A magic flavor-changing drink

Peek inside 'The Bartender's Pantry'—a new cocktail book from three bar pros.

Ten Speed Press is giving away one copy of The Bartender’s Pantry to a lucky US or Canada-based What to Drink subscriber this week. Make sure you’re subscribed by August 11—feel free to forward to friends and spread the word. Winner will be notified by email.

_{Disclosure: I may receive a small commission when you make purchases via affiliate links below.}

It’s a fun party trick to pull out some bottles of amaro after dinner, offering a taste of a few different options to friends who haven’t tried them all before. You can even stash these bottles in the freezer, so the digestivo pours luxuriously thick and cool.

But I’m always looking for ways to highlight these after-dinner sippers in cocktails, too: using citrusy Montenegro in the place of orange liqueur in a twist on the margarita, combining any amaro 50-50 with high-proof rye or mezcal, pairing one with sweet vermouth, lemon, and mint in an oddball smash.

This is probably why the Southern Cola in The Bartender’s Pantry—a new book by Jim Meehan and Bart Sasso with Emma Janzen—caught my eye.

Many amari have Coke-like flavors, so combining them with cola makes tons of sense. There’s a reason why you can’t go anywhere without running into a Fernet con coca in Argentina—the combo works.

The book by Meehan and co., which gets into the delightfully nerdy nitty-gritty of all the nonalcoholic ingredients that often go into cocktails, recommends that you make your cola from scratch, flavoring it with ginger, green cardamom, cacao nibs, cloves, and kola nuts, and brightening with citric and malic acids.

Even if you don’t want to do that particular project, though, this drink is worth trying with store-bought cola. I used the glass-bottle Mexican Coke to good effect; nothing’s easier than adding cold soda to a chilled glass with a pour of amaro and an ice cube…but we’re not actually talking about a regular ice cube here. Greg Best, who created the drink, makes ice cubes with slightly diluted lime juice for this concoction, giving you a cocktail that changes flavor as you sip it.

Photograph: AJ Meeker

The result is like drinking Coke in higher resolution. Where the classic soda is pretty straightforwardly sweet, Amaro Ciociaro brings out hints of chocolate and roasty coffee while deepening the soda’s caramel and orangey rhubarb flavors. The amaro’s licorice and sassafras notes make the cola more interesting, and leave you with a crisp, dry finish.

Meanwhile, the lime juice ice cubes make the drinker brighter and brighter as you go, giving the cocktail more freshness with each passing minute.

Southern Cola

By Greg Best, reprinted with permission from The Bartender’s Pantry by Jim Meehan and Bart Sasso with Emma Janzen, copyright © 2024. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

Greg Best created this low-proof highball for his first cocktail menu at the now-shuttered Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta, in the summer of 2004. “My goal for serving it was to expose guests to the as-then-arcane category of amaro by utilizing a very familiar and beloved ingredient with broad accessibility—Atlanta’s own Coca-Cola—as a Trojan Horse of sorts.” He came up with the lime ice cubes as a “time release of citrus that allowed a drink that walked dangerously close to being too sweet to finish tart and refreshing.”

Maggie’s Note: The book calls for homemade cola here—you’ll have to pick up a copy to get the details of that fun little project. But for a simpler rendition, use your favorite store-bought option.

YIELDS 1 SERVING (plus 6 extra lime cubes)

Lime ice cubes
6 oz. fresh lime juice
2 oz. filtered water

Add the lime juice and filtered water to a mixing or measuring glass. Pour the mixture into seven 1¼-inch ice cube molds of a silicone ice tray. Place the tray in the freezer. Once frozen solid, store covered in a freezer bag for up to 1 month.

Cocktail
4 oz. cola, chilled (see Maggie’s note above)
1½ ounces Amaro Ciociaro
1 (1¼-inch) Lime Ice Cube (see above)
1 lime wheel, for garnish

Add the cola and amaro to a chilled glass (Best calls for a Turkish chimney glass.) Add the ice cube and garnish with the lime wheel.

Can you use another amaro?

I assumed that pretty much any amaro would work, but the more different pairings I tried, the more I preferred the book’s version made with Ciociaro. I think the lime juice that’s added to the drink as the cube melts down changes the calculation, so that caramel-leaning amari are the way to go.

Cynar didn’t meld as well, and Braulio pushed the flavors more medicinal. I did like a version with Averna, which makes the drink more root-beery, and Montenegro, which pops with saffron and citrusy tea, but I’d recommend tracking down Ciociaro if possible.

What if I don’t have that specific ice cube tray?

You’ll notice that the cubes above are frozen in 1¼-inch ice cube molds. This level of precision makes sense because the cube is designed to melt and contribute an exact amount of lime juice to the drink.

That said, the world will not end^* if you freeze the lime juice mixture in a standard ice cube tray—mine made about 10 cubes instead of 7, meaning they were each a little smaller, and since I love my drinks tart, I enjoyed the drink with two cubes instead of one.

^{*I mean, the world may still end, but these particular ice cubes will not be solely to blame.}