2026: A Year in Cocktails - A New Beginning - Prologue (Grapefruit)

 Heh.

So yeah, today is the first day of my year in cocktails project.  I'll talk more about that later in the week.  Right now, I want to run down how 2025 ended and how 2026 began.

2025 ended with champagne.  'Nuff said.  I might have splashed some St Germain in there at some point but tha's about it, nothing fancy or notable.

But, 2026 began with THREE fantastic cocktails three nights in a row.

For Christmas, the hubs got me The Eras Pour, the Unofficial, Ultimate Taylor Swift Cocktail book and for that alone he should get a bit of a huzzah since he is most definitely not a fan but he LURVES me, he really LURVES me.  So I was paging through the book and came upon something called Careless Man's Careless daughter which used, among other things, grapefruit.  And hey, lookit, I just bought a grapefruit (one single grapefruit) the other day.  So I juiced that grapefruit and made that drink and holy shitsnacks it was fantastic!

But I was left with another six ounces or so of grapefruit juice and I decided I felt tiki, especially since, during a spate of housecleaning, I had uncovered our Lord of the Rings tiki mugs.  Did some Googling, found this site and made myself a Tiki Tonga Tang and folks, let me just tell you, this drink is DANGEROUSLY delicious.  I took a pic, but please please please do not expect me to make a habit of this, there will rarely be pics of drinks, sorry.

Last night I made a Hemingway Daiquiri which I had somehow never had before.  I used specs from Punch and was blown away.  Even the hubs liked it (typically his responses range from "I don't think I care for this" to "it's fine" so for him to say he actually liked a drink is a BIG DEAL.

I still have grapefruit juice leftover.  I might just make myself a dirty Greyhound with the rest of it and by dirty, all I mean is I ain't measuring shit, put that gin and that grapefruit in a glass with ice and that's IT.  So it might be a rare two drink night tonight, will have a Greyhound with dinner and make my first "on theme" drink for laters.  Yes.  This sounds like a plan.

2026: A Year in Cocktails - A New Beginning - Prologue (Grapefruit)