Your Cocktail Rims Need A Cinnamon Sugar Twist For Fall

When the weather gets colder, cocktails get a little sweeter, cozier, and more decadent. Fall and winter cocktails call on moody spirits like oaky, nutty bourbon or dried, dark-fruity brandy, rich flavors like coffee, pumpkin, caramel, and maple syrup, and, for balance, crisp orchard-fresh fruits like apples and pears plus spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. There's a way to crown these celebratory tipples, which are often rolled out on special occasions like holiday get-togethers, with one more boost of sweetness and fancy flair, too: cinnamon sugar rims. 

Cinnamon sugar rims are one of the easiest ways to make guests say "wow," upgrading everything from a fall beer to a hard cider. Cocktails are a step further into drinks that are an occasion in and of themselves. To make one of these rims, mix cinnamon and sugar in a bowl, and pour water into another, both wide enough to dip your glass into. Wet the glass's rim, and then coat it in the sugar mixture. Even better than water is simple syrup, as it's a bit stickier, and you can even add flavor here with a homemade, upgraded syrup with additions like nutmeg and ginger. You can also mix those spices and anything else into the dry cinnamon sugar combo — thinking about unique ingredients for cocktail rims, you could add a bit of sea salt for sweet-salty balance, chili powder for spice, or cocoa powder for desserty sweetness.

There are plenty of options for a cinnamon sugar rim — just think about what drink you'd like to accent with spiced sweetness at every sip. A natural fit is a boozy apple cider recipe with whiskey, apple juice, and sparkling hard apple cider. Here, you wet the rim with lemon juice, adding a hint of brightness to temper the sugar. Or, there's the modern classic cable car cocktail: spiced rum with orange liqueur, lemon juice, and simple syrup. The cinnamon sugar rum highlights the spices in the rum. Speaking of spiced rum, there's also the spiced rum cake holiday cocktail, which incorporates almond bitters and allspice dram and is a great contender for a cinnamon sugar rim.

You could make the essential espresso martini a little sweeter with a cinnamon sugar rim, and the pairing only gets better with riffs like a pumpkin spice espresso martini. A pumpkin pie martini, which can also be made as a blended drink, feels like it's missing something without a cinnamon sugar rim. A white Russian upgraded with a tiramisu riff calls on cinnamon, so bolster that flavor profile with a rim accordingly. You don't even have to go as far into drinkable cake territory, either. Instead, think about sophisticated tipples you can sweeten up, like a Manhattan reinvigorated with dessert wine. Alternatively, you could skip the booze altogether and still have a fancy drink: Make pumpkin spice affogato with a cinnamon sugar rim.