Sonoma-based couple Carey Jones and John McCarthy are no newbies to crafting cocktails. The Food & Wine columnists behind “Liquor Cabinet Roulette” and authors of “Be Your Own Bartender” have returned with a second book, “Every Cocktail Has a Twist” (Countryman Press, $25). Their book dissects 25 classic cocktails — from the Aperol Spritz to the Whiskey Sour — and offers a range of variations on each of them, yielding more than 200 recipes in all, plus tips on how to mix and match some twists of your own.
We recently chatted with them about favorite cocktails, upping your home bartending skills and why fresh-squeezed citrus is a must.
Q: What’s your backstory?
Jones: I’m a food and beverage writer by profession, and John’s a mixologist. He’s run lots of bar programs, primarily in New York, where we met, and in San Francisco. We started collaborating about 10 years ago, with John being the behind-the-bar recipe chops and me being the writer and the everyman perspective.
RECIPES: Sonoma authors’ new cocktail book gives three classics a holiday twist
McCarthy: We did a (weekly) column for Food and Wine online called Liquor Cabinet Roulette for seven years.
Jones: It was aimed at the home bartender. We picked individual ingredients people might not be that familiar with and showed them how to make three cocktails. We wanted to show people that these ingredients don’t have to be mysterious or scary. There’s such a difference between the quality of drinks people make at home and how much they could improve just with some basic tools and techniques.
Q: The new book offers twists on classic cocktails. What are some of your favorite classics?
McCarthy: If I’m going to a new bar, and I want to see what their chops are, I order an Old Fashioned, because it’s a simple drink that can be made incredibly wrong.
Jones: I think the French 75 is probably my favorite, largely because I love anything with bubbles. It’s a classic drink of just gin, lemon, sugar and sparkling wine. The format of a citrus cocktail topped up with a lot of bubbles is a fun one to play with.
Q: So what are some of the techniques that home bartenders can use to level up their drinks?
Jones: One of them is paying real attention to your ingredients. The biggest one we tell people, especially if they’re margarita fans, is that for any drink with citrus, you really need fresh-squeezed citrus juice. The aromatics you get from fresh citrus — that bright burst of scent, of flavor — there’s just no substitute.
McCarthy: When my friends and family get a store bought margarita mix, it hurts my heart a little bit. Grabbing a juicer and juicing a lime fresh makes all the difference.
Jones: Another big one is shaking or stirring your cocktails. There are some drinks that are better shaken. As a rule that’s anything with citrus juice or an egg. Some drinks are better stirred, and that’s usually your classic drinks that are mostly spirits, like a Martini or an Old Fashioned. You want to either shake or stir long enough. In either case, you’re chilling the cocktail down which is important — no one wants a warm Manhattan. You’re also allowing a certain amount of the ice to melt. That ice melt is a key ingredient in virtually any cocktail. You’ll usually get about an ounce of water from that ice melt, which is significant when you look at just the total volume of drinks. That allows the different flavors of the drink to open up and integrate.
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Q: What trends do you see on the cocktail scene?
Jones: Over the last two or three years, the attention being paid to low alcohol or alcohol-free drinks is awesome. Ten to 15 years ago, when a lot of these classics came back into style, it was nothing but Manhattan-style or Negroni-style cocktails: booze on booze on booze. And that’s not what everyone wants. It’s not what everyone can drink. So, drinks that make use of lower-proof ingredients like vermouths and sherries and some of the amazing non-alcoholic products that have cropped up over the last few years are awesome in terms of inclusivity. Everyone should have a delicious drink, regardless of how much — or any — alcohol they want to consume. They’ve just been getting more and more sophisticated, which is really fun to see.
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