Get lit with local spirits

I recently teamed up with one of my favorite local distilleries, Catoctin Creek, and my favorite local mixtress, Gina Chersevani of Buffalo and Bergen, to bring all of you hangry readers the very special recipe for the 🛷Sleigh Ride 🛷 - a cocktail to make all winter long while you’re curled up by the fire watching holiday flicks on FreeForm. If you want to skip the shakin’ and stirrin’, you can sidle up to the bar at B&B and whet your whistle while you people watch.

This jolly cocktail utilizes Catoctin Creek’s rye whisky, my personal favorite, which lends a bite of lemon and caraway to the finish of the spirit that’s filled with caramel and toffee notes. Chersevani, known for her signature syrups, adds a splash of her seasonal Elixir Fixer Syrup (which you can purchase at Buffalo & Bergen for your stocking!) and a few dashes of bitters to create a slightly sweet, rich and spicy cocktail you should serve up by the bowl full to your friends and family.

Here’s how you make it:

🛷 The Sleigh Ride 🛷

Hangry Timer: 5 minutes
Serves: 1 elf

What you need:

2.5 oz Catoctin Creek Rye 
.5 oz B&B Elixir Fixer Syrup or Red Wine Syrup
3 dashes Angostura
3 dashes Orange Bitters

Red Wine Syrup (at home version):
1 bottle Red Wine
6 oz. Sugar
6 oz. Orange Juice
1 Cinnamon Stick

What to do with it:

In a stirring glass, combine all the ingredients.

Fill with ice and stir 30 rotations.

Strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice and garnish with an expressed orange peel.

Enjoy!

🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Love the rye as much as I do?

Serve Up These shaken sensations with the festive firewater

Hot Buttered Rye

Mulled Rye Cider

Tim Gunn Cocktail

Spiced Rye Cider

🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY

If you choose to stop by Buffalo & Bergen to pick up the Elixir Fixer Syrup, or to grab a Sleigh Ride crafted by the masters, be sure to try some nibbles masterfully crafted by Chef Silvia Zelaya and check out the bar decked out with scenes from The Nutcracker. The seasonal NOT BURNED latkes are the best in the city, and the matzo ball soup has me daydreaming of the lemongrass chicken stock with duck fat matzo balls at my desk on the reg. Be sure to take a chance on the Welcome to Jam Hock - a curious puzzle of flavors pieced together seamlessly with salty melty gruyere, fragrant rosemary ham, clouds of scrambled egg and a veil of strawberry jam. Go savory with a sesame bagel, or embrace the sweet with B&B’s french toast bagel. If you’re HANGRY, have it piled high on a knish and draped with garlic butter (turnpike style). Whatever you do, do not leave without a taste of New York.

Special thanks to Gina Chersevani and Catoctin Creek for making this collaboration possible!

★★★