Fuerza
A smokey, coffee-forward tequila cocktail… say less.
The recipe was created by my dude Dalton Bedard (@intent_to_imbibe) at @eattheordinary here in Charleston, SC. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Dalton placed in the Top 5 US Bartenders for @worldclassus in 2024. But good news y’all, he’s back at in 2025 as a finalist for the East Coast and we’re all pulling for him to take it all home this year.
ingredients:
1¼ oz | 37.5 ml Reposado Tequila
½ oz | 15 ml Scotch
¾ oz | 22.5 ml Cold Brew Agave Syrup
3 Dashes Chocolate Mole Bitters
Lemon Peel Garnish
instructions:
Combine all ingredients into a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain over a large cube. Express a lemon twist, garnish with lemon twist.
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Style is personal. So why should your cocktail try to copy somebody else’s?
I teamed up with my friends at Ralph Lauren Fragrances to build a cocktail around their Ralph’s Club New York Parfum, and the fragrance did most of the talking. Black currant, cognac, oud wood. That’s basically a drink order.
So we built a Manhattan style sipper with cognac as the base, swapped the sweet vermouth for creme de cassis and a touch of dry vermouth, added a barspoon of absinthe and a few dashes of bitters, then finished it with an expressed lemon twist for brightness. Given the NY roots on this bottle, I’m calling it The State of Mind.
Cheers, y’all!