Want to Elevate Your Batched Cocktails?

Try these show stopping ideas!

You’ve batched your cocktails for your holiday party and they are chilling in the fridge or freezer. You’re all set for a fabulous, chill evening of hosting. But, what if you’re in the mood to be a little more fabulous and a little less chill? I hear you. I don’t think parties need to be picture perfect, but I absolutely love to have elements that are extra and make it memorable. Up your presentation with one of these showstopping ways of serving cocktails to make your evening into “the event of the season.” (And I promise they’re all easier than that time I blew out a bunch of eggs, cleaned them, painted them gold, made edible glue for sealing them and filled them with martinis and manhattans for guests to crack into their glasses. But, if that’s something you want to know how to do, just let me know and I’ll share, lol.)

A tower of Spruce Gin martinis

The Cocktail Tower

Towers are having a moment for events, and with good reason. They are eye-catching, dramatic, AND FUN! While a champagne tower is classic, a cocktail tower is even better. For a holiday party I hosted last year, I built two cocktail towers, one of martinis and one of cranberry cocktails, and I literally couldn’t stop grinning about them the whole night. Building a tower is a little bit of a job, but it’s totally doable. You will need cocktail coupes that are exactly the same size. You can buy sets of coupes specifically for building towers with, or find a rental company to rent them from (just check with the company to make sure they are giving you precisely matching glassware). 

Here’s the standard way to build a tower with each tier being a square of glasses (some sets of glasses have you build with a triangle of glasses instead of a square, but it’s similar). The top glass will be a single glass. The layer underneath that will be 2 glasses X 2 glasses, i.e. 4 glasses, and the top glass will be perched at the place where the 4 glasses meet. The tier below that will be 3 glasses X 3 glasses, so 9 glasses. If you wanted a four tier tower, there would be one more tier under than with 4 glasses X 4 glasses, i.e. 16 glasses. 

Here’s a helpful little graphic of how to set build a three tier tower:

How to build a cocktail tower

Assemble your tower on a sturdy table. I like to have the tower pre-filled (fill it with your cold batched cocktail right before guests arrive) so guests can easily grab their cocktail, starting from the top, once you invite them to do so. Have additional batched cocktail to refill glasses. And also remember, the cocktail tower is a statement visual, but not everyone has to get their cocktail from the tower. You can also hand your guests cocktails that you pour from your batched cocktail pitcher and leave the actual tower intact for as long as you’d like.

Cranberries, citrus slices, and herbs ready to be frozen into a decorative ice ring.

A Glorious Ice Ring in a Punch Bowl

How many of us have a giant punch bowl that we inherited from a grandmother gathering dust in our storage? Take it out, shine it up, and serve a big batch of cocktails in it! Make your bowl of cocktails look incredible and festive with a beautiful decorative ice ring.

Virtually any freezer safe container can be used for making your ice ring (or dome or whatever other shape you wind up with), but a bundt pan works particularly well for giving you an actual ring shape. For making it look decorative, sturdy herbs like rosemary, sage, or bay leaves, sturdy fruit like citrus slices or cranberries, edible flowers, and large spices like star anise all look really pretty when frozen into ice.

Freeze your ring in layers to make sure you are showing off the best side of your decorative elements. Put the garnishes you want at the top of your ice ring in the bottom when you are starting the process. Add just enough water to cover them, then freeze for about 20 minutes, until the water is starting to harden. Add another layer of garnishes, cover with water and freeze for a bit longer, 30-45 minutes, until mostly hardened. Repeat with one or two more layers, depending on the size of the container you’ve chosen as your mold. Finally, freeze the whole thing overnight so it is really nice and solid.

When you want to release your ice ring from the mold, fill a bowl that is larger than the ring with hot water, dip the mold in the water for a few minutes to get just the very surface of the ice to melt, then invert the mold to release the ring, and add it to your bowl of cocktail. 

A giant drink fountain ready to serve 200 Cedar Gin negronis!

The Drink Fountain

Besides the eggs filled with cocktails and the martini tower, my other favorite way I’ve ever gone over the top with cocktail serving was the party where we rented a beverage fountain and filled it with batched negroni. It took 7 gallons of negroni to fill it, but it was a hundred person party, so it worked out and was 100% worth it. For smaller gatherings, it is possible to find beverage fountains that are, much more reasonably, about the size of a punch bowl. Completely cheesy and completely fantastic.