Mix cocktails in the comfort of your home
Stir the cocktail craze into the maelstrom of entertaining at home and what do you get? Maybe panic. It's stressful enough for hosts who have to make food, decorate the house, and figure out where to put the ice and how to stash the coats. It's no longer enough to lay in wines and chill beer and let guests serve themselves in little plastic cups.
Now there's a new complication: You have to address the cocktail component of your party. Otherwise, while you're opening bottles of pinot, guests who troll the coolest night spots might find their way to your pantry, searching for fixings for Cosmopolitans. And suddenly you'll realize that the bar -- pun intended -- has been raised.
One of those pushing the new standard is Daniel Karp, director of marketing and development of the Ellie Fund, who lives in the South End with his fiancee, Samantha House. They entertain often in their loft on Harrison Avenue, and cocktails are always part of the festivities. ''Generally, we do some sort of martini, premixed," he says. ''We really like to make sure that people have a fun cocktail." The drinks might contain cranberry juice, melon, even herbs. The winter season is ushering in ideas of something ''warmer," perhaps with cinnamon and nutmeg. ''My fiancee is a huge eggnog fan," Karp says.
Loft guests -- usually 10 to 30 people -- are greeted at the door with a cocktail in a martini glass. Karp thinks the drinks ''can diffuse the tension" of entering a room of possible strangers. After that first round, partygoers are on their own for refills. Providing cocktails instead of cracking open a few beers is ''more work on the host, sure," says Karp. But it ''shows the host spent some time planning."
If you're wondering how this fashion for mixed libations came about, blame the pink and frilly Cosmopolitan, says Jim McCarthy, whose business, The DrinkLink, provides bartenders for caterers and parties. The latest drink, McCarthy says, is a crantini made with white cranberry juice, lemon vodka, and a fresh cranberry dropped into the glass. The cocktail craze makes having a bartender de rigueur for parties of more than 20 people, McCarthy says. He suggests limiting the cocktail selection to one or two favorites, although some hosts insist on a full bar.
Dan Mathieu, one of the owners of Max Ultimate Food caterers, agrees that there's a rush back to specialty drinks. ''It sets a different mood," Mathieu says, ''and makes a party more festive." Candy cane martinis and green apple martinis are recent requests, says the caterer, whose holiday business is limited only by the number of weekend days this month.
''A lot of our clients are in their early 30s," he says. Usually ''we prepare our cocktails back at the shop so they're consistent through the night." Even so, it takes training for a bartender to serve cocktails properly.
A recent party Mathieu catered was extravagant. Guests could choose from beers and whiskeys at a Bavarian-themed bar; there were frothy cocktails from an all-pink bar; a wintry bar offered snowball martinis -- orange, lemon, or raspberry snow cones with liquor.
It costs no more to hire bartenders to make specialty drinks than to pour beer or wine, says Jason Rothe, owner of New Dimension Event Staffing. Each bartender earns from $20 to $24 an hour with a four-hour minimum. Unless a client has a full array of bar equipment, though, the specialty drinks are limited to one or two. ''We're getting calls this holiday season for private house parties," Rothe says. Many want Cosmopolitans or chocolate or apple martinis. Rothe, who also owns Drinkmaster bartending school, finds that some party customers are interested in an interactive mixology course, where they can entertain and learn to mix fancy cocktails themselves.
After mastering Cosmo 101, what do you pour your candy cane martini in? Well, plastic glasses certainly won't do. ''Sex and the City" changed the sales of barware, says Keith Sherwin, a sales associate at Williams-Sonoma in Copley Place. ''When the show was going off the air," he says, ''we couldn't keep [martini glassware] on the shelves."
The store sells several types of cocktail glasses as well as seltzer bottles, ice buckets, and martini mixes, and the line is expanding, Sherwin says.
Although the barware line is a popular seller year-round, Christmas gifts perk up sales. Robert Fathman, chef of Azure in the Lenox hotel and
There's a final quandary for the cocktail aficionado, whether you're hiring a bartender to do the shaking or managing it on your own. When the party's over and the last glass is washed and dried, where do those oversize martini glasses get stored? It's a problem Karp and his fiancee wrestle with. They both brought cocktail glasses to their relationship and have picked up more along the way. The collection has ''grown on its own," Karp says.
Their solution: ''We put it in cabinet space that we desperately need for other things."
