TO BEGIN WITH, I love infusing. To infuse vodka with a fresh ingredient  is to simply turn your favorite food into your favorite cocktail. For instance, if  fresh apples go into vodka, in time the vodka will taste like fresh  apples. This goes on and on with spices, vegetables, herbs, and various combinations of  unlikely suspect.

 For instance:

 

JUNE--Granny Smith Green Apple Vodka

This is the best vodka I've ever made.

If you work at McDonald's and go home at night to make yourself a quarter-pounder for dinner, then you really love McDonald's. When I go home, I infuse vodka using organic, natural  green apples. By far my greatest success (so far) is Granny Smith Green Apple Vodka.

I can make any cocktail I've ever heard of at home. I have the ingredients to make any cocktail from any era going back to ancient Babylon—seriously. But at the end of my Friday, this is what I reach for.

Virtually no vodka on the market uses fresh ingredients. If they did, then they would shout it from the highest rooftop. ALL NATURAL, ALL ORGANIC, NO SUGAR ADDED! NO PERFUMES, DYE OR ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS! They can't say this because it's not true. I can say it.

No sugar is needed and the tartness balances naturally. Purists value clarity of color over flavor. I value flavor over anything else. And while some bartenders grimace at the thought of a vodka martini on the rocks (because vodka snobs think of this as diluting) what I make myself hold bright, authentic flavors whether straight up or over ice. 

When my workweek—finally!!!--ends, I come home to kiss my wife, I look in on my baby boy asleep, and then I can relax. She and I sit and talk. I mostly listen as she tells me about her day, her work, our baby boy, over two glasses of Granny Smith vodka.

 

JULY—Cilantro Vodka

Too hot and too much rain: bad for summer weather but good for rich, green cilantro. Local farmers in upstate New York and New Jersey (don't judge) hail their best crop in a decade. Crisp, sharp, delicious. Natural earth notes and a finish of light pepper.

My family caught some good weather and adjourned from the sweltering concrete jungle to celebrate pastoral pure sunshine on the Harlem Meer in Central Park. Heirloom tomatos and carmelized onions on French bagette. Crisp kale chips. Gourmet sausage. 

Washed down with glasses of dry, fresh cilantro vodka. As my son chases pidgeons and we threw a ball around. We took a break and I joined the rest of my family for a cilantro vodka on the rocks. My best day in Central Park.

 

AUGUST--Montauk Spiced Rum

One month ago, I saw Montauk for the first time. I was raised in a quiet meadow of a southern beach town, so this felt like getting back to my roots. Sand dunes and open water deserve respect and get it here.

Astonishingly, from jaded, harried New Yorkers. In a small downtown square, my wife and son and I find a small seafood house. My son ate fish, which is rare, a snow-white piece of scalar. She and I had a thick stew made for a man's man. Blocks of potato, crushed carrot and celery in the stock, along with all manner of shellfish.

After I finished a pint of local micro-brew, the sun had gone down and the breezes blew cooler and as slow as the waves. I asked the bartender if there was a fisherman's rum or local night-warmer for flasks out on the seas.

Wrong question. He glared at me, looking down through thick eyebrows pulled low. No professional fisherman, I was corrected, drinks on the job.

Oh, I said.

Further, I was asked, if I drank when I was working; I replied that I was a bartender in Manhattan, so drinking IS my business.

On the drive home my mind started building an idea for a spiced rum to capture my trip to the Hamptons, a culinary scrapbook of Montauk for the first time. It was a perfect day, old and new. Land and sea. New England's traditions mixed just right with Manhattan's cocktail iconoclassicism. Cranberries, cinnamon sticks, citrus zest balanced with allspice berries, sweetened only slightly with fresh pear.

 

(I sure think all these are good as they are, but if you’d like a cocktail recipe for any of these, then all you have to do is ask.)

 (If you enjoy mixology, and think you know a good cocktail for any of these liqueurs, then let me know.)