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Emoji Cocktails
There’s an emoji for everything, so to celebrate World Emoji Day, we’ve turned our favourite drink emojis into the real deal for you to sip at home.
From dumplings to fried prawns, pasta and birthday cake, there’s an emoji for everything. But when it comes to happy hour, there are only a few emojis we’re sending (and you know which ones we’re talking about!). To celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17 🎉 we’ve turned the drink emojis into three cocktails you can make at home, whether you like a martini 🍸, something fruity 🍹 or a snifter of whisky 🥃 Now it’s time to put down your phone, pick up the shaker and raise a glass to your favourite emoji. 😉
The Cocktail glass emoji: Pickletini
Ingredients (Serves 4)
Ice cubes, to serve
180mL Hendrick’s Gin
20mL Cinzano Dry Vermouth
60mL brine from cornichons
4 green olives
8 cornichons (optional)
Method
- Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add half the gin, half the vermouth and half the cornichon brine. Shake for 1 minute or until well chilled. Strain into 2 chilled martini glasses.
- Repeat with more ice and remaining gin, vermouth and brine to make 2 more cocktails.
- Skewer olives and cornichons, if using, onto small skewers and add to each glass to garnish. Serve immediately.
- TIP To make a classic dirty gin martini, use olive brine and olives instead of the pickle brine and pickles.
The Tumbler glass emoji: Godfather
Ingredients (Serves 4)
8 large ice cubes
180mL Singleton 12YO Single Malt Scotch Whisky
125mL Disaronno Amaretto liqueur
4 strips of orange peel
Method
- Divide ice cubes among 4 tumbler serving glasses. Divide Scotch and amaretto among the glasses. Stir to combine.
- Garnish with orange peel and serve.
The stories behind these emoji cocktails
No matter how many times bearded bartenders muddle small-batch drinks or watch over barrel-aged cocktails, the martini in all its guises will never go out of style. After all, it’s what James Bond orders. Like many classic drinks, its origins are disputed. The Americans claim it. Some say it comes from a Californian town called Martinez. Some say it was first mixed in the 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco. Then again, it might have been the work of a bartender called Martini di Taggia, who stirred one in 1911 at New York’s Knickerbocker Hotel. Its popularity grew during Prohibition when backyard gin was, well, everywhere, and now it’s sipped around the world.
If there’s one thing we know about British sailors, it’s that they drank… a lot. In the 1600s, when they discovered beer spoiled on long journeys, they began making drinks from a dark Asian rum-style liquor called arrack, which they’d then mix with lemon or lime juice, sugar, water and nutmeg to make punch. This happened in the early 1600s. They then brought the punch back to the UK and Europe. As colonisation spread to the Caribbean, Jamaican rum arrived to make Rum Punch a drink that’s still popular to this day, hundreds of years later.
The 1970s brought us disco, Hawaii Five-0 and, when it came to cocktails, amaretto, an Italian liqueur with a distinct bitter almond flavour. It was also the era of New Hollywood, and that’s where the name for our final emoji cocktail got its name. Apparently, the Godfather was a favourite drink of Marlon Brando, who played Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic film of the same name. Not that anyone can prove that, but it makes for a great story.
What you need to bring drink emojis to life
No matter what people try to tell you, a true martini is always made with gin and vermouth. For this Pickletini, we’ve thrown in the brine from cornichons (swap it out for olive brine and you’ve got yourself a Dirty Martini). The base is Hendrick’s Gin with its infusion of cucumber and rose. Vermouth brings a bunch of herbs to the equation. In this case, Cinzano Dry Vermouth has a dry, crisp mouthfeel with an aroma of mint, sage and spices.
To make a great Rum Punch, you need a classy rum. Havana Club Añejo Especial is smooth, having been aged in an oak barrel. Some have spent four years in the barrel, the rest seven years, then it is carefully blended. The oak gives it spicy overtones, which complements the orange and lime juices beautifully.
In the Godfather, the sweet, fruity notes of Singleton 12YO Single Malt Scotch Whisky pair beautifully with the almond flavours of the liqueur, plus its lingering warmth hits the spot during winter’s cool sting. One of the world’s best-selling liqueurs, Disaronno Amaretto gets that distinctive flavour from 17 herbs and fruits soaked in apricot kernel oil.
Take an emoji and make your own signature cocktail
Want to expand your emoji cocktail game? Take a scroll through your phone and find that coconut shell 🥥 and – bam! – you’re on an island cradling a pina colada. Mai Tai? You may, especially if you’re into classic rum cocktails.
Got the large glass of red wine in your emoji line-up?🍷 OK, now it’s time for a twist. Refreshing, fruity and perfect for get-togethers, glasses of Sangria are an entertainer’s dream come true. Want to give it another spin? Buy a couple of bottles of medium-bodied rosé and sub out orange juice for pomegranate or cranberry juice and you’ve got rosé sangria.
Hear us out… Beer isn’t normally thought of as a cocktail ingredient, but take that ‘clinking beer glasses’ emoji 🍻 and get set for new horizons. Make like Layne Beachley and try a Campari IPA or channel the essence of AFL legend Leigh Matthews for the Leigh Shandy. Check out those and three other beer cocktail recipes inspired by Aussie sporting legends 🍺 🏅.
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