How’s Your Drink: New “Austin Cocktails” are bottled craft cocktails worth seeking out

Mixing craft cocktails, like playing chess or winning at office politics, requires creative thinking and the ability to zig when others want to zag. Give a bartender a bottle of something clear, something sweet and something citrusy, and a good one can turn out a highball worth more than your 15 bucks.

Two ladies down in Austin, Kelly Gasink and Jill Burns, each with a knack for business and a craving for mojitos and martinis, captured all the pizzazz of four pricy craft cocktails, funneling their mojo into frosty 750-ml bottles. A friend of a friend dropped off some of their hooch for me to try, and well, wow. Ladies, you are gonna love these 100-calorie libations.

Gasink and Burns created four balanced bottled cocktails for their Austin Cocktails, each made from ingredients whose quality and freshness you can taste. Vodka made from premium grains and distilled six times through a continuous column still.  Purified water. Organic agave. Natural juices and citrus oils that taste natural and citrusy.

Poured over ice, all those flavors come together in a mind meld of deliciousness. I liked the cucumber vodka mojito, but I won’t hate you if you lean toward the Vodkarita (vodka, orange, lime and agave) or the sweet-tart Tea Twister (vodka, tea, brewed tea and agave). But I do draw the line at the Paradise Found (vodka, coconut water, stone and citrus fruits, basil and agave). Because, honestly, shouldn’t a cocktail with more than four ingredients be left to a professional? (You can make one of those, right Michael Martensen?)

Look for them soon in local Spec’s stores, or pick up a couple of bottles in Austin when you drive down there this weekend for the  Texas Monthly BBQ Festival.