Cocktail of the Week: Cocktail Academy’s Oscar-Inspired Drinks

Ahead of this year’s Oscars ceremony, Los Angeles’ Cocktail Academy has come up with a series of drinks inspired by the Academy Awards Best Picture nominees for you to sip on at your own awards season parties.

Fit for a Queen, inspired by The Favourite

1.5 oz gin
0.5 oz strawberry-infused blanc vermouth
0.75 oz fresh lemon juice
0.5 oz earl grey syrup
Champagne to top

To create this Oscar-inspired cocktail, first add all ingredients, except champagne, to a shaker tin and fill it with ice. Shake then double strain into a flute. Top the glass up with champagne and add a strawberry slice as the garnish. Explaining the inspiration behind the drink, the founder of the Cocktail Academy, Matt Landes, tells us: “The Favourite is all about competing for the affections and access to power. Looking at the time-period when the film takes place and the cheeky nature of Lanthimos’ film, we were inspired to great a drink that was decadent and over the top. The fizzy nature and dark tea notes represent the dual facades the two leads (Emma Stone and Rachel Weiss) must play when tending to Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and her needs.”

Greener Pastures, inspired by Green Book

1.5 oz gin
0.5 oz green chartreuse
0.75 oz fresh lime juice
0.75 oz peach schnapps

Make Greener Pastures at home by adding all the ingredients to your shaker tin and filling it with ice, then shaking and double straining into a cup glass. Garnish the cocktail with a ripe, sliced Georgia peach. “When developing drinks for Green Book we thought it would be important to connect two seemingly opposing flavors into one cohesive drink,” Landes explains. “Much like how Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) forge a great relationship by the end of this film, our drink becomes more balanced and nuanced as it comes together.”

Vibranium, inspired by Black Panther

1.5 oz cognac
0.5 oz hibiscus-infused absinthe
1 oz fresh lime juice
0.75 oz sorrel-cherimoya syrup
0.5 dashes of butterfly pea flower extract
Red sorrel to garnish
Black lava salt to garnish

Before making this cocktail, first coat the rim of your glass with black lava salt. Once you’ve done this, add all the other ingredients to your shaker tin and fill with ice. Shake hard, then pour over crushed ice and garnish with red sorrel. “We had a lot of fun when coming up with this drink,” says Landes. “Given Black Panther has a lot of elements of fantasy we knew we could create something a bit more out of the box. Using Vibranium and Wakanda as our inspirations the result is a drink that is exotic and sexy with underlying rich flavors like cherimoya, anise and hibiscus.”

Let the Waves Wash Over, inspired by Roma

1.5 oz Tequila Don Julio
0.5 oz Cherry Heering
0.25 oz Islay Scotch
2 dashes of Mole Bitters

Create this drink by adding all the ingredients to a mixing glass and filling it with ice, then stirring until properly chilled. Stain the drink over a large ice cube and garnish with a grapefruit floret. On the inspiration behind this drink, Landes says: “Director Alfonso Cuaron’s sweeping narrative set in Mexico City was a touching and personal tribute that we loved this year. We played with a cocktail called Sea Way from Michael Madrusan at New York’s Little Branch, which to us represents the Sofia family’s trip to the sea to wash away their collective pain. We shot the drink in black and white to play homage to the imagery in the movie.”

cocktailacademyla.com