9 Adult Beverages to Pair with Your Autumn Traditions  

Fall is the perfect time for tailgating, get-togethers with friends, family dinners and quiet reflection around a backyard fire pit. Autumn is also the perfect time to trade hot, hectic workdays for cool, relaxed moments while enjoying an adult beverage or two.

No matter where you live around the globe, you are likely to have plenty of memories connected with the change of seasons, even if the air doesn’t turn chilly where you reside. Let your autumn traditions guide you to a new array of refreshing autumn treats.

Friday Night Football
Fall in our house when I was growing up signaled football season and Friday nights at the local steakhouse with my dad after he coached the weekly high school football game. His drink of choice to warm up on those cold evenings was always a Southern Comfort Manhattan “up.” There is something about the rich, warm color of Southern Comfort that glistens like sunlight on autumn leaves, making it the ideal, elegant evening beverage for autumn.

Matthew’s Southern Comfort Manhattan

• • • ¼ ounce dry vermouth
    • 2 ounces Southern Comfort
    • Maraschino cherries
    • Combine vermouth and Southern Comfort over ice in a shaker. Serve on the rocks or in a martini glass “up” (Matthew’s way).

Walks in the Woods
If rum is your thing and autumn calls to mind strolls through damp woods and New England fields with crumbling stone walls, let this aged rum revision of an old classic become your new fall favorite. Hints of apple and ginger meld with rum and sweet simple syrup for a delicious drink to share with friends on the patio.

The Stone Wall

• • • One 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
    • 1 ½ teaspoons Simple Syrup
    • 1 ½ ounces aged rum
    • 1 ½ ounces apple cider
    • Ice
    • 1 ½ ounces chilled ginger beer
    • 1 lime wedge
    • 1 slice of apple

Muddle the sliced ginger and simple syrup in a shaker. Add the rum, apple cider and ice. Shake well. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass and top with the ginger beer. Garnish with an apple slice and lime wedge if you wish. (Find this recipe at Food and Wine)

Apple Orchards
If the first cold snap sends you running to the apple orchard for cider and donuts, or you just fall for all things apple, spend a quiet weekend afternoon sipping apple sangria. Refreshing and delicious, apple sangria combines white wine, apple cider, seasonal fruit and, sometimes, a hint or vanilla or caramel vodka. You can find a collection of recipes online, but we love this combination.

Caramel Apple Sangria

• • • 1 750 ml bottle of Pinot Grigio (or your favorite mild white wine)
    • 1 cup caramel flavored vodka
    • 6 cups apple cider
    • 2 medium apples, one green/one red, cored and sliced
    • 1 medium apple chopped
    • Cinnamon sticks (optional)
    • Combine wine, vodka and apple cider in a glass pitcher. Stir. Add sliced apples.
    • Serve over ice and chopped apple in a glass. Garnish with cinnamon stick if desired.

Thanksgiving Dinner
When thoughts turn to Thanksgiving dinner replete with cranberries, jellied and sauced, this drink is the perfect complement.  Whiskey Sour lovers will flip for the fall colors and taste of the Cranberry Whiskey Sour!

Cinnamon stick infused, cranberry simple syrup combines with whiskey for a beverage so delicious, you won’t know if you should pair it with turkey dinner for Thanksgiving or instead of your afternoon tea with a scone!

Cranberry & Cinnamon Whiskey Sour

• • • 2 cups fresh cranberries
    • 2 cups water
    • 2 cups sugar
    • 2 cinnamon sticks
    • 3/4 cup bourbon or whiskey
    • 1/2 cup lemon juice
    • 1/4 cup orange juice
    • 1/4 cup lime juice
    • Ice cubes & cocktail shaker for mixing

In a medium-sized pot add cranberries, water, sugar, and cinnamon sticks. Heat over a medium flame, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries have burst open and can easily be stirred into the syrup, resulting in a smooth consistency. This will take about 10 minutes. Once done, remove syrup from heat. Fit a large bowl with a fine mesh strainer and strain the simple syrup, leaving all of the large chunks and skin behind. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before using.

When ready to make your cocktails, add 3/4 cup simple syrup, whiskey, lemon juice, orange juice, lime juice, and a large handful of ice to a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Divide into 4 glasses and serve at once. (From Baker by Nature) Serves 4

Warm Beverages & Roaring Fires
If you live in a region where autumn cool snaps don’t come until later, if at all, you’ll love the feelings of fall brought to mind by warm and spicy mulled wine.

What could be easier to prepare for a gathering than a specialty drink you can prepare and let simmer for hours. It only gets better with age! Make this super-easy recipe at home with your favorite bottle of wine (this recipe calls for red, but you could experiment with white.)

Mulled Wine

• • • 1 (750 ml) bottle red wine
    • 1 orange, sliced
    • 1/4 cup brandy (optional)
    • 1/4 cup honey or sugar
    • 8 whole cloves
    • 2 cinnamon sticks
    • 2 star anise

Combine all ingredients in a non-aluminum saucepan, and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, and let simmer for at least 15 minutes. Strain, and serve warm.*You can also place the oranges, cloves, cinnamon, and star anise in a cheesecloth. Then simply strain and pull out the bundle when ready.

Hay Rides
It is said that the hayride—sitting in an open wagon or sleigh atop bales of hay—is a fall leisure activity that originated in Kansas. They are good, old-fashioned fun for all ages—or until the old bones don’t appreciate the bumpitty-bump of a wagon.

Celebrate hayride season with a delicious Autumn Old Fashioned like this one from Maker’s Mark.

Old Fashioned

• • • 1 ½ parts Maker’s Mark^®  Bourbon
    • Splash of water
    • 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
    • 1 tsp sugar
    • Orange slice
    • Maraschino cherry garnish

For Classic Old Fashioned: Dissolve or muddle sugar with a splash of water in an Old Fashioned glass. Fill glass ¾ full of ice. Add Maker’s Mark^® Bourbon and bitters and stir.

Garnish with orange slice and maraschino cherry. For a Muddled Old Fashioned: Muddle sugar, bitters, orange, cherry and water in an Old Fashioned glass. Remove the orange rind and fill glass ¾ full of ice. Add Maker’s Mark^® Bourbon and stir.

Delectable Deserts 
If the fall equinox calls to mind tables laden with festive cookies, cakes and pies shared with company, you’ll love this dessert drink. Its blend of coffee and maple flavors and the richness of heavy cream mean you and your guests can drink your dessert tonight.

Maple Vodka Espresso Dessert Cocktail

• • • 2 oz. Vermont Gold Maple Vodka
    • 1 oz. espresso
    • 1 oz. Kahlua
    • 1 oz. heavy cream

Combine all ingredients over ice, shake and strain into chilled martini glass. Garnish with grated nutmeg.

Fall Festivals
No fall would be complete without caramel apples. Maybe you spent hours with mom or grandma in the kitchen, melting caramels and dipping apples before carefully setting them on wax paper to harden. Or maybe you got your caramel apples at the local fall festival where they had been lovingly prepared by the church ladies’ group. Exchange your caramel apple memories for a Caramel Apple Martini brought to you by The Cocktail Project. They blend the best flavors of fall in a pretty glass for fall feelings anytime.

Caramel Apple Martini

• • • 2 parts DeKuyper® Pucker Sour Apple Schnapps
    • 2 parts Pinnacle ® Original Vodka
    • 1 part DeKuyper® Buttershots Schnapps

Combine in shaker with ice, shake, strain into martini glass and serve.

The Great Pumpkin 
When fall isn’t autumn, but Pumpkin Spice Season combined with memories of the Great Pumpkin and trick-or-treating, and you believe there is no such thing as too much pumpkin, you MUST try Fulton’s Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liquor. The Great Southern Pumpkin blends the southern taste of bourbon with pumpkin pie in a glass.

Great Southern Pumpkin

• • • 2 oz. Fulton’s Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liquor
    • 1 oz. Honey Flavored Bourbon

Pour Fulton’s Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liquor onto ice in a rocks glass, add bourbon. Stir and serve.

Some people view autumn as a goodbye, a time to reflect on summers passed. Other’s see fall as a quiet, preparation stage before the dormancy of winter and rebirth in spring. However you feel about fall, take the time to enjoy the beauty of softly-filtered golden sunlight, crisp mornings, frost in areas preparing for winter, and the uplifting times that happen when relaxation, friends, family and traditions combine.

Dismiss agonizing thoughts of the items left on your to-do list and think about the words of Henry David Thoreau, “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”