Turkey gets all the glory, but the drinks menu deserves some planning too. Sunset has pulled together six Thanksgiving cocktails from its recipe archive, and the list covers every mood of the long weekend — from a steaming mug by the fire to something bubbly for greeting guests at the door.
The most on-theme option is the Thanksgiving Star Cider, a hot cider steeped with dried hibiscus blossoms and star anise, sweetened with honey and given depth by pear nectar, lemon juice, and either red wine or unsweetened cranberry juice. If you want dessert disguised as a drink, the Warm Apple Pie Cocktail comes close: fresh unfiltered apple juice simmered with cinnamon sticks, cloves and allspice, spiked with spiced rum, and finished with whipped cream so it genuinely looks like the pie it imitates.
For coffee lovers, there's Flatliners — a stronger cousin of the espresso martini discovered, fittingly, on a trip to Telluride, Colorado. It mixes equal parts espresso, vanilla vodka, Kahlua and Bailey's, and the source's own advice is to sip it slowly. On the lighter end, Pomegranate Fizzies are a two-ingredient crowd-pleaser: extra-dry sparkling wine (or sparkling apple juice for a mocktail) topped with unsweetened pomegranate juice and a few seeds. They pour a deep cranberry red, which does half the decorating for you.
Rounding out the six are two slow-sippers. Sipsmith's Flippin' Sloe combines sloe gin, amaretto, simple syrup and cream — roughly dessert in a glass, best near a fire. And for a classic with a twist, there's orange-scented mulled wine, optionally boosted with orange liqueur and fresh slices, ladled straight from the saucepan so everyone gets it warm.
Why does this matter to travellers? Two reasons. First, several of these drinks double as souvenirs of a trip: the Flatliners story is a nice reminder that the best recipes often come from a bar in a mountain town you'd otherwise just pass through. Telluride, for what it's worth, is well worth a winter detour of its own. Second, if you're spending Thanksgiving away from home — at a rental house with friends, or visiting family in the US — showing up with the ingredients for one of these is an easy way to contribute. The Fizzies need only two bottles and a punnet of pomegranate seeds; the mulled wine scales up for a crowd; the mocktail option in the pomegranate drink means non-drinkers aren't stuck with tap water.
The common thread across all six is that they lean on autumn flavours most kitchens already have around in late November — apple, cranberry, pomegranate, orange, warm spice — so the shopping list stays short. Pick one hot drink, one bubbly one, and you've got a full evening covered without turning the host's kitchen into a cocktail bar.
