My Favorite Holiday Cocktail: the Cranberry Daiquiri

I’m thrilled to be able to make this festive Gramercy Tavern favorite at home, and now you can too.

My birthday falls right in the thick of the holiday season. For many years, I had a ritual: I would treat myself to a solo dinner at Gramercy Tavern, either on my birthday or in the days or weeks leading up to it, since I would often be out of town on the day itself.

I would, invariably, sit at the bar and order much too much food and perhaps two too many drinks, and have a fabulous time.

There weren’t any particular food-menu items that were part of the tradition, although I probably ordered the duck liver mousse, a perennial favorite of mine, for more than one birthday feast. The only thing that remained consistent over the years was that I would always start the evening off with a cranberry daiquiri, the restaurant’s wintertime twist on the rum-based classic cocktail. It returns to the menu year after year; it’s back on there now.

Cranberry daiquiris at Gramercy Tavern, 2017-2019

Why that specific cocktail? I find there’s just something perfect about the combination of flavors, evoking those of classic cranberry sauce: how the tart cranberry enhances the lime, or maybe vice versa; how the winter spice interacts with the molasses-y blackstrap rum; how an extra pop of citrus ties it all together. Besides, I’ve always loved a good daiquiri twist.

But the 2020 holiday season found me skipping my holidaytime visit to my favorite restaurant. I missed its joyful conviviality, the holiday decorations dangling from the ceiling and a tree adorning the far corner of the bar. I missed ordering two desserts all for myself (and, tbh, I missed visibly horrifying any men who witnessed me doing so, an inevitable experience). I missed drinking my cranberry daiquiri.

Sitting at home one evening that winter, I realized that while I might not be able to recreate a Gramercy Tavern meal or atmosphere in my apartment, perhaps I could do something about the cocktail situation. I hit up the internet, hoping for a miracle.

And glory be—there it was: the recipe for the cocktail I was craving, straight from The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook. (The link where I found it is no longer live; thank goodness I copied the recipe into a Word doc.) I grabbed a bag of cranberries from my fridge and got to work.

Did it taste as good as I remembered? Almost. The context was missing: the conviviality, the holiday cheer, the luxury of having someone else make it for me—all of which make any drink more delicious. But it was still fantastic.

The following year, when my favorite neighbors were planning a small holiday cocktail party, they asked for my drink suggestions; the cranberry daiquiri was an obvious choice. They served it to great acclaim (and also served a manhattan made with walnut bitters, if I recall correctly—a perfect yin-yang of winter cocktails). Here, finally, was the conviviality and the holiday cheer, as well as the great food to accompany the drinks (one of the neighbors also works in food media). The cranberry daiquiri has become one of their favorite holiday cocktails, too.

And now it can be one of yours.

Cranberry Daiquiri
as created and served at Gramercy Tavern

2 ounces Goslings black strap rum (this particular rum is crucial)
1 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed
1 ounce cranberry syrup (see below)
Garnish: poached cranberries (see below)

Add the rum, lime juice, and cranberry syrup into a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into a martini or coupe glass and garnish with poached cranberries.

Cranberry syrup:
Add 2 cups simple syrup (see below), 4 wide strips orange zest, and 2 cinnamon sticks to a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. (Go ahead and throw other spices in there, too, if you like: a couple of whole cloves, an allspice berry, a bit of a nutmeg seed.) Add 2 cups cranberries, reduce heat to low-medium, and cook until all of the cranberries have burst. Remove from heat and allow mixture to steep for a half-hour. Strain the mixture and discard the solids (press the solids only gently while straining), and chill before using.

Simple syrup:
Combine 1.5 cups granulated sugar and 1.5 cups water in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. (Do not allow to boil.) Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Poached cranberries:
Add 1/2 cup simple syrup, 2 wide strips orange zest, and 1 cinnamon stick to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Add 1/2 cup cranberries and reduce heat to low-medium, removing from heat as soon as a couple of berries have burst. Chill before using. (The resulting syrup will be too weak in cranberry flavor for use in this cocktail, but can be reserved for other uses if desired.)