The Best Holiday Themed Cocktails to Get You in the Spirit

At Downtown LA’s Birds and Bees, you’ll find an array of cocktails featuring spirits like Japanese whisky, sherry, and infused mezcal, among many others.

For the holiday season, this 1950s-themed bar hidden in a basement behind a parking lot will offer Christmas Palm Tree Eggnog. The nog is house-made, and it’s combined with rye whiskey, mezcal, vanilla bean, and dried Arbol chili pepper for a spicy kick.

Located in downtown Austin’s warehouse district, the swanky Roosevelt Room has been serving a mixture of classic and modern cocktails since 2015, with innovative takes on standards like the Cosmo and the Long Island Iced Tea.

This winter stop by for the Milk Punch, sort of a riff on the classic combination of milk and cookies. It’s made with whole milk whey, rum, bourbon, cognac, bitters, and chai tea.

Venture to the epicenter of bourbon this winter for a holiday cocktail made with rum instead. Louisville’s Decca restaurant is located in the NuLu district, and downstairs from the dining room you’ll find the brick and limestone Cellar Lounge.

The dipping temperatures should put you in the mood for the Winter Warmer, made with dark and light rum, stout beer, vanilla liqueur, egg white, and garnished with espresso and cocoa nibs.

There’s a lot of holiday cocktailing going on at the Kimpton Everly Hotel this year. The pop-up bar Miracle lands there, one of over 80 locations around the world, with cocktails like Bad Santa hot milk punch and the Die Hard-themed Yippee Ki Yay, Mother F****r made with sweet potato rum and marshmallow orgeat.

Also, at Ever Bar in the lobby overlooking Hollywood, try the Genger Bread Man cocktail, made with genever, amaro, absinthe, ginger, and cinnamon, and garnished with a gingerbread cookie.

The Lotte New York Palace is a long-standing beacon of luxury in the city, especially during the holidays when the hotel is festively adorned. Guests and passersby can make a pit stop at hotel bars Troubles Trust or Tavern on 51 on a chilly evening for the Hot Buttered Rum.

This classic cocktail is made with Ron Zacapa rum and a spoonful of batter mix—an actual batter made from brown sugar, butter, honey, and baking spices. It’s sweet, buttery, and warming.

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Southern charm is on display at Charleston’s brand-new Parcel 32, a restaurant that opened this past June in a restored house built in 1837.

Stop by at happy hour this winter for a smash burger, pecan meal hush puppies, and the Holiday Spice cocktail. This drink is made with bourbon, spiced pear liqueur, apple butter, and nutmeg and a dried apple chip as garnish, incorporating seasonal flavors into a comforting mix.

Not all of the good food and drink in Las Vegas are found in the casinos. Venture over to the sleekly designed Andiron Steakhouse in the Downtown Summerlin mall to experience winter in a desert with the Whiskey Toasted Almond cocktail.

The drink brings together flavors of the season as well as some tropical notes, combining J.P. Wiser’s spiced vanilla whisky, RumChata (a rum cream liqueur), coconut, and almond.

If that piney Christmas tree scent is what most evokes the holidays for you, then L.A.’s Redbird has a winter cocktail you should try. This homey Downtown spot serves modern American cuisine in the rectory of a former cathedral.

The key to The Woods cocktail is the St. George Terroir Gin, a spirit from a Northern California distillery with strong pine notes. Combined with that are vermouth, falernum, Douglas fir brandy, and lime—“a gin gimlet that took a walk through an evergreen forest,” as it’s described.

Lower Manhattan’s BlackTail gets its inspiration from Prohibition-era Havana, incorporating premium rum into many of its tropical-style cocktails.

This winter you can try out the bar’s take on a holiday cocktail with the Drag Queen, a mix of Santa Teresa 1796 rum, maple syrup, and apple pie-flavored whiskey, topped with a little bit of hard cider. This drink brings a little bit of the tropics to your winter doldrums.

The Monarch Bar is the place to drink in Kansas City, where you can relax on velvet couches or watch the bartenders behind the beautiful white marble bar.

This winter head to the “Mid-America” section of the beautifully designed menu and order an Angry Elf. This cocktail is made with tequila, red pepper, prickly pear, and Lambrusco, combining flavors of smoky, spicy, and sweet in this holiday treat.

There’s a lot to do at Nashville’s Pinewood besides drinking—bocce ball, bowling, and swimming by an Airstream trailer when the weather is hot.

When the weather is cold, however, the folks behind the bar can make you a Mississippi Leg Hound, a name inspired by the holiday movie classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The cocktail is made in the flip style, with amaro, bourbon, heavy cream, and garnished with nutmeg and a cinnamon stick.

There are many locations of this upscale steakhouse chain throughout the United States, and D.C.’s Del Frisco’s Grille has something sweet and festive on the menu for the holiday season.

The White Chocolate Candy Cane Martini is really more candy than cocktail, made with vanilla vodka, white chocolate, peppermint schnapps, and a crushed candy cane garnish. Maybe save this one for an after dinner drink.