This cocktail was one of our featured cocktails for the distillery dinner in August.

2 oz Roundstone Rye 92 proof Distiller's Edition
½ oz Benedictine
½ oz Carpano Antica
3 dashes Herbsaint
3 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
Garnish with Catoctin Creek 1757 Brandied Cherry

Serve in rocks glass.

This cocktail was one of our featured cocktails for the distillery dinner in August.

1 oz Roundstone Rye 80 proof
1 oz Pineapple Juice
1 oz Orange Juice
¼ oz Raspberry Truffle Tea Simple Syrup
¼ oz Grenadine
Garnish with a floating layer of Angostura Bitters and Orange Wedge

Serve in rocks glass.

This cocktail is one of our featured cocktails for the Virginia Spirits Month of September.

1½ oz Catoctin Creek Watershed Gin
¾ oz Carrot Juice
¾ oz TRUE Tonic Syrup
Top with Club Soda
Dash of Aromatic Bitters
Garnish with Mint Sprig

Serve in a Nick and Nora glass.

I love Boulevariers, and I love spritzes, so when this one came across my Instagram feed, I sat up and took notice!  What a refreshing take on a couple classics!  This one is courtesy @adamdstein on Instagram.

1½ oz Roundstone Rye
1 oz Campari
San Pellegrino Limonata, to top.

Fill a rocks glass with ice, add the rye and Campari, stir, and top with San Pellegrino Limonata soda.  Garnish with a lime.  Enjoy!

Recipe and photo courtesy Adam D. Stein, and used with permission.

This cocktail is one of our featured cocktails in the tasting room for the month of August, 2018.

1 oz Roundstone Rye 92 Proof
2 oz Loudoun Raspberry truffle tea
½ oz fresh orange juice
½ oz True grenadine
2 brandied cherries
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all in shaker, stir, and pour over ice in a rocks or punch glass. Garnish with brandied cherries

Recipe courtesy Denise Petty.

Nothing says summer in the south quite like peaches.  The juicy ripe fruit, dripping with sweetness, just begs to be in a cocktail!  

This one comes to us from Instagram personality @jonpenndorf.

1½ oz Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye
1 peach slice, muddled
½ oz thyme simple syrup
1-2 dashes Fee Brothers grapefruit bitters

Muddle the peach in the bottom of a cocktail shaker, add ice, and other ingredients. Shake and strain over ice in a rocks glass.

Recipe and photo courtesy Jon Penndorf via Instagram.

Ahhhh.... summer is unofficially here.  And with it, strawberries!  This take on a traditional whisky sour is refreshing and just about as pretty as a flower on a summer evening.

1.5 oz Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye
1 oz fresh squeezed lemon
1 oz strawberry-hibiscus simple syrup*
Lemon wheel garnish

Combine all three ingredients in a shaker of ice, shake, then strain into coupes.  Garnish with a lemon wheel.

*Strawberry-hibiscus simple syrup

In a mixing pot or a crock pot, combine 1 cup of sugar with 1 cup of water, along with a 15 oz package of sliced and mashed strawberries and 4 oz of dried hibiscus blossoms.  (If hibiscus blossoms are unavailable, you can use pre-packaged hibiscus tea, like "Red Zinger".)  Steep the syrup mixture until fully dissolved, then for another 30-60 minutes.  Strain out the solids and bottle.  Will keep for 1-2 months in the fridge.

This cocktail is featured on the menu at the Wine Kitchen in Leesburg, Virginia.  It is a rather simple old-fashioned recipe featuring a rare ingredient:  a simple syrup infused with Palo Santo oil (Bursera graveolens).  Palo Santo comes from a wood native to the Yucatan region of Mexico, and is lauded for its ability to remove the "mala energía" (bad energy).  Deliciousness and setting your energy right?  Yes, please.

2 oz Roundstone Rye
½ Palo Santo simple syrup
4 dashes of house bitters

Mix and serve with a big rock in a rocks glass.  Orange peel garnish.

Courtesy the Wine Kitchen, Leesburg, Virginia.

This cocktail was inspired by the "Red Lips Rye" cocktail currently featured in the cocktail book at the Savoy American Bar in London.  The original cocktail features rye whisky, a raspberry port cordial, Campari and Kummel.  Not having the exact measurements and original ingredients, I endeavored to re-create this cocktail, in color, flavor, and sweetness, with ingredients in my home bar.  I do believe this comes pretty close to the original, and is pretty damn delicious!

2 oz Roundstone Rye 92 Proof
1 oz Port
⅓ oz Garofalo Blueberry liqueuer, Chambourd, or Cherry Heering
⅓ oz Aquavit
⅓ oz Aperol or Campari
2 dashes Peychauds bitters

Combine all in a cocktail mixer with ice, stir well, and strain into a chilled coupe or martini glass.

Recipe by Scott Harris, inspired by the American Bar, Savoy Hotel, London.

This cocktail comes to us from Italy, through bar manager Mario Farulla of Baccano in Rome!  It is so cool to be selling our products in Italy, the land of vermouths, bitters and amaro.  Mario writes:

La lucida follia di Schmidt, è pura arte, genio ed improvvisazione; estro di cui siamo tutti figli. La sua visionaria via di accostamenti e presentazione dei drink è l’eredità di cui dobbiamo far tesoro senza però fermarci mai alla superficialità. Per questa rivisitazione del “Pleasant Surprise” ho voluto utilizzare il Catoctin Creek, che con le sue note vanigliate e di pellame ben sia accostano al mix di vini liquorosi e spezie presenti nel drink.

---

Translation: Schmidt's lucid madness is pure art, genius and improvisation; inspiration of which we are all children. His visionary way of combinations and presentation of drinks is the legacy we must treasure always maintaining the superficiality. For this version of the "Pleasant Surprise" I wanted to use Catoctin Creek, which with its hints of vanilla and leather, well match the mix of liqueur, wines and spices present in the drink.

The "Schmidt" referenced here is William Schmidt, a pre-prohibtion bartender and author of The Flowing Bowl.

1 tsp caster sugar
40ml (1⅓ oz) Catoctin creek Roundstone Rye Whisky 92 Proof
20ml (⅔ oz) Lustau Almacenista Sherry
20ml (⅔ oz) Madera Cossart 5 y.o.
1 dash orange bitters
3 dashes Angostura bitters

Garnish: Essentia vaporized nutmeg

Grated black pepper crusta

Glass: Sherry Goblet

Tecnique: Savoy/Throwing

Courtesy of Mario Farulla, Baccano, Rome, Italy, @mariofarulla on Instagram.

The whisky sour is one of the simplest drinks you can make.  It is easy and refreshing, and unlike many complicated drinks, the simple ingredients really highlight the whisky and allow it to shine through. 

The humble whisky sour is one of the basic spirit+citrus+sugar cocktail recipes that serve as the backbone to American cocktails.  Citrus in the below cocktails can vary between fresh lemon juice and fresh lime juice (or some combination of both).  Sometimes, it also includes a splash of orange juice or orange liqueur (like Triple Sec). 

For those interested, here are the basics on this theme:

• whisky+citrus+sugar - The whisky sour
• gin+citrus+sugar - The gimlet
• vodka+citrus+sugar - The lemon drop [sometimes called the lemon drop martini]
• rum+citrus+sugar - The daiquiri
• tequila+citrus+sugar - The margarita*
• brandy+citrus+sugar - The sidecar
• cachaça+citrus+sugar - The caipirinha

*It is said that the whisky sour is the precursor to the margarita.  Back in the late 1800's the whisky sour was often called the whisky daisy, and when whisky for this popular cocktail was hard to find in Mexican resorts, they switched to using local agave spirits (tequila).  The name "Margarita" happens to be the Spanish word for "daisy".

1½ oz Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye
¾ oz simple syrup
¾ oz fresh squeezed lemon juice (Never ever use sour mix!  It is nasty!)
1 egg white (optional)

If using egg white, combine all the ingredients in a shaker without ice. Shake to combine ingredients and froth egg white. (This is called a "dry shake".) After the dry shake, add some ice, and shake briefly once more to chill the ingredients, but no too much to lose the foam. Strain and pour into a cocktail glass.

If not using egg white, combine the ingredients in a shaker of ice, strain and pour into rocks glasses with ice.

Garnish with a lemon wedge and a cherry on a bamboo skewer.

I made this cocktail up as a variation of "black manhattans" that I've been playing with for years.  I love amaro and have been experimenting with it a lot.  The Don Ciccio ones are my favorites, but Averno is good also.  There are even German bitters which are very similar (Boonekamp is a favorite from Bavaria), but they don't call them amaro in Germany.   So, amaro was the basis of the drink... with chocolate and mole bitters to give more richness and dark depth.

2 oz Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye
½ oz Amaro (try one from Don Ciccio, Averno, Ramazotti, Cynar or your favorite)
½ oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
2-3 dashes of Mole / Aztec or Chocolate bitters
Luxardo cherry garnish

Combine all over ice, stir, and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a cherry.