Defining precisely when summer turns to fall vexes those who favor crisp borders. It’s sweaters today, T-shirts tomorrow. Repeat, until one night the sweaters win out for the season.
The shift is more clearly defined in the glass, at least for me. There comes a point, as daylight diminishes and nights grow longer, when something within me dictates that it’s time for fall drinks. I know it’s not logical, but I tend to think of these as “adult drinks” when compared with the callow, wanton cocktails of summer—the spritzes and gin and tonics served in tall glasses crowded with ice.
Just as there’s a fall palette of colors, certain flavors satisfy my seasonal palate. They’re duskier, deeper, more bass than treble. What they have in common is that they warm you from the inside.
One cocktail that ticks those boxes comes from the Cooper, a new luxury hotel that opened this past spring on the waterfront in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. At its restaurant the Crossing, which offers what it describes as “coastal Mediterranean cuisine with a Lowcountry twist,” beverage director Cameron Nadler built a bar program that plays off that theme, with cocktails featuring Greek liqueurs like ouzo and mastiha, and evocative flavors like fig. Among these, the Midnight on the Med nods to the Mediterranean but also stirs in a healthy dose of local autumn.
“When it comes to creating cocktails, I’m always trying to flip the script slightly,” Nadler says. In this case, he liked the idea of starting with something “adjacent” to the Vieux Carré—a New Orleans classic that also makes a fine fall drink—but basing it on gin, a spirit typically associated with warm weather. “You have that nice juniper and citrus from the gin, but then with the cognac and everything, it adds a caramel kind of fall flavor.”
This drink stacks its fall notes like firewood. Beneath the basso profundo of the cognac, Bénédictine liqueur adds familiar-yet-not suggestions of candied orange peel and warm baking spices, while dashes of Angostura and chocolate bitters subtly tease the impending holidays.
But it’s the fig that identifies this as having set sail from a Mediterranean port. Fresh fig season runs into fall, but Nadler uses dried figs for his syrup, which layers in a more intense sweetness with a hint of earthiness. The syrup isn’t hard to make, or you can order premade versions online.
The final touch as it’s served at the Crossing is a fluttering layer of cherrywood smoke atop the drink. Feel free to skip this step, but if you’re so inclined, cocktail smoking guns and kits are widely available. While serving a drink whispering with smoke might be seen as gilding the lily, it’s also surprisingly evocative, bringing to mind the first backyard fires of fall as you mentally prepare for the winter ahead.