I love, love, LOVE this time of year — the nip in the air, the colorful falling leaves, all the cozy campfires — but there’s more to fall than simply curling into my nubby sweaters. When Autumn ushers in her insignia bounty of fruits like pear and apple and spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg, I crave cocktails that smack of the season, that highlight fall flavors. I want tipples that warm my palate, something peppered with sapid flair. I am looking for sumptuous seasonal sips.
With these criteria in mind, I reached out to the folks at Pineapple Ink Tavern, a downtown establishment known for its house made syrups and high-end well liquor brands. Basically, a place where the cocktails are anything but basic. PIT in turn promised an especially gratifying cocktail adventure. Bartender Bailey Logue professed that the PIT gang collaborated to create a menu of seven drinks that feel like fall. Music to my ears. So I plopped into a goldenrod leather stool across her bar with confidence my cocktail dreams would come true.
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Bailey started my flight with a tall and icy gin-based cocktail called Rosemary’s Baby. Cozy yet refreshing, it’s comprised of two botanically-nuanced gins, fall spice simple syrup, lime and soda. The rosemary garnish provides a delightful evergreen nose that accentuates the gins’ botanicals. While this cocktail is much less diabolical than its Roman Polanski namesake, it is nonetheless deliciously otherworldly.
Next was The Great Pumpkin, served in a graceful coupe glass. In the fashion of a pumpkin spice martini, this sweet and creamy sipper is composed of vodka, espresso liqueur, pumpkin and cream. It will have you licking your lips and asking for more. Whether you choose to drink it as an apéritif or dessert — or both — is up to you.
A Hot Mezz is a mezcal-based mango margarita with a spritz of lime. The mezcal’s headiness provides an underlying layer of smoke, and the jalapeño syrup brings a welcomed sweet heat. Be sure to lick the Tajin rim, the perfect chili-lime foil to the juicy mango. And like a box of Cracker Jack, it comes with a prize: a bonus piece of dried mango.
Put an evening at Pineapple Ink Tavern on your fall cocktail to-do list, where you will find a cornucopia of curated cocktails.
And don’t forget to tell them nakedepicurean sent you. ????
Pineapple Ink Tavern is located at 1002 Broad St.
Ann Beth Strelec is known around town as the Naked Epicurean, sampling the finest cocktails known to Augustans. Find out about adult beverages at The Augusta Press on the first and third Friday or on Instagram @NakedEpicurean
