How to get your favorite cocktails delivered to your door

Longing for a cocktail but not thrilled about getting out there in traffic to go to your favorite bar? Online wine and spirits retailer Merchants of Beverage has a solution.

Order a cocktail kit for a signature cocktail delivered straight to your door. It includes not only the recipe, but every item, however arcane, that goes into it — and not just enough to make two cocktails, but however many the full-size bottles make.

What’s on offer? LA Bartender Cocktail Kits includes cocktails from four local establishments: The Varnish, Harlowe, Cinco and Harvard & Stone. Prices range from $65 to $150, depending on the number and quality of ingredients. That may sound steep, but with cocktails costing something like $15 these days, you could be coming out well ahead.

Also, a portion of the profits from the cocktail kits are funneled into each bar’s favorite charity. For the Varnish, that’s Alex’s Lemonade Stand, for Cinco, Lung Cancer Foundation of America. Harlowe has picked the Wounded Warrior Project. Harvard & Stone chose Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services.

Billed as “fail-proof” cocktail kits, Merchants of Beverage’s LA Bartender Cocktail Kits allow you to make like a skilled bartender in your own home or backyard. Impress your date. Wow the neighbors. Create your own lost weekend.

Fans of downtown’s the Varnish may already have a thing for Eric Alperin’s “Smuggler’s Notch,” a rum-based take on an Old-Fashioned and a Sazerac. Alperin actually created the cocktail while he was working at Osteria Mozza and slipped some of Joe Bastianich’s amari (or bitters) into some contraband Havana Club 7 year rum. His recipe includes El Dorado 8 year rum, Regan’s Orange Bitters, and St. George Absinthe Verte. The kit goes for $65.

Another example is “Tres Brujas” from Ben Molina of Cinco. The name means “three witches” in Spanish, the witches being the three spirits that go into this fierce cocktail, made with Calle 23 Tequila, Mescal Vago, Strega and a dash of Angostura Orange Bitters. The kit is $150.

So plan ahead for that night when you’re wishing for that “Smuggler’s Notch,” “Tres Brujas,” a “Harlowe Cobbler” from Harlowe or the “Gold Fashioned” from Harvard & Stone. You know the night will come when you just don’t want to go out and would rather have a cocktail at home.

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