Our favourite winter whisky cocktails

Turn up the heat on date night with our favourite winter whisky cocktails. We partnered with Johnnie Walker to curate a cocktail menu that pairs perfectly with the sultry sounds of jazz. Available at Incognito every Thursday at For Everything Else There’s Jazz.

Raspberry & Hibiscus Sours

A good Whisky Sours has that perfect balance of sweet, sour and smoky whisky. 

While the first written recipe of Whisky Sours was in 1862 in Jerry Thomas’ Bartenders Guide, it’s likely that  –  like so many classic cocktails  –  this one dates back to sailors. In the height of sea travel in the 1800s, between a lack of clean water and Vitamin C, the humble lemon was a saving grace and became the perfect addition to alcohol. Over time, egg white was added to give the Whisky Sours that classic, foamy texture and many variations developed  –  the most famous being the New York Sour, which takes the classic and adds a splash of red wine.

For our take on this classic cocktail, to turn up the sours we took a classic Scotch Whisky, Johnnie Walker Gold, and mixed in raspberry purée, hibiscus infusion and grapefruit bitters, along with your traditional lemon and egg white.

The Johnnie Walker Gold brings flavours of honey and heather with thick caramel and woody notes and a subtle nutmeg spice. Perfect for a cold winter’s night.

Hop Scotch

Like the name says, it’s part hop, part Scotch, with a mix of our draft on tap, Stella Artois, and Johnnie Walker Black. We’ve added peach and orange for some warming flavours and finished it off with a garnish of garden mint.

The Johnnie Walker Black is rich and full and complements these flavours beautifully with notes of winter spice and treacle, hints of white pepper and a little citrus.

Penicillin

Just what the doctor ordered, the Penicillin adds lemon, honey and ginger to Johnnie Walker Gold, giving it a wonderful kick and the added benefit of excellent immune-boosting properties for winter!

This modern-classic whisky cocktail hails from New York City in the mid-2000s and was designed to work with a good peaty whisky. Sweet, tart, spicy and delicious  –  the topper of Johnnie Walker Black keeps the whisky’s smoky aromatics front and centre.

Smoked-up Chocolate Old Fashioned

No winter cocktail menu is complete without an Old Fashioned, with its warm, smoky flavours and balance of sweet, spicy, aromatic and bitter.

The OG Old-Fashioned (known in full as The Old Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail) from 1806 was a simple combination of whiskey, sugar, angostura bitters and water. Through the prohibition and into the mid-century it came to include orange and a maraschino cherry. Through the craft renaissance of cocktails, newer recipes include flavoured bitters and various syrups in place of sugar, where almost any good cocktail bar has its own variation on the classic Old Fashioned.

For winter, we’ve given the Old Fashioned our own unique spin at Incognito, combining Johnnie Walker Gold with maple syrup and chocolate bitters to recreate this classic as a new signature cocktail.