Abbey Road Cocktail Companion

Me crossing Abbey Road in 2016.

Abbey Road is my all-time favorite album, so I thought I would put my mixology skills to good use and honor it by crafting custom cocktails to pair with 11 of its incredible tracks (I thought about doing all 17, but not every song had a name that I thought made sense for a drink; while “Something” is perfect, it’s a weird name for a cocktail). All measurements are in ounces unless otherwise noted. Have fun! But please drink responsibly and don’t drink all of these in a row while listening to the album or you will probably die!

Come Together

• 1.5 Bourbon
• 1 Lime Juice
• 0.5 Cherry Heering
• 3 Coca-Cola

Obviously this drink needed to have Coca-Cola in it, so I went for a bourbon-based riff on a Cuba Libre with Cherry Heering added for some herbal notes and chocolatey undertones, which brings out some interesting flavors in the Coke while adding a nice cherry finish. I went with bourbon instead of the traditional rum because this is a bourbon song. I can’t really substantiate that; it just felt right. That’s rock n’ roll, baby! To make this drink, you can put everything in a highball glass filled with ice (Coke last) and stir.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

• 1.5 Blanco Tequila
• 1 Pineapple Juice
• 0.75 Lime Juice
• 0.75 Strawberry Syrup

For this cocktail, I used Gran Centenario Plata tequila, plata of course meaning “silver” in Spanish, so it felt like the right move. Despite its dark and violent content, this song sounds like it’s meant for children, so I wanted the drink to be sweet while still providing a kick with the tequila. The strawberry syrup represents the blood that would spill after being hit in the head with a silver hammer. Pretty straightforward; a very refreshing drink. Shake well and serve it over ice.

Oh! Darling

• 2 Rye Whiskey
• 1 Amaro Sfumato Rabarbaro
• 0.5 Maple Syrup
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters

“Oh! Darling” is a smoky dive bar song, so I knew that meant whiskey and something with a little smokiness to it. Enter Amaro Sfumato Rabarbaro, a rhubarb-based amaro whose name comes from the Italian word for “smoke.” The cocktail needed a little sweetening, and I thought maple syrup would add a more interesting depth than simple syrup. Add a dash of bitters (just because I like bitters), and you’ve got yourself a cocktail. Stir all the ingredients with ice and pour into a chilled glass.

Octopus’s Garden

• 1.5 Gin
• 1.5 Pineapple Juice
• 0.75 Melon Liqueur
• 0.5 Lime Juice
• Club Soda

I wanted this cocktail to be green, so my mind went to the bottle of Midori Melon Liqueur in my cabinet that I rarely use. I wanted something tropical but unconventional, so I added pineapple juice and (instead of going with the obvious rum as the base liquor) went with gin because I figured it could add some nice botanical notes to make the sweetness of the Midori a little less basic (I used Roku Gin, but you can pretty much use whatever gin is your favorite). All it needed was a little citrus to balance out how sweet this was going to be, and that’s how I ended up with draft one of the “Octopus’s Garden.” It was still missing something: bubbles. This song takes place under water, after all. So I decided to transfer my cocktail into a taller glass and fill the rest up with club soda. It made the cocktail 100x better. With that being said, shake all the non-soda ingredients with ice then pour them into a highball glass filled with ice cubes. Top it off with as much club soda as you like.

She’s So Heavy

• 1 Navy Strength Dark Rum
• 1 Lemon Juice
• 1 Ramazzotti
• 0.5 Egg White
• 0.25 Demerara Syrup
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters

I knew that for my number one favorite song of all time, I wanted to do a riff on what I’ll call my favorite “classic” cocktail: the whiskey sour. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is also classic, but with a twist. It follows a traditional blues structure and uses a traditional blues scale for its verses, but it breaks out of that mold for the rest of the song, which leans on some truly strange chords to create something more aggressive and menacing than The Beatles usually went for. It’s a really dark song, and that’s why I went with a navy strength dark rum for this cocktail: it packs a punch like the song while also literally being dark. I also added Ramazzotti because a) you can sing its name to the tune of “She’s So Heavy,” which is fun, and b) it further distances this cocktail from the traditional sour recipe by giving it a different type of sweetness than just adding simple syrup would. Make sure to give this cocktail a good dry shake before adding ice and shaking for a second time, and serve it straight up in a chilled glass.

Sun King

• 1.5 Blanco Tequila
• 2 Orange Juice
• 0.75 Lemon Juice
• 0.5 Grenadine
• 0.25 Suze

While this is essentially just a tequila sunrise, the addition of lemon juice and Suze gives it a little more of a pop than orange juice and grenadine alone. It’s a chill drink for a chill song, what more do you want? Shake everything but the grenadine with ice and strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Then, pour the grenadine on top.

Mean Mr. Mustard

• 1 Añejo Tequila
• 1 Bruto Americano
• 1 Sweet Vermouth
• 2 dashes Orange Bitters

This is technically a negroni riff that has more in common with a boulevardier than a traditional negroni because of the dark tequila, which to me leans more bourbon than gin. It’s a bitter drink, which makes me think “mean,” much like the titular “mean old man” of this song. I used Bruto Americano, which has a really particular brand of earthy (some might say “dirty”) bitterness, in place of Campari, which is a little fruitier. I also used Cocchi Storico Vermouth di Torino, which has nice chocolatey notes that I think complement the sweetness of an aged tequila well. Orange bitters round out the drink by making the citrus notes of the Bruto Americano pop. Stir with ice and serve it over a big sphere or cube of ice if you can.

Polythene Pam

• 1 Mezcal
• 1 Dry Vermouth
• 1 Green Chile Vodka

I imagined Polythene Pam as the kind of a girl who would order something strong and unconventional. I also imagined maybe she could be a martini girlie, so I combined those two impulses to make the weirdest martini I could imagine while still having flavors that complemented each other. I’ve always been a slut for mezcal, so I thought it could be fun to use that as a starting point, but just a mezcal martini wasn’t bizarre enough for Pam. I have a bottle of St. George Green Chile Vodka that I don’t use enough, and I thought it could be fun to split the base between that and mezcal. That combination of smoke and spice makes for an attractively built cocktail. Stir with ice and serve in a chilled martini glass if you have one.

Bathroom Window

• 1.5 Dark Rum
• 0.75 Lime Juice
• 0.5 Amaro di Angostura
• 0.25 Coconut Syrup

I admittedly just needed to get rid of some rum when I created this drink, so not a lot of thought went into it beyond thinking, “Yeah, ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’ could be a rum song.” That being said, it’s a killer cocktail. The Amaro di Angostura has nice cinnamon notes that create a really unique sweetness when paired with the dark rum and coconut syrup. It’s kind of like a complex, richer-tasting daiquiri, one of my favorite cocktails and a staple of the tiki genre. Nothing about ‘Bathroom Window” screams tiki, but whatever. Shake with ice and double strain into a chilled glass.

Golden Slumbers

• 1.5 Dry Gin
• 0.75 Lemon Juice
• 0.5 Crème De Mûre
• 0.5 Egg White
• 0.25 Italicus

Could I have made a gold-colored cocktail for this one? Certainly. It probably would have made more sense in hindsight, but my initial impulse was to make something that reminded me of sleep, which made me think of the bottle of Italicus Rosolio di Bergamotto liqueur that my friend Chris gifted me. It gives it a floral aftertaste that reminds me of some lighter herbal teas that I enjoy drinking at night, though this note is pretty subtle with only one quarter ounce included. Adding egg white gave it a pillowy texture, which seemed like a no-brainer, so that meant turning it into a sour of some sort. I’d already settled on a dark rum sour variation for “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” so I thought gin would be a fun way to spice things up, and it pairs well with the Italicus. The crème de mûre was the finishing touch; I just like blackberries and thought their flavor would add a little pop. As with the “She’s So Heavy,” don’t forget the dry shake first, and serve it in a chilled glass.

Her Majesty

• 1 Scotch
• 1 Cynar
• 0.5 Green Chartreuse
• 0.5 Sweet Vermouth

I know “Her Majesty” barely counts as a song, but I wanted an excuse to bust out my most regal-feeling ingredient: green chartreuse. It’s not every day I have an idea for a cocktail worthy of the rarest ingredient in my collection, but I knew I wanted to use scotch and chartreuse together somehow. Really, I just wanted to throw a bunch of complex flavors together. Cynar and chartreuse in and of themselves are incredibly complex, but in different yet complementing ways. Cynar is herbal in an earthy way whereas chartreuse has a brighter herbal feel. As for the “belly full of wine,” the sweet vermouth (a fortified wine) mellows out those overlapping herbal notes in a really nice way. Stir with ice and serve over ice or straight up, whichever you prefer. You’ve earned a choice; you’ve made it through the album!