The Last Word

Deep in the heart of San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin neighborhood is the creative bar Rye. When a few folks from the CHOW staff made a trip there, they fell in love with this light, bubbly cocktail made with elderflower liqueur, Yellow Chartreuse, and Prosecco.

Herbal Yellow Chartreuse is shaken with orange liqueur, orange juice, and heavy cream in this frothy after-dinner drink. If you can’t find Yellow Chartreuse, you can use Galliano instead.

Inspired by the idea of making a camping cocktail, we thought it’d be novel to use a little pine liqueur to bring the taste of the great outdoors to the canteen. We found the punchy, herbal liqueur a little tricky to mix with, but ultimately we were able to balance it out with some dark rum and a little pineapple juice. This recipe is scaled to fit into a canteen, and serves four.

Tart kiwis are an excellent fruit to muddle into a cocktail, especially when offset with a sweet, fruity liqueur like peach. Gently crush the kiwis to release their juice, add the rest of the ingredients, strain into a glass, and top with sparkling wine.

Abigail Gullo, head bar chef at SoBou restaurant in New Orleans, celebrates the flavor of ripe figs by muddling them with elderflower liqueur and shaking them in a cocktail shaker with vodka, lots of lemon juice, and agave nectar. This floral, sweet-tart drink is a refreshing way to enjoy fresh figs.

This drink comes to us courtesy of Martin Cate, owner of Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco. The aged rum, molasses, and allspice liqueur lend nice complexity to the cocktail. What to buy: Allspice liqueur (a.k.a. Pimento or Allspice Dram) is available at specialty liquor stores. We like the St. Elizabeth brand distributed by Haus Alpenz.

This light, delicate cocktail combines the dry, salty flavor of manzanilla sherry with herbaceous gin and floral elderflower liqueur. Stir together a few of these for guests as an elegant after-dinner drink. What to buy: Manzanilla sherry, made in the coastal town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in southern Spain, is a very dry sherry with a touch of saltiness from the sea. You can find it in the wine section of well-stocked grocery or liquor stores or online.

This is a classic, refreshing sparkler made with sloe gin, regular gin, and lemon juice, shaken and topped off with club soda. What to buy: Sloe gin is a red liqueur made from gin infused with sloes (also called blackthorn), a relative of plums.