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!

It's like if a Mojito with bit more style…

Together with my friends at @mountgayrum and @devereuxgolf, we're going to add some style to something familiar.

These two brands have teamed up to showcase their shared love of craftsmanship and leisure by putting together a line of limited edition designs that are comfortable enough to wear on a golf course to being stylish enough to wear on a sailboat. Check out the collection in the link in my stories.

The Queen's Park Swizzle is named after the historic Queen's Park Hotel in Port of Spain sometime in the early 1900s. Built with rum, mint, lime, and bitters, it's bright, refreshing, and dangerously easy to drink — basically the Caribbean cousin to a Mojito with a little more spice and depth.

For this version, I'm using @mountgayrum Eclipse Rum, whose warm vanilla, baking spice, and oak notes fit perfectly into the drink's tropical backbone while still letting the mint and bitters shine through.

Cheers, y'all!