Fail-Safe Drinks To Serve All Summer Long

Created for our alcohol sponsors

When temperatures rise and daylight extends well into the evening, it’s time to bring your friends and family together for outdoor fun and feasts. One of the most essential, unskippable parts of a summer barbecue? Great drinks.  Great drinks. Think icy rosés, thoughtful cocktails and other thirst-quenching and highly cooling sips.

The secret to setting up the perfect summer bar is to select a variety of notable bottles that can offer something for different preferences. For wines, you want a sunny rosé and a crisp, crowd-pleasing white wine that will work well with appetizers and light bites. Spirits-wise, look for high-quality bottles that shine both in summery cocktails and on their own.

To foolproof your bar set-up this season, we’ve rounded up our summer entertaining secret weapons—excellent in cocktails and served alongside summer barbecue fare.

Hampton Water Rosé

When guests walk into your backyard, greet them with a hug and hand those who partake a glass of crisp rosé to help them settle in.

Hampton Water rosé  is the perfect party starter—unsurprising, as it’s made by Jesse and Jon Bon Jovi. The father-son duo worked with famed French winemaker Gerard Bertrand to make this summery, South of France rosé from a sunny blend of grenache, cinsault and mourvèdre.

Rosé isn’t just a poolside wine. The bright notes of strawberry and citrus and the long, lingering finish make this wine the perfect partner for grilled shrimp, fresh salads or fried bites, like arancini or pakoras. The bold, vibrant label stands out on a table. Add a splash to cocktails—it’s excellent in a watermelon punch.

Matua Hawke's Bay Sauvignon Blanc

When summer starts to get hot and sticky, you want a wine that will maximize your chill. Matua’s Hawke’s Bay Sauvignon Blanc is vibrant, fresh and fruity, packed with tropical notes of passion fruit, gooseberry, lime leaf and lemon. One sip sets you into vacation mode, but that doesn’t mean this nuanced New Zealand sauvignon blanc isn’t a serious wine—the light herbaceousness and grassy crispness complement tomato salads, grilled fish and ice cream.

Glendalough Wild Botanical Irish Gin

This bottle hails from the valley of Glendalough, also known as the Garden of Ireland, so of course this gin pops in summer cocktails. It also helps that the distillery’s full-time forager, Geraldine Kavanagh, carefully collects wild, fresh botanicals to bring the full taste of the forest into your glass. 

The gin’s crisp notes of lemon and pine play well with the herbs and spices of cured fish, the brine of olives, the freshness of a cucumber salad and the charred spices of grilled lamb or brisket. Try batching portions of Glendalough negronis and martinis in an empty wine bottle. Keep it in your fridge door and pour right into a glass over ice. 

Wild Botanical negroni cocktail recipe

Swap Glendalough in as the gin in a negroni and do as the Italians do—sip it as an aperitivo before a big dinner. The three-ingredient equal-parts drink is sophisticated, summer ready and patio perfect.

Ingredients:

• 30 ml Glendalough Wild Botanical Irish Gin 
• 30 ml Campari
• 30 ml sweet vermouth
• Garnish: orange peel

Recipe:
1. Combine the Glendalough Wild Botanical Irish Gin, Campari and vermouth in a mixing glass filled with ice.
2. Stir until well chilled.
3. Strain slowly into a tumbler glass with large ice cubes.
4. Garnish with orange peel.

Dillon’s Canadian Spirits

There’s no need to look far for world-class vodka, gin, and rye. Crafted in Niagara, Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers spirits showcase Canadian-grown grain, grapes, fruit and botanicals, carefully distilled into award-winning gins, whiskies and vodkas.

For effortless entertaining, set up a highball bar featuring Dillon’s spirits alongside sparkling mixers. Add flavourful touches with Dillon’s handcrafted liqueurs, like elderflower and orange, and finish with such seasonal garnishes as fresh Ontario fruit, citrus slices and garden herbs. Guests can mix and customize drinks to their own taste.

Simple, refreshing and rooted in local ingredients—these are the cocktails of Canadian summer, made better with Dillon’s on the bar.

1. Vodka-based cocktail: Tepache Sunrise

Consider the tepache sunrise a pinkies-up take on the tequila sunrise: fruity, tart, spirited and sophisticated. Start with Dillon’s vodka, a grape-based Niagara-made vodka that’s pure, smooth and silky. Then top the drink with tangy, fresh summer flavours, like just-squeezed lime, blackcurrant and tepache (a fermented pineapple drink). Add a pineapple wedge or a few fronds for drama.

Ingredients:

• 1 ounce Dillon’s Vodka
• ¾ ounce Dillon’s Black Currant Liqueur
• ½ ounce fresh lime juice
• 3 dashes Dillon’s Lime Bitters
• 3 ounces Casa Piñata Tepache
• Lime wheel and pineapple wedge, for garnish

Recipe: Add vodka, black currant liqueur, lime juice and bitters to a highball glass and stir. Add ice. Top with tepache and stir again. Garnish and enjoy!

2. Gin-based cocktail: Blueberry Breeze

This is the best of summer in a glass: peaches, blueberries, lavender and gin. Your choice of gin will greatly affect your final drink, so we lean on Dillon’s Unfiltered Gin 22, made from local Niagara grapes and 22 different botanicals.

Adding peach bitters, lavender syrup and fresh muddled blueberries brings juicy, floral and fruity flavours that riff off the gin’s bright botanicals. Make your own syrup or buy Dillon’s peach and lavender one. It’s also excellent in a whisky sour or with soda water and lemon.

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces Dillon’s Unfiltered Gin 22
• ¾ ounce Dillon’s Peach & Lavender Syrup
• ¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
• 3 dashes Dillon’s Peach Bitters
• 3 ounces soda water
• 8 blueberries, more for garnish
• Lemon wheel, for garnish

Recipe: Add all ingredients, except soda water, to a cocktail shaker. Muddle blueberries. Add ice and shake for 15 seconds. Double strain into a highball glass with ice. Add soda water and stir. Garnish with fresh blueberries and lemon wheel.

3. Whisky-based cocktail: Pink Derby

When raspberries pop up at the farmers’ market, it’s your sign to sip this perfectly pink drink. It starts with Dillon’s rye whisky, a fully grain-to-glass whisky made from 100 per cent Canadian rye grain. Bright grapefruit brings a tart sweetness to the spicy rye, while Dillon’s lemon bitters lighten up the drink. Top with the freshest raspberries you can find and serve in a coupe as a welcome drink or alongside rhubarb pie.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ ounce Dillon’s Rye Whisky
• 1 ¾ ounce fresh grapefruit juice
• ½ ounce Dillon’s Simple Syrup
• 3 dashes Dillon’s Lemon Bitters
• 6 raspberries, more for garnish
• Lemon peel

Recipe:  Add simple syrup, bitters and raspberries to a shaker. Press raspberries with a muddler to release the juice. Add whisky and grapefruit juice. Add ice and shake for 15 seconds. Double strain into a chilled coupe. Express oils from lemon peel over the cocktail and garnish with raspberries on a cocktail pick.