Cocktails Enter the Cheese Era

"Looking back, the dawn of the cheese-cocktail era feels inevitable. After surviving the sugar-laced Sex and the City-inspired '90s, when cocktails were more like quaffable cupcakes than adult beverages, we arrived at a more adult place. Since the turn of the millennium, classic cocktails - made with a little more flash and aplomb and definitely better ingredients than your grandfather's Old Fashioned and Martinis - have dominated."

"I worked with Xavier Thuret, a gifted fromagerie. We created a pairing for several Michelin-starred restaurants where we would put a stick of Comté in a shooter and then pour our raspberry eau de vie over it. When we created one with a spoonful of Roquefort and a pear eau de vie, people went completely crazy. And I thought, 'Let's take it a step further.'"

"The resulting spirit, Liqueur de Roquefort, took two years to design, test and perfect through a series of macerations, filtrations and infusions that are kept secret but include a lot of Roquefort, neutral alcohol and patience."

Cocktail trends moved from overly sweet, decorative drinks in the 1990s to a revival of classic cocktails and then toward culinary, savory ingredients during the 2000s and 2010s. Cheese-based drinks and spirits emerged as a substantive culinary direction rather than merely an Instagram-ready novelty. Distillerie Massenez in Alsace developed Liqueur de Roquefort through two years of macerations, filtrations and infusions using abundant Roquefort and neutral alcohol. Inspiration for the liqueur came from pairing fruit eaux de vie with classic French cheeses in Michelin-starred restaurant collaborations. The resulting liqueur integrates Roquefort's sharp, salty tang into the playground of mixology.

Read at InsideHook