineapple Gum Syrup

3 oz Sparkling Wine

1 oz Soda Water

Lime Slices

Combine Campari and pineapple syrup in a shaker without ice. Shake well to combine, then pour into a glass filled with ice. Top with sparkling wine and soda water, and garnish with lime slices.

I love that this movie includes several different reasons for the Reno Divorce because it shows how complicated marriages (and their dissolutions) can be. There’s the reluctant divorce, the resigned divorce, even the aborted divorce! But in the end, I don’t even care what happens to the men in their lives- I just want these women to get the good apartment, maybe get a new Adrian gown, and most of all, get revenge. Cheers!

Classic Films

Now, Voyager

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: Now, Voyager 1942

Bette Davis, plus a cruise ship, plus some of the Casablanca cast? On the surface, Now, Voyager (Disc/Download) seems like a slam dunk for me. But as I would soon find out, there is such a thing as too much melodrama, and this movie crosses the invisible line.

Based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, Now, Voyager opens with a classic “spinster aunt” character who has existed under her tyrannical mother’s thumb for far too long. Although Charlotte Vale (Davis) once had a scandalous tryst at sea with a lowly staff member (Titanic fans will probably enjoy the shared plot points here, even down to the backseat canoodling in a fancy car!), her mother made sure any happiness was short-lived. It isn’t until Charlotte’s sister-in-law steps in with the help of a psychiatrist that she finally manages to claw her way out from her mother’s talons and get back on the horse. Or the cruise ship, in this case. While on this voyage, she meets a lonely man trapped in a loveless marriage (Paul Henreid, still as dull as he was in Casablanca), and after their car crashes on a port excursion to Rio, they spend a few days ashore falling in love. After, he heads back to his terrible wife and very troubled daughter, while Charlotte brings her new glowed-up self back to Boston. From there, the script gets… messy. I won’t spoil anything, but let’s just say, she makes some truly weird decisions involving her lover’s daughter, and the whole thing gives me the impression this woman still doesn’t understand how to extricate herself from codependent relationships. The cruise scenes? Fantastic! Everything else? Cringe.

Although the characters in this movie choose to drink Old Fashioneds on their cruise, I prefer to mix a favorite Brazilian cocktail, the Caipirinha. I like to think this is a drink Charlotte Vale would have enjoyed while trysting in Rio. Also, she probably would have loved picturing her mother while pulverizing the lime.

Caipirinha

2 oz Cachaça

2 tsp Sugar

1 Lime, cut into wedges

In a rocks glass, muddle lime wedges with sugar. Fill the glass with ice and add the cachaça. Stir gently to combine.

Ultimately, Now, Voyager is an exhausting movie. However, maybe with enough Caipirinhas, you’ll laugh (as I did) at the collection of dead minks hanging from Bette’s shoulder. Doris Day sported something similar in Romance on the High Seas, and this makes me wonder—should I be visiting a furrier before my cruise? I think I’d rather just stick with jaunty sun hats. Cheers!

Classic Films · Musicals

Romance on the High Seas

LizLocke3 Comments
Image credit: Romance on the High Seas, 1948

In a few week’s time, I’ll be packing my bags for an ocean voyage to the kiddie-filled sands of Castaway Cay. Not being an experienced cruiser, I decided to spend this month taking advice from the movies. What to pack? What to drink? What, exactly, is a Lido Deck? To get me started, I’m turning to my movie fairy godmother Doris Day. She tends to have the answers to most of life’s dilemmas, and I found a lot of great tips in her delightful debut role in Michael Curtiz’s Romance on the High Seas (Disc/Download).

Tip No. 1: Nobody dresses the first night out.

Apparently, cruisers wear business casual instead of formal on their first trip to the dining room. Poor Doris, posing as a rich society lady as part of this crazy woman’s attempt to catch her husband cheating, is excited to get doll’d up, and makes the major faux pas of wearing a GORGEOUS ice blue silk gown on her first night at sea. This would send anybody else running back to their stateroom, but not Doris. She just pastes on a smile and walks confidently up to the maître d’ because goddamn it, she looks great, and she’s hungry. Except… she missed her seating time. People might not dress in their finest, but they show up when they’re supposed to.

Tip No. 2: You can make a meal out of pretzels and potato chips.

Turns out, the bar is the place to be on a cruise ship. Not only is it quiet and practically empty during the dinner hour, but bartenders will bring you snacks. Lots and lots of snacks. And if you’re lucky, a nightclub singer with the voice of an angel will appear out of nowhere to sing a melancholy tune.

Tip No. 3: Always overtip

This is just a great rule no matter where you are, land or sea. The society woman who hired Doris might be suffering from an extreme case of paranoia, but she’s still a class act. She makes sure to provide Doris with plenty of cash to tip the boat crew; after all, she wouldn’t want word to spread that she’s cheap. The horror!

Tip No. 4: If you’re distressed, just walk into any bar and tell the server you want to get higher than a kite.

These are not words I ever expected to hear coming out of Doris Day’s mouth, but I applaud the way she advocates for herself. Pretending to be someone she’s not while falling in love with the private investigator hired to trap her is difficult enough, but then her bandleader beau from New York boards the ship at the next port of call! I really can’t blame her for wanting to check out for a night.

Speaking of ports of call, this ship visits some really exciting places. Cuba and Rio are great stops, but Trinidad looks like a lot of fun too! Let’s toast Doris’s Caribbean adventure with Giuseppe González’s recipe for a Trinidad Sour.

Trinidad Sour

1 1/2 oz Angostura Bitters

1/2 oz Rye Whiskey

3/4 oz Lemon Juice

1 oz Orgeat

Lemon Twist

Combine bitters, whiskey, lemon juice, and orgeat in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled, then strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Although I’m not sure the Disney Wish will give me the same opportunities for cocktails and couture I’d find on other voyages, I can still take a page out of Doris’s book and make this trip something memorable. She doesn’t board the ship with intentions to find love or a gig in the lounge, but somehow she pulls off both. So I guess I’ll leave it here with Tip No. 5: Keep an open mind. Cheers!

Classic Films · Dramas

From Here to Eternity

LizLocke1 Comment
Image credit: From Here to Eternity, 1953

We’ve all seen this shot. Deborah Kerr locked in a passionate embrace with Burt Lancaster on a Hawaiian beach, waves crashing around them as they kiss in the sand. You’d think this would be indicative of the romance in the movie as a whole, but if you’ve ever sat down and actually watched From Here to Eternity (Disc/Download), then you know- there are no happy endings to be found. I see the image, and I just want to scream: “False advertising!!!”

In fact, the love story subplots of this classic film only receive the bare minimum of screentime. This is a movie about military power trips, not trips down the aisle. I’d equate it more to Cool Hand Luke than Casablanca. Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra are terrific in their roles as three conflicted army soldiers on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, while Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed are magnetic as their love interests. Where the plot drags and meanders, the actors soar. It’s funny to me that the famous beach scene gets vaulted as one of the most romantic movie images because the truth of that scene is far different. Burt Lancaster wants to see how far his boss’s wife will go with him, believing she’s already been “loose” with soldiers in the past. When he mentions her reputation, it’s like a needle scrape across the record. Suddenly, that beach gets very, very cold. It’s a great moment, and there’s certainly a lot of drama when she explains her situation, but… “romantic” it is not. I guess we were all too mesmerized by Burt’s muscles to notice. By “we”, I mean myself.

One thing these characters do frequently is drink. Clearly, the army is a very stressful environment, even in paradise. Legend has it, one of Frank Sinatra’s favorite cocktails was the Navy Grog, a delicious tiki concoction that’s fallen by the wayside due to its complicated preparation. The drink was meant to be garnished and sipped through an ice cone, which required a special mold to make, and… yeah. I’m not doing that. So let’s keep the drink recipe and alter the prep for the modern home bar enthusiast. While watching From Here to Eternity, I recommend drinking an Army Grog.

Army Grog

1 oz Dark Rum

1 oz Gold Rum

1 oz White Rum (I used Koloa Rum, in a nod to Hawaii!)

1 oz Honey Syrup (1:1 ratio honey to water)

¾ oz Club Soda

¾ oz Grapefruit Juice

¾ oz Lime Juice

Lime Wheel garnish

Combine rums, honey syrup, club soda, grapefruit, and lime juices in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled, then strain into a glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a lime wheel.

With a slew of Oscars to its credit (including one for Ol’ Blue Eyes), From Here to Eternity manages the tricky task of being a war picture with mass appeal. Maybe the key is that there’s very little actual war depicted. We all know it’s coming, which provides even more tension for the fate of these characters, but we’re not bogged down with fighter jets and explosions. So go ahead, call it a great movie. Just don’t call it a romance. Cheers!

Classic Films

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1971

How do you make a Western that a pink-loving, romance-obsessed millennial female like me will actually enjoy? Easy.

  1. Fill it with gorgeous Leonard Cohen songs.
  2. Cast two of the most beautiful humans alive in 1971: Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.
  3. Make bath time fun again.
  4. Tell the costume department to invest in a really big fur coat. I’m talking massive. Make him look like a very fancy bear.

This week on Cinema Sips, I’m featuring the Robert Altman classic, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Disc/Download). You won’t find a lot of Westerns on Cinema Sips because I’ve never been a fan of dust and dirt and long, lonely vistas; however, there’s something about McCabe & Mrs. Miller that hooks me. The modern music is certainly part of it, but I think it’s also the way ordinary realities are depicted. The characters speak like normal people, instead of holdovers from the Victorian era. They talk about real issues, like same-sex attraction, and menstruation, and what it is that humans really want on the edge of a barren frontier. It’s not sex and it’s not religion (despite the proliferation of brothels and churches); it’s comfort. In many cases, power.

I’m going to warn you, McCabe has truly heinous cocktail preferences. He enjoys a double whiskey with a raw egg, and frankly, seeing that yolk drop into the glass makes me want to vomit. Let’s make a tastier egg-white version instead, adding a little marmalade in honor of Mrs. Miller’s cockney roots. While watching McCabe & Mrs. Miller, I recommend drinking a Marmalade Whiskey Sour.

Marmalade Whiskey Sour

2 oz Bourbon

1 oz Lemon Juice

½ oz Simple Syrup

½ oz Orange Marmalade

1 egg white

Combine ingredients in a shaker without ice first. Shake vigorously for thirty seconds, then add ice. Shake for another thirty seconds until chilled and frothy. Strain into a glass filled with fresh ice.

I’ll have to remember this movie when I’m sweltering through a Texas summer because one look at the snow-covered mining town makes the room feel ten degrees cooler. But even when the snow is falling outside, and the wind is howling, it’s still fun to snuggle up under a furry blanket, pour a drink, and contemplate whether any Western hero was ever as cool as John McCabe, before or since. Certainly, he was the best-dressed. Cheers!

Classic Films · Dramas

The Shining

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: The Shining, 1980

I always thought the scariest place a person could be is in The Overlook Hotel with a murderous Jack Nicholson and a whole bunch of angry ghosts. Not to mention, those hallways of hypnotic carpet patterns! But that was until I made the decision to renovate my home. A decision which has forced me to become trapped, in increasingly smaller spaces, as the days and weeks bleed into one another. Suddenly, this quote from The Shining (Disc/Download) makes so much sense: “A kind of claustrophobic reaction which can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time.” Let’s just say, I’m looking increasingly vacant-eyed over my keyboard. The dog is calling out to Scatman Crothers.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, The Shining is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, inspired by his own stay at a Colorado resort (the Estes Park Hotel, which I can personally say is quite lovely… in the summer). Jack Torrance (Nicholson) moves his wife and son to a remote hotel for the winter, accepting the job of caretaker. As a writer, he thinks an empty resort will be the perfect spot to work on his novel. However, the ghosts of the hotel have other plans for the Torrance family. Slowly, Jack begins to go mad, while his telekinetic son senses the presence of the hotel’s previous dead occupants. Little Danny has a touch of “the shining”, just as the hotel itself “shines”. There are a lot of hallucination scenes in this, several times involving a bathroom. I too have been hallucinating a bathroom during long stretches of isolation, so this part of the film makes sense to me. When Jack and I dream, we dream of a beautiful, spacious retreat fit for a luxury hotel. My nightmare is that I’m as old as the decaying woman in Room 237 by the time my soaking tub gets installed, but that’s probably just the claustrophobia talking. Surely, my contractor will get his act together by then.

Another dream sequence involves one of my favorite movie bars, host to many glamorous parties throughout The Overlook’s storied history. Lloyd the bartender may have served up a mean Bourbon on the rocks, but I prefer to take my cocktail cue from Danny. While watching The Shining, I recommend drinking this variation on the Negroni, a Redrum cocktail.

Redrum

1 oz Dark Spiced Rum

1 oz Campari

1 oz Sweet Vermouth

Blood orange slice

Combine rum, Campari, and vermouth in a mixing tin with ice. Stir until chilled, then strain into a glass over a large ice cube. Garnish with a slice of blood orange.

If you’re not typically a Negroni drinker, this may change your mind. Rum gives the cocktail a sweeter, spicier edge, and I actually prefer this to its gin-based cousin. It’s the perfect drink to toast five miserable months of home renovation, and the irreparable harm it has caused me. Cheers!