Modern cocktail culture satisfies the old-school and new-school alike. Bartenders pay homage to the classics and play new riffs on those themes, creating delicious drinks that also happen to sparkle (sometimes literally) on social media.
A good drink is mixed with precision and care, the result is refreshing and balanced. The best drink has a good backstory. And it should reflect the atmosphere where it is served.
The old meets the new in Mobile’s craft cocktail bars, where drinks may be blended with primo or locally distilled spirits, or laced with a few drops of non-intoxicating cannabis extract. You’ll find fun frozen drinks in a former ice house, and Caribbean-style concoctions in a place patterned after a pre-revolution Cuban bar.
But most of all, you’ll find pleasure when sampling some of tastiest alcoholic beverages in The Port City.
POST
POST uses super-premium Absolut Elyx vodka in the standard-sized drink, MailMan’s Kid, and in the multi-person fruity punch bowls called Blotto Vivacious. Elyx, billed as the luxury expression of Absolut vodka, is made with winter wheat from a single estate and distilled in copper to help remove impurities. The MailMan’s Kid combines it with muddled strawberries, house-made sour mix, and soda. Blotto Vivacious features Malibu coconut rum, fruit juices, muddled mint, strawberries and prosecco sparkling wine. Oh also, did we mention the latter two are served in a rose gold flamingo?
(Las Floriditas/Facebook)
Las Floriditas
When a bar offers an eponymous cocktail, it better deliver the goods because that’s how the place will be judged. Las Floriditas does that with refinement and flourish. The speakeasy is named for and patterned after the El Floridita, Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar in Havana, Cuba, where the daiquiri is said to have been invented. The Las Floriditas cocktail pays tribute to the daiquiri—white rum, fresh-squeezed key lime juice, turbinado sugar—and punches it up with cherry liqueur. A password is required to enter, but it’s revealed daily on the bar’s social media.
Royal Street Tavern
The Royal Street Tavern seems to have baseball on its mind. The drink list includes a martini called Split-Finger Fastball and a cocktail called Foreign Substance (ordering one, however, won’t get you ejected from this game). Not only is the Hammering Hank cocktail named for Mobile native and baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, it’s also a nod to the original recipe for a Sazerac. HH features Remy Martin VSOP cognac, Angostura bitters, cane sugar, and an absinthe rinse. It is served with a lemon twist.
(The Haberdasher/Facebook)
The Haberdasher
The Old-Fashioned cocktail—classically made with bourbon, sugar and bitters—is a thing at this speakeasy. Its menu has several versions, including interpretations substituting rum, barrel-aged tequila, and Irish whisky. The Creekside uses Alabama-made Dettling small-batch bourbon, brown sugar, spiced cherry, and cocktail bitters.
The Ice Box Bar
Located in the one-time home of the Crystal Ice Factory, The Ice Box Bar is known for its rotating lineup of frozen drinks. This is a cocktail program with a sense of humor. One of its slushes is the John Daly (it’s a mix of sweet tea and lemonade known as the Arnold Palmer but spiked the way Daly, professional golf’s party boy, would make it). Just reading the ingredient list for the Dark & Stoney cocktail makes us giggle uncontrollably: Kraken rum, ginger beer, and a dash of cannabis-derived CBD bitters.
Modern cocktail culture satisfies the old-school and new-school alike. Bartenders pay homage to the classics and play new riffs on those themes, creating delicious drinks that also happen to sparkle (sometimes literally) on social media.
A good drink is mixed with precision and care, the result is refreshing and balanced. The best drink has a good backstory. And it should reflect the atmosphere where it is served. The old meets the new in Mobile’s craft cocktail bars, where drinks may be blended with primo or locally distilled spirits, or laced with a few drops of non-intoxicating cannabis extract. You’ll find fun frozen drinks in a former ice house, and Caribbean-style concoctions in a place patterned after a pre-revolution Cuban bar.
But most of all, you’ll find pleasure when sampling some of tastiest alcoholic beverages in The Port City.
