Winter Spirits to Warm Your Soul

Once January hits (and we have finally stopped bragging to our friends in cold places about our long summer) we will get a tiny dose of winter here in the Bay Area. It’s nothing like the winters I remember as a child growing up in New England. But I like to embrace traditions and pretend it’s a cold winter somewhere.

Something I will never forget are the long days of shoveling my driveway, and the satisfaction of finishing and going inside to warm my bones with a hot drink. As an adult, the best way to do this is with a little booze. And it turns out, people have been using the stuff to warm us up, and even ward off colds and illness, since medieval times.

Possets were a popular drink through the 19th century, and consisted of milk, ale or wine, sometimes heated with a hot iron from a fire. Possets evolved into many styles of warm drinks, all with the same purpose: to comfort. Whether the drink, dram or spices warm your soul, winter drinks exist to carry you through in good spirits until the spring thaw.

Here are a few festive cocktails you can easily make at home that can warm you up in any winter.