Ice Shouldn’t Be an Afterthought in Your Cocktail — It’s the Main Attraction

At first glance, the Sugar Baby Punch at Café Carmellini in New York City’s Flatiron District appears to be garnished with a giant chunk of watermelon. But upon closer inspection, you’ll realize it isn’t a piece of fruit floating in the glass, but a large ice cube made from watermelon juice molded with a neatly tailored patch of dark green rind frozen over one side. The bright red cube glows inside the translucent clarified cocktail — a milk punch made with white rum, bergamot liqueur, and watermelon juice — and bleeds watermelon flavor into the drink as it slowly dissolves.

“We see a lot of guests refuse to give up their empty glass, wanting to still drink the watermelon juice as it melts,” says Darryl Chan, beverage director for Café Carmellini. 

While the quality of ice in craft cocktails has steadily risen for years, bartenders like Chan continue to push the envelope with ice to enhance the flavor and aesthetic appeal of their cocktails. With new methods like directional freezing (a technique used to clarify ice) bartenders can design elegant and eye-catching cubes that do much more than chill a drink. 

“Ice is an active participant in every cocktail,” says Camper English, author of The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts. “It can be a functional or aesthetically pleasing garnish. It can chill the drink while also making it pop. It can also be edible.” 

English became known as an “ice whisperer” through his blog Alcademics, where he began to publish primers on topics like directional freezing over a decade ago. His book, which just received a Spirited Award for Best New Cocktail or Bartending Book at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, is filled with recipe ideas that incorporate flavored ice, including a riff on a Swampwater cocktail (Chartreuse and canned pineapple juice) made with coconut water ice cubes.

How ice can transform cocktail recipes 

At Four Walls, a new craft cocktail bar in Nashville, the Paisano cocktail is poured over paper-thin slices of green tomato rolled into a rosette pattern and frozen inside the glass. The intent is to keep the drink cold while also intensifying its savory flavors.

“We dedicate as much attention to ice and presentation as we do the recipe and balance of the cocktail,” says lead bartender Mickey Stevenson. Using frozen tomato slices instead of traditional ice cubes prevents the cocktail, made with olive-oil-washed vodka, spiced tomato water, and Manzanilla sherry, from watering down too quickly. The spiral pattern also creates a stunning visual that makes the cocktail as photogenic as it is delicious.

Outside of high-end cocktail bars, ice content has become a popular source of ASMR on social media. Leslie Kirchhoff spent almost a decade posting creative ice designs on Instagram and TikTok, before transforming her Disco Cubes brand into a full-service company that manufactures bespoke ice cubes for private clients. Her intricate ice designs include company logos etched into the surfaces and floating garnishes like flowers and herbs that help spice up the beverage offerings at her clients’ special events.

“The experience of drinking a cocktail is like an interactive art piece,” she says. “It changes from beginning to end and it can get spicier, sweeter, or more acidic as you go when you add flavor to the ice.” Kirchhoff began her career as a photographer, which gave her an especially keen eye for how imaginative ice designs can quicken the pulse of simple cocktail recipes, which she still regularly posts on social media, like her slow-release mimosa made with an orange juice ice cube molded into the shape of an orange, a golden tomato Bloody Mary with shoyu ice, and a Michelada recipe with beer cubes.

Upscale bars are turning alcohol into ice

Freezing alcohol can be challenging, but more sophisticated cocktail bars are experimenting with alcoholic ice cubes that add potency as well as flavor. 

At Shinji’s in New York City, beverage director Jonathan Adler uses a special blast freezer capable of chilling ice to -50°C to create show-stopping ice designs, including one he made earlier this year from Chartreuse, the French herbal liqueur created by Carthusian monks. The rose-shaped green ice cube is the centerpiece of the Green Lady, a variation on the classic Pink Lady made with Botanist gin, blanc vermouth, green apple, jasmine, and lovage. Adler intentionally lowers the alcohol level of the shaken component of the cocktail so that as the Chartreuse melts, it raises the drink to the proper alcohol level (from about 7% ABV when it’s poured to around 20% ABV when the ice has fully melted).

 Meanwhile, the signature drink at Clockwork Champagne & Cocktails in Toronto features “frosé ice,” a solid orb of frozen rosé wine. In Chicago, the Single Barrel Old-Fashioned at Sepia is poured over a bright yellow ice sphere made with Apologue Saffron liqueur and Weatherby’s Orange Saffron Bitters, which imparts subtle floral and honey notes to the drink. 

Although designer ice cubes may seem like a domain best left to professional bartenders, Kirchhoff believes that leveling up your ice game at home can be a great way to spice up a cocktail party or inject life into one’s home bartending practice, like adding olives and their brine to an ice tray to dirty a round of Martinis. “If you’re going to be filling trays anyway, why not splash a little something extra in there,” she says. “It’s one step that can bring a little excitement to the every day.”