The best cocktails to sip during a Netflix binge

The show: Mad Men

The drink: Old Fashioned

This show, set in the New York advertising world of the 1960s, is single-handedly responsible for a thousand throwback bars inspired by the suave attire, hard living and very hard drinking of Don Draper, Roger Sterling and the rest of the Sterling Cooper (Draper Pryce) team.If any drink sums up the show, it would be an Old Fashioned. Don Draper even makes an Old Fashioned in one episode in season 3, so what better than the ad exec’s own in-show recipe. Draper puts an ice cube in a glass, over which he drips angostura bitters. He then shakes together rye whiskey (the club he is in is all out of bourbon) and soda water. He then pours it over the bitters-soaked ice cube, before serving with a lemon wedge. A standard Old Fashioned also includes a teaspoon of sugar, though Draper seems to do without.

From the episode, entitled My Old Kentucky Home, it is hard to see how big his measures are. But, whatever they are, it’s probably best to half them for us mere mortals.

The show: Gilmore Girls

The drink: Espresso martini

If there’s one thing Rory and Lorelai Gilmore like, it’s coffee. In the pilot, Lorelai drinks 11 cups over two days, and in a later episode she famously says, “I need coffee in an IV”. Then in another, “I need caffeine. Whatever form you’ve got. I haven’t had any all day. I’ll drink it, shoot it, eat it, snort it, whatever form it’s in. Gimme!”. No wonder everyone in Stars Hallow speaks so quickly.

So when you’re getting ready to rewatch the series for the 800th time (or slogging through those final hour-long specials), you have two Gilmore Girls cocktail choices. You can either risk going into a diabetic coma and try a Rory Martini, the toxically pink beverage invented by her grandmother for her 21st that “tastes like pink”, or you can combine Lorelai’s love of martinis and coffee by bringing the two together for an espresso martini. Mix one shot of vodka with one shot of Kahlua and one shot of chilled espresso, then serve by floating three coffee beans on top.

The show: RuPaul’s Drag Race

The drink: Acai Blueberry Mojito

The drag queen reality show, whose tenth series is currently streaming on Netflix, is pretty much the best reality TV show in the world. For those who haven’t seen it yet, it’s like someone put America’s Next Top Model, Project Runway, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and ‘90s sketch comedies in a huge blender, threw in some glitter, then garnished it with RuPaul, the Emmy-winning, six-foot-something Glamazon who is the host/goddess on earth reigning over the craziness.

Cocktails have often been a part of the show. The queens get one when they ‘untuck’ (look it up. In a private browser) as the judges deliberate, and the early seasons were even sponsored by a vodka company. Throughout the series, cocktails have been thrown during fights, outrageously hawked for challenges, and even been the inspiration for a challenge where they had to make dresses featuring real fruit. Yep, that really happened.

How could one cocktail sum up all this madness? Anything strongly alcoholic will come close, but the perfect RuPaul’s Drag Race cocktail is a Mojito-based tribute to season 2 queen, Jessica Wild, who got eliminated after a challenge where she had to sell an acai berry cocktail and failed miserably to pronounce the word ‘acai’ properly (it’s a-sigh-eee, by the way). Shake together 2 shots of vodka, 1 tsp sugar, one shot of acai juice and one shot of lime juice, then garnish with blueberries, mint leaves, and every cocktail umbrella, streamer and novelty stirrer you can get your hands on.

The show: Rick and Morty

The drink: Brain haemorrhage

How do you sum up the weird, pan-dimensional antics of Morty and his grandfather Rick in one beverage?  This TV-show-inspired drink would need to be a little scientific, a little bizarre, an acquired taste and definitely completely disgusting. In short, it needs to be a brain haemorrhage – a shot of peach schnapps with Irish cream liqueur poured over it so that it congeals into the shape of a brain. Drink up and get blasted into a very different flavour dimension.

Above are just four examples of perfect matches of cocktails and Netflix, but there are many more. An espresso martini is also the perfect accompaniment to every visit to Central Perk in Friends, for example. Just as long as you don’t follow the example of Orange is the New Black and drink toilet hooch, you should be fine.

Photo Rick and Morty