In the wake of the Thirst Boston conference, I was thinking about the Ward 8 and the conversations I had that weekend about it. One of my major problems with the earliest recipe of the 1898 drink appearing in Robert Vermeire's 1922 Cocktails: How to Mix Them is that the orange juice clashed with the oaky American whiskey. I pondered what spirits might work well here, and my eyes drifted over to the Cognac section of my home bar. With a French theme, perhaps substituting Amer Picon for the orange juice might work especially given how well grenadine and Amer Picon pair in some of Trader Vic's recipes, plus the swap reminded me of Paul McGee's trading curaçao for orange juice. For a name, I dubbed this one the 8th Arrondissement which is the part of Paris that contains the Champs-Élysées.

I was inspired by the bottle of Cardamaro, and I was inspired to create this Genever Manhattan riff based off of what would work well with that amaro. For a name, I dubbed this one after a Richard Hell and the Voidoids song after thinking about how I was swapping around ingredient pairings from other recipes to assemble this one.

I was inspired by the mezcal-Cynar pairing, and I set forth to craft this tribute to Evita Muñoz, a starlet of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

I was inspired by the orgeat-Maraschino pairing in Tiki drink like the Gold Cup, and I wondered how I could transfer that flavor unit. This morphed into the idea of a mashup, and I thought about simple classics that utilized these two sweeteners. The two that called out were the Japanese Cocktail from Jerry Thomas' 1862 How to Mix Drinks and the Fancy Free from Crosby Gaige's 1941 Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion. With both drinks being spirit, sweetener, and bitters in an Old Fashioned style, it was easy enough to merge them.