How to Drink Like Your Grandparents and Enjoy It

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Food

How to Drink Like Your Grandparents and Enjoy It

Yes, all grandmas are different, and some don't even drink. But these cocktails—Pimm's Cups and wine spritzers—are for old people, or at least the old at heart.

Now, before you get your control-top panties in a twist, we're not saying that all grandmas drink like this. Maybe your grandma was only an occasionally beer-drinker. Maybe your grandma didn't even drink. Or maybe your grandma liked to pound cheap sherry and feed you and your sister cat food while your parents were on a yacht somewhere.

May or may not be speaking from personal experience on that.

But for every Lucille Bluth of the world, there are at least two sweet, old, Norman Rockwell-ish grandmas who get adorably ripped off a thimble of schnapps at Christmas, and two more who wouldn't ever let the demon alcohol near their lips.

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That is to say: All grandmas are different. But you get the drift. These here are cocktails for old people, or at least the old at heart.

pimms-cups-1

Photos by Janelle Jones. Styling by Eleanore Park.

The Pimm's Cup is easily the more posh of the two. Its titular gin-based liqueur (Pimm's No. 1 Cup, that is) dates back to 1823 in England. Nowadays, it's one of the official drinks at Wimbledon, the Chelsea Flower Show, the Henley Royal Regatta, and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Well, ooh la la.

MAKE: Pimm's Cup

What makes it a grandma cocktail? Its easy drinkability, relatively low alcohol content, fresh fruit and herbs combine into a sort of boozy iced tea—the perfect thing for a hot summer day, when you're betting on the ponies or criticizing Camilla's choice of sailing partner in Rupert, that wastrel. Have you seen him tie a bowline? Shameful.

Photo by Janelle Jones.

Further down on the trashiness spectrum is the wine spritzer, a not-too-distant cousin of the 90s porch party staple known as the wine cooler.

You will not be breaking out the Château Lafite Rothschild for this one, but you don't have to hurt yourself and your loved ones by grabbing a marked-down box of Franzia, either.

MUNCHIES' in-house oenophile/wino Marissa Ross was inspired to make a spritzer—with a little help from Josh Rosenstein of Hoxie Spritzer—by remembering a time "when your aunts wore floral denim shorts and talked about one day buying a beach house over bottles of Bartles & Jaymes because it was the fucking 90s and people could actually buy beach houses."

MAKE: Melon and Midori Wine Spritzer

With that in mind, they came up with a lime-green cocktail made with Midori (another much-maligned throwback to the 1990s and favorite liqueur of Kim Kardashian) and fresh melon, tangled with some Blue Plate Chenin Blanc.

Top it up with some seltzer and you've got a drink equally fit for the putt-putt course and the mall. Too bad dELiA*s isn't still around.