The Hot Toddy

The holiday season is a time to recharge, reconnect with family and restock your bar cart with a few tips and tricks.

As you might have guessed, this is where the Rhoback Hot Toddy Polo comes into play. We could think of no better way to bring our favorite silhouettes into the holiday season. What better drink to pair with this polo than the legendary namesake drink itself? It’s rumored to cure colds, it goes perfect with a roaring fire, and you’ve probably got more than a few of its ingredients on hand already.

It’s more nuanced than you might think but fear not: These are the best Hot Toddy recipes to pair with your new favorite polo. Cheers!

The Best Ways to Make a Hot Toddy This Season

Before we dive into it, a brief history of the Hot Toddy for the uninitiated. Stories abound, but one traces the origins of this drink to blustery cold Scotland, blending hot water with a base liquor to warm your bones. Here are a few ways to make it.

The Recipe: The Classic Maker’s Mark Hot Toddy

Why Maker’s Mark? The Kentucky bourbon is also a reliable choice in an Old Fashioned, so it makes perfect sense to use its full-flavored winter wheat. It’s also got a rich and slightly sweet flavor, which plays nicely with the honey used in a Hot Toddy. Plus, who doesn’t love the handsome craftsmanship behind each hand-dipped and wax-sealed bottle of this iconic favorite? It looks great on your bar cart and tastes even better in a Hot Toddy.

Ingredients:

• 2 parts Maker’s Mark
• ½ part lemon juice
• ½ part simple syrup or cinnamon simple syrup
• ¼ part honey
• Hot water (Heated over the stove or in a coffee mug for quick access for a solo drink)
• 2 dashes bitters (We prefer Angostura)
• Garnish of your choice (Lemon wheel and a cinnamon stick are most common)

Heat the water as you ready the rest of your ingredients, adding the water last. A Hot Toddy can be a difficult cocktail to make in batches, the way you might make a summer-friendly drink like sangria in a massive pitcher, but keeping hot water at the ready (alongside your Maker’s Mark) helps, too.

The Recipe: The Rum Hot Toddy

Using rum, in a hot toddy? Some might call that sacrilege, but we call that getting creative when faced with either a shortage of whiskey or a desire to quite literally mix things up. Because rum is a fellow dark spirit, it’s about as solid of a bet as it gets.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ ounces Bacardi Gold Rum (Or your favorite dark rum -- Captain Morgan might also work well here)
• 3 ounces hot water
• ¼ ounce honey (All the better if you buy local!)
• Garnish of your choice (Lemon wheel and a cinnamon stick never fail)

The overall effect should prove largely the same: Warming, rich and best sipped slowly in front of a roaring fire with great company surrounding you, stories bouncing off the walls, and laughs echoing through out.  

The Recipe: The Non-Alcoholic Hot Toddy

Like most any traditional cocktail, you can also serve up a Hot Toddy sans alcohol. Feel free to add in an Earl Grey tea bag to your hot water, along with traditional Hot Toddy trappings.

Ingredients:

• 7 ounces hot tea (Again, Earl Grey is preferred)
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon and ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon cloves
• Lemon wedge and cinnamon stick to garnish

The Hot Toddy, kind of like styling your favorite shirt, can be customized to suit you, and we appreciate its versatility and the warmth it provides all winter long. Whether you’re with friends, family, loved ones, and anyone else, we hope you all are able to gather together to celebrate another year, while testing one of these recipes. We’ll raise a glass… Happy Holidays!