3 Cheese Cocktails You Will Love | The Cheese Professor

I am a fan of a savory cocktail. I like my martinis with luscious texture and underlying umami offset by sharp, salty garnishes—not so much dirty, as full-bodied, multilayered. I found my sip by putting cheese in my drinks. A tangy chèvre, a funky blue, or a briny feta adds just the dimension I want for a complex elixir with a velvety mouthfeel.

Utilizing cheese in cocktails has been called pricey and difficult, with equipment like foamers and misters necessary to whip a solid dairy product into drinkable form. But, honestly, it doesn't have to be that hard. If you’re using a soft, crumbly cheese that falls apart easily, there’s really nothing complicated about making an infusion, and a little bit of cheese goes a long way, so it doesn’t have to be expensive. Plus, for cheeses packed in brine, what normally would be a throwaway ingredient adds lusciousness and lip-smacking salinity.

Especially if you’re eating foods that include the cheese you’ve used in the drink, or a common accompaniment to it such as charcuterie or salad, these cocktails pair well with snacks. But they’re also like sippable meals themselves, so you don’t need to make them too big to be satisfying. Here are the three cheeses used in standout cocktail recipes sourced from pros that are easy to execute at home.

Goat Cheese Cocktail: The Madamoiselle Seguin

“The story of goat cheese has followed me for a long time,” says Adrien Lefort, bar captain at brasserie–cum–burlesque club Maison Close in Manhattan. When he was starting in Paris two decades ago, he’d shake chèvre with muscat brandy from the south of France because the combination of the cheese and the oak-aged spirit, with its caramelly, nutty notes, reminded him of goat cheese on toasted baguette. At the now-shuttered Barrio 47 in NYC’s West Village 10 years ago, he followed that up with a pisco and goat cheese cocktail. “Then, everywhere I was working, I did the goat cheese thing,” he says.

Maison Close’s Mademoiselle Seguin cocktail is his latest iteration. Made with mezcal, it covers just about all the flavor bases: smoke from the spirit; sweetness from the honey, whose texture augments the chèvre’s silkiness; licorice “pep” from the anisette; and tartness from the lemon, which matches the tang of the cheese.

To make the cheese easy to work with, Lefort brings it to room temperature beforehand. And although he double strains the drink, he finds that most of the cheese has diluted into the cocktail anyway. “There’s very little left in the strainer.”

Because the drink is so white with diluted cheese, he taps on a colorful spice mix that jives with the anisette, boosts the cheese’s salinity, and adds a pop of heat to the drink. A playful thyme-sprig garnish amplifies the herb’s aroma in the drink. “It’s a savory cocktail, both interesting and easy to drink,” he says.

Lefort named the drink “Mademoiselle” in homage to the working girls of the maisons closes, the government-regulated brothels of Belle Epoque Paris, and “Seguin” after Alphonse Daudet’s 1869 short story La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin, about a freedom-loving goat and the farmer she escapes from and “also because in most of the casual restaurants in France, we call the goat cheese salad ‘Salade Seguin,’” he says. Indeed, the cocktail goes swimmingly with a classic goat cheese salad, the round of chèvre slightly brûléed and laid on a bed of mixed greens dressed in a Dijon vinaigrette.

The Mademoiselle Seguin

2 oz of mezcal, preferably Del Maguey Vida

1/3 oz fresh goat cheese

¾ oz homemade thyme syrup (see below)

½ oz lemon juice

¼ oz anisette, preferably Marie Brizard

1 star anise pod

Pinch each ground star anise, flaky sea salt, black pepper, pink pepper

Combine the mezcal, syrup, lemon juice, goat cheese, and anisette in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake and double-strain it into a couple glass. Garnish it with the star anise pod, sprinkle on the rest of the spices, and attach the thyme sprig to the rim of the glass with a mini paper clip.

Thyme Syrup

1¼ cup honey

1 cup boiling water

¼ oz fresh thyme

Combine all the ingredients in a heat-proof container, give it a good stir, and infuse the syrup until it cools to room temperature. Strain it into a clean container. It will keep in an airtight container in the fridge, for up to 2 weeks.

Blue Cheese Cocktail: Silver Bullet Martini

Blue cheese can be pungent, and that’s why it’s such a fantastic stuffing for the olive in a dry martini: It adds a funky touch to the clean, clear liquid. In fact, chef Rob McDaniel of Helen in Birmingham, Alabama, years ago decided the best thing about a blue cheese olive was the cheese, and he did away with the olive altogether. The minimalist martini he came up with stuck as his signature. In his version, which they’re serving at the restaurant now, the drink is simply Hendrick's gin shaken with ice and poured over a sugar cube–sized hunk of Danish blue, a cheese, he says that is both affordable and nicely pungent. Called the Silver Bullet after the cocktail shaker, it’s terrific, he says, with a burger.

“The blue cheese serves the same purpose as an olive or lemon twist. When you put that in, the gin picks up the flavor of the blue cheese while you’re drinking it,” he says. But the cheese serves another purpose as well. “The cocktail gets a little bit more velvety toward the end because of the blue cheese leeches out in the gin.”

There have been variations on the Silver Bullet at Helen over time. One has included an infused vermouth, flavored with Danish blue and dehydrated orange peel. Cubing the cheese provides lots of surface area for the infusion. With its concentrated flavor, the dried orange rind mimics the orange bitters in a classic martini and balances out the cocktails. Just plan ahead; the vermouth needs to sit in the fridge for a few days so that the flavors mature.

As for the gin, Hendrick's “is nice and clean,” says McDaniel, not overly juniper-forward or brash, so the funkiness of the cheese comes through. A good, hard shake bruises and aerates the drink, creating a frothiness, chipping the ice, and making the flavors really pop, so the blue cheese gets more pronounced.

How do guests respond to the drink? “Most of them really like it,” he says. “Some want to substitute vodka, but I’m a believer in giving people what they want.” So go ahead and make this one his preferred way—lean and clean without the vermouth. Or go a bit more wet and add the cheese-infused vermouth. Either way, at the end of the sipping? “You have a nice cheese cube to eat.”

Silver Bullet Martini

2¼ oz Hendrick’s Gin

¾ oz blue cheese vermouth (see below)

1 cube Danish blue cheese

Combine the gin and vermouth in an ice-filled cocktail shaker, give it a good shake, and strain it into a 4-oz martini glass. Garnish it with the cheese cube.

Blue Cheese Vermouth

1 cup of dry vermouth

½ cup Danish blue cheese, cubed

½ tsp dried orange rind powder

Combine ingredients in airtight container and stir well. Cover and let sit in the fridge 2 - 3 days. Strain it through a chinoise strainer into a clean, airtight container. It will keep in the fridge for 1 week. Makes enough for 10 martinis.

Feta Cheese Cocktail: Dirty Feta Martini

Greece’s only craft vodka distilled from Greek olives, Kástra Elión is the brainchild of master distiller Frank Mihalopoulos, who grew up in Nafpaktos, on the Gulf of Corinth.

The town is set in the shadow of an enormous castle, which is the vodka’s namesake, and surrounded by olive groves. Mihalopoulos grew up eating those olives, three varieties of which infuse the wheat-based mash for the vodka, bringing an oily richness and a subtle herbaceousness. “You get all the umami, saltiness, and texture, without it being an olive-flavored vodka,” says Rafael Reyes, director of strategy and commercial sales for Kástra Elión. “When you drink it neat, you perceive extra mouthfeel, and when you have it in a martini, the olives add another layer.”

In 2020, when Kástra Elión launched in the States, Reyes sent out dirty martini kits that included the vodka, some feta-stuffed olives, and a compound brine from both olives and feta cheese, sans the vermouth. “The traditional classic martini always has vermouth to soften the drink and add a layer of the botanicals,” says Reyes, but in this case, the cheese brings the softening. As brines tend to do when shaken, this one opens right up in the glass. “You add the feta-olive brine, and you’re getting the freshness of the cheese and saltiness of olive, and it makes you have another sip.”

Though you can buy olives already stuffed with feta, for the best flavor, visit your local Greek market. Purchase feta in brine and a jar of olives, and stuff your own olives. “The cheese tends to not travel well, so if you stuff them yourself, the consistency of the cheese and its characteristics express themselves a little bit better,” says Reyes. Then blend the brine from the pitted olives with the brine from the cheese. You’ll end up with a luxurious drink that speaks of the provenance of its ingredients.

“We wanted something unique with the character to add another layer to your martini. You’re getting some of the olive, some of the cheese; it’s not just one note. You taste more as it evolves,” explains Reyes. “Plus, the feta helps bring you a little bit of Greece.”

Dirty Feta Martini

2½ oz vodka, preferably Kástra Elión

¾ oz equal parts feta and olive brine

1 cube feta

1 pitted green olive, such as Halkidiki or another Greek variety

Combine the vodka and brine in an ice-filled cocktail shaker, give it a good shake, and strain it into a 4-oz martini glass. Stuff the feta into the olive and drop it into the drink.