There is a certain category of cocktail that does not need to be respected. It does not need to be analyzed by a panel. It does not need to come in a coupe. It just needs to be cold, bright, easy to make, and the kind of drink that gets handed to a person who showed up at our kitchen counter on a Friday looking like they could use a break.
This is a list of fun vodka cocktails from Abiqua Spirit Distillery. The serious vodka cocktails have their place, and that place is most of our cocktail book. This piece is for the other place. We pour these all the time. We are not going to apologize for any of them.
What makes a vodka cocktail fun
Fun is not a tasting note. It is not really a flavor at all. It is the feeling of a drink that does not take itself too seriously, that has color in the glass, that gets people leaning in to ask what it is. A fun cocktail can absolutely also be a good cocktail. The two categories overlap a lot more than serious cocktail people will admit.
A few things help a vodka cocktail land in the fun category:
- Color. Pink, red, orange, blue. The eye drinks first.
- A good story. A name people recognize, or a name they want to ask about.
- An easy build. Something you can make for four people without setting up a station.
- A garnish that makes someone smile. A cherry on top, an orange wheel, a candy rim, a bright twist.
Silverton Vodka is built for this kind of drink. Potato vodka has body, a clean finish, and a soft creamy edge that holds up against sweet mixers without disappearing. It also makes a serious Martini, which we will write about another time.
The Dirty Shirley
The Dirty Shirley is the headline of the fun vodka category and we are not even close to embarrassed about it. The original Shirley Temple was vodka-free, invented for a kid actress in the 1930s. The Dirty Shirley adds the vodka the original always wanted. The result is grenadine-pink, fizzy, sweet, and kind of unhinged in the best way.
In our book it is one ounce of Silverton Vodka, a half ounce of Üla Orange Liqueur, a half ounce of grenadine, and three ounces of sparkling water, built over ice with a maraschino cherry and an orange slice. Five minutes. Looks like a million dollars. The Üla gives it warmth that the original was missing. Full recipe in the grid.
The Pink Martini
The Pink Martini is what happens when somebody decides a Martini glass should also be allowed to be raspberry colored. It is two ounces of Silverton Vodka, half an ounce of Üla, an ounce of raspberry syrup, and an ounce of lemon juice, shaken hard and strained into a chilled coupe with fresh raspberries dropped in.
It is not a Martini in any historically defensible sense. It is barely related to a Martini. It is a vodka sour with raspberry, presented in the glassware of a much more serious drink, and that joke is half of what makes it work. The other half is that it is genuinely delicious and you can drink three of them. Full recipe.
The Lemon Drop
The Lemon Drop is a drink that arrives with a sugar rim and refuses to apologize for it. Two ounces of Silverton Vodka, a half ounce of Üla, an ounce of fresh lemon juice, an ounce of simple syrup, all shaken hard and strained into a sugar-rimmed cocktail glass.
It is a vodka sour at heart. The sugar rim makes it look like dessert. The lemon makes it taste like a wake-up call. It is a strange combination on paper and an unbeatable combination in the glass, which is most of why it has stayed on cocktail menus since some bartender at Henry Africa’s in San Francisco invented it in the 1970s. Full recipe.
The Cosmopolitan
We have to include the Cosmopolitan. It is the most popular vodka cocktail of the last forty years, it carries a TV-show story everyone knows, and it is, despite the cultural baggage, a fundamentally well-built drink. One and a half ounces of Silverton Vodka, two ounces of cranberry juice, an ounce of Üla, a half ounce of fresh lime, shaken cold and strained into a chilled martini glass with a lime twist.
It is pink. It comes in a martini glass. It tastes great. None of those things are accidents. Full recipe, and there is a whole Journal piece on its origin story if you want the long version.
The Cape Cod
The Cape Cod is what happens when a bartender accepts that sometimes a person just wants vodka and cranberry juice in a glass with ice and a lime wedge. The Cape Cod accepts it gracefully. The drink is two ounces of Silverton Vodka, cranberry juice to the top, and a lime wedge.
There is no shake. There is no strain. There is no garnish theater. It takes thirty seconds to make and tastes the same way it has tasted for decades. The Cape Cod is the cocktail equivalent of a comfortable t-shirt and we are firmly in favor of it. Full recipe.
Gems in the Night
Gems in the Night is a house drink we put together for a New Year’s Eve party years ago and never took off the list. One ounce of Silverton Vodka, three quarters of an ounce of Üla, an ounce of blueberry-pomegranate syrup, a quarter ounce of fresh lime, all shaken hard and strained into a glass that has been perfumed with orange zest, then garnished with fresh blueberries and orange peel.
The whole point is the look. Deep purple liquid, blueberries floating, orange aroma in the rim. It is the drink we make when we want to put on a show without doing actual show work. Full recipe.
How to throw a vodka cocktail party
The easiest version: pick three from this list, get one good vodka, get fresh citrus, get the mixers, and prep the syrups in advance. A Dirty Shirley, a Cape Cod, and a Lemon Drop will cover almost anybody who walks through the door. If somebody asks for something fancier, make them a Cosmopolitan. If they want to be impressed, make them a Pink Martini or a Gems in the Night.
Cold ice is more important than expensive vodka. Fresh citrus is more important than fancy mixers. A garnish that takes ten extra seconds is what people remember. None of this is a secret. Most of being a good home bartender is just paying attention to the details that other people skip.
Worth a serious mention
There is one vodka cocktail too important to leave off any modern list: the Espresso Martini. It is not a fun drink in the same sense as a Dirty Shirley, but it is the cocktail of the decade by every measurable count, and a generation of drinkers reaches for it the way an earlier generation reached for the Cosmopolitan. We have a full piece on its history and how to make one well.
A short note on Silverton Vodka
These drinks all work better with a vodka that has body. Silverton Vodka, made by Abiqua Spirit Distillery in Silverton, Oregon, is potato-based, ultra-premium, and built for cocktails. It won the American Distilling Institute’s Gold Medal in 2019 and Silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Find a bottle through Oregon Liquor Search.
The fun vodka cocktails on this list deserve a vodka that earns its place at the bottom of them. We make ours.
The recipe (one to start with)
2 oz Silverton Vodka 2 oz cranberry juice 1 oz Üla Orange Liqueur ½ oz fresh lime juice
Shake all with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a lime twist.
That is the Cosmopolitan. Make it once. Then come back to the list.