B. Rodell

Sculaccione at Osteria Mozza

By Osteria Mozza's standards, the Sculaccione is an old standard, a cocktail that's been on the list since the restaurant's opening. A recipe for it appears in The Mozza Cookbook, and it's a favorite of GM David Rosoff (though he admits to making his with mezcal, rather than the tequila used in the original). So why drink the Sculaccione now, specifically?

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Anne Fishbein

The Daily Double at The Derby

Oscar night now looms over Hollywood like a gathering of clouds, some of which, for the winners at least, will be parted or silver-lined (if only there was a playbook for that!). Hollywood Boulevard is cordoned off, knots of tourists and lookyloos line the corners. Whether you attend, watch, or both, an extended viewing is nearly impossible to do without drinking.

Of course, on the West Coast the feed gets going while the sun is still up, and so Oscar drinking requires a certain amount of discipline and stamina. You want to go with a selection of drinks to nurse as the hours mount between Best Supporting Actor and Best Picture -- drinks that are festive and light, mostly celebratory, not fatiguing. Here are my nominees for Best Drinks with which to fill the hours.

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B. Rodell

The Cold War Kid at Picca

There are plenty of cocktails around town this time of year that play with traditional holiday flavors -- orange, cinnamon, mint. And mostly, they're cloying, or at best fun and balanced but not particularly interesting.

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T. Nguyen

Broguiere's egg nog

It's the middle of December, which means you might be busy roasting chestnuts and decorating trees and, somewhat less glamorously, checking nearly every supermarket in town in the annual hunt for a Broguiere's egg nog. For the uninitiated, this liquid gold would be from a family-owned dairy farm that's been operating since 1920, famous equally for its steadfast commitment to selling its milk in glass bottles and for its seasonal egg nog that Huell Howser once enthusiastically declared to be "excellent!" So popular is Broguiere's that in the brief moment that bottles are stocked at your local market, no doubt someone will get there before you do and clean out the entire inventory to sell on eBay.

And so, unless you really enjoy the thrill of the egg hunt, maybe this year you can skip all those supermarket parking lots and just go straight to the source, to Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy in Montebello.

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B. Rodell

Dirty and Rowdy 2011 Semillon

OK, lovers of truly weird wines, have I got a doozy for you. A cloudy, funky, Napa Valley partially skin-fermented 100% Semillon. It was described to me by a woman at a wine store as "a beer drinker's wine." Others have compared it to orange wine. When first opened, it smells intensely of jalapeños, and pickles, and all kinds of crazy herbs. As it opens up (and I recommend giving it plenty of air -- it changed dramatically over the two hours I had it open), it transforms to a citrus-zest, tarragon, mineral-rich wine that would be fantastic with food but is interesting enough that food might just be a distraction.

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B. Rodell

2010 Alaverdi Monastery Cellar Rkatsiteli

Oh, orange wine, how I adore thee. For lovers of odd wines, orange wines are somewhat of a cult item, prized for their weirdness and obscurity. Unlike rosé, which gets its color from a few days of contact with grape skins, orange wine is left to ferment -- skins, stems and all -- for months at a time. They look, well, orange, and they taste pretty odd.

The weirdness and obscurity is part of what appeals to me, but mainly I love orange wines because they are so food-friendly. Some people say they're difficult to pair -- I disagree. And if you're a white wine lover who's looking for a non-red to pair with heavier foods, this is the wine for you.

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B. Rodell

The Silver King Fizz at Sunny Spot

The Bloody Mary is a perfectly respectable drink. It goes well with egg dishes. It's spicy and salty and sometimes comes with fun/stupid garnishes. Mimosas are pretty great too -- bubbly, fruity, what's not to love? But, listen. It's time to up your brunch/hangover cocktail game. It's time to turn to fizzes.

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B. Rodell

Among the weird and wonderful wines produced in Hungary, Kiralyudvar 's Tokaji Furmint Sec has been a favorite of wine writers and wine geeks for years. Widely available and priced at around $20 a bottle retail, the dry tokaji, made primarily from furmint grapes, is all golden honey petrol goodness, fantastic with food and on its own.

So I was intrigued and surprised last week to come across a sparkling Kiralyudvar on the wine list at Gjelina. Apparently Kiralyudvar began producing sparkling wine in 2007 in small quantities.

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B. Rodell

Outside of a gin and tonic, the piña colada was the first mixed drink I ever had. I was 14 and in Fiji with my father. I was moving to America with my mother; he was staying in Australia. We took a vacation together as a farewell of sorts. I don't remember much about what we talked about or where we went, but I remember the beach, and a little shack with a wonky billiards table where he taught me to shoot pool, and I remember the piña colada he bought for me, its taste like pure tropical exuberance. It's a bittersweet memory, to say the least. To me, a piña colada has always tasted like the beach and the ocean but also like growing up -- my first cocktail, my first great heartbreak.

And yet, as a true adult, it has betrayed me. Is there another drink that should be so delicious but so often is so nasty? Even at its best, a piña colada is frequently too sweet, too cloying, too reminiscent of suntan lotion.

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G. Snyder

Historic Core Cocktail

The Parish, downtown's new restaurant wedged into the narrow flat-iron space on Spring Street, opened a few weeks ago -- but you might not guess it after look around. Chef Casey Lane took inspiration from downtown Los Angeles so-called "golden era" of the 1920's and 30's in creating the space's vintage feel. The bar -- which runs the length of the second floor, is covered with dark wood paneling, iron sconces, and brass fixtures -- is exactly the kind of place you'd want to mull over a few stiff drinks.

But the history doesn't stop at the decor, the drink program run by John Coltharp (Seven Grand, Caña Rume Bar) includes a cocktail that he created back in 2008 as part of Marco Tellos' "Downtown Los Angeles Sub-District Cocktail Competition," which challenged L.A. bartenders to create cocktails that would represent the different districts of downtown in the same way that New York bartenders a few years back created such drinks as The Bensonhurst, Greenpoint, Harlem, and Little Italy.

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