A New Kind Of Spirit For National Cocktail Day

It’s National Cocktail Day and with the new world order changing every couple of days, you probably need a stiff drink. Enter Casa Lotos, a Mexican spirit made from sotol, an ancient wild native plant of Chihuahua. This newly emergent brand is produced by a fourth-generation “sotolero” and is showing well in prestigious awards competitions. In 2024, the spirit took home “Best of Class” and was a “Double Gold” winner in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition based on taste and its four pillars: authenticity, artisanal production, organic cultivation and sustainability. The brand’s motto is “Wild Harvested. Hand Crafted” and represents a fresh alternative to tequila and mezcal.

Here are three cocktails conceived by mixologists testing out the spirit in New York City, with a variety of venues— a Korean steakhouse, a modern Middle-Eastern bistro and a neighborhood seafood spot.

The Gui-tini

Ingredients:

Casa Lotos blanco sotol

Adray blended scotch

Tres Tribus cuishe mezcal

Steak-dripping infused Spanish vermouth

Orange bitters

Orange essence

Stir all ingredients together in a bar/drink-mixing glass and pour into a martini glass

Garnish with house-made beef jerky (available online)

Recipe courtesy of Gui Steakhouse

ECHOS

Ingredients:

2 dashes Scrappy’s Firewater Bitters

.50 oz agave syrup

.25 oz Empirical Ayuuk

.25 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao

1oz Casa Lotos Sotol

1 oz blanco tequila

Use a iSi culinary whipper (or similar) to create Passion fruit silan foam (see below)

Mix all in shaker and pour over ice in rocks glass. Top with the foam in the dispenser.

Recipe courtesy of Frena

For the foam: 150ml lime juice, 300 ml passionfruit syrup, 200 silan syrup, 3 g Magic Foam (pastry product), Maldon salt. Mix silan and Chinola (passion fruit syrup) with lime salt and Foam Magic

Margarita Del Mar

Ingredients:

4 dashes Nori tincture (see below)

1 oz. lime juice

.5 oz. Yuzu Honey blend (see below)

.25 oz. Alma Finca orange liqueur

1 oz. Casa Lotos Sotol

1 oz. Tequila Don Fulano

Shake all ingredients and strain into a rocks class over a king cube. Garnish with a Nori chip.

Recipe courtesy of Time and Tide

For the nori tincture:

20g Nori, 1000ml Everclear. Place in vacuum seal bag or container. Let infuse 24 hours. Strain through flexible sieve. Bottle, label and store for use.