A Flurry of Winter Cocktails From Professional Bartenders The first time you hear Bing Crosby croon his way through "White Christmas," it can coax a smile. By the 17th time, your ears may have gone numb out of self-preservation. The same goes for holiday drinks. How many rounds of eggnog, Tom and Jerrys, hot toddies and other too-familiar libations can we take before palate fatigue sets in? With that in mind, we asked seven mixologists from across the country to create a cocktail to match the tastes and spirit of the holidays. From sweet potatoes to swizzles, hot Cynar to Amaros, here are their fresh ways to toast the season. By Deborah Acosta and Will Lloyd New York City bartender Dan Greenbaum created a simple cocktail of mixed rums with a hint of bitters. A Substitute for Holiday Punch Dan Greenbaum, who has mixed drinks at the Beagle in the East Village and now works at Attaboy on the Lower East Side, is a deft hand with a bottle of sherry. This dark mixture pairs sweet Pedro Ximénez sherry with two kinds of rum and a sizable dose of Angostura bitters, which adds spice elements. "I wanted to incorporate what I see as holiday flavors without making a hot, punchlike drink, because I never want to actually drink more than half a glass of one of those," Mr. Greenbaum said. The cocktail comes on like a rich rum old-fashioned, the forthright flavors of the rum, sherry and bitters intertwined in a fruitcake-like medley of clove, allspice, nuts, molasses and dried fruits. It's a nightcap, to be sure, made to accompany whatever dessert is served at your holiday feast. Have one, then settle in for a long winter's nap. Lynn House of Chicago created a eggnog-inspired cocktail with the addition of sweet potatoes. A Slice of Pie That Comes in a Glass Lynn House, most recently of the Chicago bar Blackbird, drew on her Southern background for this rich cocktail. "One of my greatest memories as a child was making pies with my grandmother for the holidays," she said. She, like every other good Southern woman, always went over the top. There would be apple, pecan, pumpkin and, of course, sweet potato pies. To her beloved sweet potatoes, Ms. House adds rum, maple syrup, cream and cinnamon. "Adding the whole egg to the cocktail turns it into a flip, which is a very traditional holiday drink," she said. The result is creamy and comforting, with an almost puddinglike texture. It's a dessert drink, with probably as many calories as those pies Ms. House's grandmother made. But, as she points out, "This is the one time of the year that we should just spoil ourselves and the ones we love." Jon Santer of The Prizefighter in Emeryville, Calif., made a spice-filled cocktail from brandy and rum. A Cocktail That Gets Better as It Sits At first glance, it seems that Jon Santer - the proprietor of the Prizefighter, a bar in Emeryville, Calif., known for its simple but solid cocktails - has gone all tinsel and bows with this bright, tiki-like creation. Yet he insists this modern swizzle is an easygoing affair. "It requires no special tools, not even a shaker tin or a strainer or anything," Mr. Santer said. Most importantly, it requires no technique. It's easily batched and has no time-sensitive ingredients like sparkling wine or soda, so one could make the whole thing ahead of time, measure 3.25 ounces into glasses and be ready to swizzle when guests arrive. Also, "As it sits, it gets better rather than worse," a plus at holiday parties where drinks can play hide and seek with their owners. The drink is surprisingly spicy, owing to the rum and allspice dram, while the mint and lime contribute tropical notes. It's "Bob Hope's Christmas in Hawaii" in a glass. Leo Robitschek from the NoMad in New York City created a whiskey cocktail with a hint of crisp apple. A Cocktail of Apple Juice, Amaro Abano and Spices "To me, the best cocktails always tell a story and evoke sense memory," said Leo Robitschek, bar manager at the NoMad in Manhattan. There are no cocktails that are more successful at this than holiday cocktails. With his Mott and Mulberry, named for two streets in Little Italy, in homage to its Italian and American ingredients, he aimed to create a drink that was festive, like a hot spiced cider, but avoided the rich excesses of some traditional holiday tipples. It is basically a whiskey sour armed with two secret weapons: the distinctly sweet-tart flavor of Honeycrisp apple juice and Amaro Abano, which the bartender called a "spice bomb, adding cinnamon and clove notes while adding a pleasant bitterness." Suited for the cocktail hour or just before dinner, it's a nostalgia-inducing drink that somehow tastes of fall and holidays past. New York City bartender Maksym Pazuniak created a new take on the classic Irish coffee. Mixing Cynar and Coffee As the name of his drink may suggest, Maksym Pazuniak, who has tended bar at Cure in New Orleans and the Counting Room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a devotee of challenging tastes. Bitter Coffee, a hot, creamy concoction, takes as its base Cynar, the bittersweet Italian liqueur that incorporates flavors of artichoke and rhubarb. A few minutes of easy whisking over a stove yields a full-flavored mugful in which the maple-vanilla roundness of the drink is snapped to attention by the edgy Amaro and steaming coffee. Mr. Pazuniak calls the cocktail "an unholy combination of a Cynar flip, a Tom and Jerry, and Irish coffee," and added, "The combination of coffee, bitterness and fat makes it a good post-holiday-dinner drink." It wouldn't be out of place at Christmas Day breakfast, either. Mr. Pazuniak said that the recipe can easily be scaled up to serve a group. Tonia Guffey of Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, created a cocktail packed with holiday flavors: orange, cocoa and cinnamon. Fernet Branca Meets Orange, Cocoa and Cinnamon Tonia Guffey, the head bartender at Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has a talent for marrying disparate ingredients and a borderline-obsessive interest in Fernet Branca, the bitter Italian Amaro. Those two tendencies come together in this pleasingly complex cocktail, which she said was "inspired by those chocolate oranges you get from your mom for Christmas every year and you kind of hate and love them, the ones with the hard chocolate shell you have to break open." Despite the heavy pour of Fernet, this is a surprisingly balanced and approachable drink, its bitterness tamed by sweet holiday flavors: orange, cocoa and cinnamon. As with most of her cocktails, the name is a music reference - in this case, a song about winter by the band Further Seems Forever. "I'm a big music geek," she said, "and it really helps me when I'm developing drinks to sort of tune out and try to create a kind of flavor symphony." Mike Ryan of the Sable Kitchen and Bar in Chicago created a warming cocktail from red wine and whiskey. Calling Mulled Wine to Mind This drink, simple and direct, is intended as "a cold version of a type of mulled wine, from Nordic or Germanic tradition," said Mike Ryan, head bartender at Sable Kitchen and Bar in Chicago. "My mother is German - Bavarian, specifically - and around the holidays, the air in our home was always redolent with the scent of baking spices," he said. Things like pfeffernüsse, snickerdoodles, etc., have always signaled that extended moment of festive warmth. In Mr. Ryan's interpretation, the red wine lends a nice roundness, the rye gives strength and the Drambuie provides sweetness and spice while pulling the drink into Rusty Nail territory. It's a natural before-dinner sipper. For a garnish, Mr. Ryan suggests "a thoughtful, interesting present for your loved one, wrapped in gaudy paper festooned with snowmen and tied with a green and red ribbon." That's a mixologist for you: exacting about ingredients.