This holiday season, surprise—and delight—your guests with a touch of olive oil cocktail magic. Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), long celebrated for its flavor and health benefits, is stepping out of the kitchen and into the cocktail shaker. Around the world, creative bartenders are using EVOO to craft drinks with luxurious texture, fragrant complexity, and a festive glow. The result? Cocktails that are silky, savory, visually stunning, and guaranteed to steal the spotlight at any holiday gathering.
Before diving in, it’s important to clarify two distinct ways olive oil appears in cocktails:
1. Cocktails With Olive Oil In the Final Drink
Here, EVOO is shaken into the cocktail or drizzled on top. This creates a silky, luxurious mouthfeel, adds aroma, and provides striking visual appeal. Extra virgin olive oil thickens or solidifies when chilled, which may produce interesting—and often delightful—effects when shaken with ice.
End result: you’ll taste and see the olive oil.
2. Fat-Washed Cocktails (No Olive Oil in the Final Drink)
In these recipes, the olive oil is combined with a spirit—usually vodka, gin, or whiskey—and infused over hours or days. The mixture is then chilled so the oil solidifies and is entirely removed.
End result: a crystal-clear spirit with the flavor of EVOO, but no oil floating in the glass.
Both approaches offer different ways to highlight extra virgin olive oil’s sensory and culinary magic.
When shaking olive oil into a cocktail, timing matters—especially when it comes to adding ice. If the mixture gets too cold too early, the EVOO can thicken and create an unpleasant, chunky texture. That’s why many olive oil cocktails use a dry shake, where the ingredients are shaken vigorously without ice first. This warms and emulsifies the mixture—much like when working with egg whites—creating a smooth, unified texture. After the dry shake, ice is added for a second shake to chill, dilute, and prepare the drink for straining.
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Fat washing is a technique in which a flavorful fat is infused into a spirit, then removed—leaving behind only the aroma and taste. EVOO is ideal because its polyphenols are water-soluble, meaning they migrate from the oil into the alcohol during infusion.
Choose a flavorful extra virgin olive oil
Combine EVOO with your spirit in a glass jar at room temperature.
Shake vigorously, then let sit for several hours to several days.
Chill in the refrigerator or freezer until the oil solidifies on top.
Skim off the solidified olive oil and strain through cheesecloth. Note: You don't have to toss the olive oil after fat washing. Save the strained olive oil for cooking.
Bottle, label, and use in recipes such as the ones below.
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