The 2010s were a decade of excess capped off with surprising thoughtfulness. They were a decade of canned concoctions and boozy brunches. They were, in a word, boundless. And as sad as we were to bid them farewell, we’re also thrilled to see more mindful trends make their way into the spotlight. So I talked with Robby Nelson, AMASS’ East Coast Sales Director and cocktail whiz whose personal resume reads like a who’s who of the New York food and beverage scene. Before joining the AMASS team, Robby served as the General Manager at Momofuku’s East Village bar, Booker and Dax, bartended at The Long Island Bar under Toby Cecchini, the much-lauded creator of the legendary Cosmopolitan, and worked at Pernod-Ricard first as the Brand Ambassador for Plymouth Gin and later as a Key Account Manager. Suffice it to say, Robby knows a thing or two about cocktails. So it should come as no surprise that when I asked him to share his bold predictions for the drink trends of 2020, he did not disappoint.

No Proof Cocktails

I have definitely noticed more and more bars/restaurants offering "No Proof" cocktails and devoting a section of their menu to them, not to mention taking the time during menu development to create some delicious drinks. Seedlip is, of course, a brand that I see more and more of, but bars have also been incredibly creative when developing non-alcoholic cocktails. For instance, Existing Conditions, which is over a year old now, launched with some truly incredible No Proof cocktails, employing all of their "scientific" and "molecular" techniques (I put those in quotes because they hate the term molecular, and probably wouldn't like scientific much either).

The Martini

I also think the martini is having a bit of a moment. A lot of cocktail bars have a house martini or a martini variation on the cocktail menu. My friends recently opened a restaurant called Anton's in the West Village, and they serve a pre-batched, pre-diluted, and chilled martini, as well as a Manhattan, which are both simple and delicious. That's another trend, too–prepared cocktails that are made better by being made ahead of time. Existing Conditions has an old school vending machine with three different bottled cocktails that you get by requesting a token from the bartender that you then use on the vending machine as if you're getting a Coke.

Classic Cocktails on Restaurant Menus

I have also been noticing that a lot of restaurants have decided they don't need to have a list of bespoke, house cocktails. They're happy to serve a short list of classic cocktails and do them well, which I am so happy about.

Glassware

Glassware—that's the new arms race. Gone are the days where everyone used the same Libbey 5.5 oz coupe glass. Now anyone with a serious cocktail program selects their own glassware because they want it to be beautiful and unique. Which I also love because I'm a sucker for glassware.

Mini Martinis & Vermouth Service

I was never a big fan of doing shots of Fernet, which used to be what every bartender would serve every industry person who walked through the door. Thankfully, this has largely disappeared.  Now, bars/restaurants have their own unique ways of saying hello/goodbye to a visiting industry person.  For instance, Dante usually pours tiny martinis (because they have them prepared) or they'll do a small version of their vermouth service, which is dry vermouth, a splash of bubbles, and a frozen grape. [The drinks are] delicious and low proof, so you're not staggering out of the bar after a full-blown shot of full proof spirit.

Thoughtful Consumption

Along the lines of what I said above about shots, I think consumers are also drinking with more care and intention. They want to understand and appreciate what they're drinking, not necessarily get wasted. Don't get me wrong, people also do that, and frequently. But it's like with food, people want to eat/drink something they enjoy, they can learn about, talk about, take a cute picture of, and engage with on a deeper level than just being full/drunk.

Written by Nicole Carullo & Robby Nelson

What we order at a bar says a lot about us. Our drink orders provide a portal into what we desire, of course, but also how we desire to be seen. And while we all have our old standbys (like my friend who continues to order Cosmopolitans everywhere he goes no matter how uncool they have become), most of us are at least somewhat concerned in appearing in-the-know. That’s why we here at AMASS rounded up the trendiest drinks of the past decade, as a glimpse into the cocktails and beers and shots we ordered and drank in an attempt to seem cooler than we actually are.

2010: The Four Loko

The decade started out with a bang with the rise of the now-infamous Four Loko, a caffeinated alcoholic beverage responsible for many a forgotten night out. Once beloved among college students for its potency and almost concerningly low price point of 3 bucks a can, the caffeine-and-sugar-laden concoction has since been banned (fair), but its legacy forever lives on.

2011: Pabst Blue Ribbon

Unlike its fellow cheap beer counterparts, in its prime PBR was beloved not among bro-y frat stars, but among the beanie-clad, handlebar mustached hipsters of the early 2010s. It was the beer you drank if you were in a band, and although it quickly became outshined by the emerging craft beer scene, for a fading moment it reigned supreme.

2012: Whiskey

With the popularity of Don Draper came a short-lived but nonetheless memorable Americana phase. Many an old fashioned and whiskey sour were drunk and The Avett Brothers were played loudly and often. In the words of a not-so-American writer, it was the best of times and it was the worst of the times.

2013: Negronis

Back in 2013, Campari launched Negroni Week in an effort to 1) celebrate the cocktail, 2) raise money for charities around the world and 3) sell a lot of Campari. It worked, and the classic cocktail became the drink du jour. (Of course, we’re partial to an AMASS Negroni, which you can shake up at home with our recipe here.)

2014: Over-the-top-Brunch-Cocktails

The advent of Instagram brought Instagram-friendly cocktails, and none were more extra than the Bloody Mary. Stacked with everything from fried chicken to cocktail shrimp to cheeseburger sliders, these savory cocktails were a lesson in excess.

2015: Fireball

While Fireball first had a surge of popularity in 2012, it wasn’t until 2015 that the cinnamon-flavored whiskey became the top-selling liqueur in the United States (and the one countless college freshman would cite as the reason they can’t stomach the taste of cinnamon anymore).

2016: Frosé

The moment has passed, but the “frosé all day” tee shirts still remain. The unofficial white girl drink of 2016, frosé, or frozen rose, is like a grown-up slushie made with pink wine and fresh strawberries. It’s best drunk poolside, ideally with one of those pizza or donut-shaped pool floats nearby.

2017: Natural Wine

Natural wine, or wine that is made with fewer additives and sulfites, became popularized in France back in the ‘60s, but it took some time (over 50 years, to be exact) for the movement to gain traction stateside.  Made with the principle that “nothing is added and nothing is taken away,” natural wine’s growing popularity mirrored consumers’ growing concern about what they were putting into their bodies.

2018: The Aperol Spritz

Ah yes, the cocktail that spurred countless Instagram posts and a hotly-debated New York Times think piece. Aperol, the part sweet, part bitter Italian aperitivo, has been around since the ‘50s, but it wasn’t until an intense marketing campaign led by Campari that the drink became a stateside sensation. The buzz has since mellowed a bit, but expect to still see the orange-hued cocktail on your feed come June.

2019: Low ABV Alternatives

While consumers at the beginning of the decade were primarily concerned with how to get drunk fast (hence the popularity of Four Loko), we’ve since entered into an era of low ABV and more thoughtfully sourced ingredients. It’s why hard kombucha and mocktails (and yes, even White Claws) have hit their stride now, and is a trend we’ll continue to see as we bid the 2010s adieu.

After my grandmother died, my family went into a holding period. We boxed up the contents of her attic, sorted through troves of old photographs and jewelry, argued who among us would inherit her wedding ring. And then we retreated to our separate homes for a while, unsure of how or where to reconvene without this central matriarch.

In most cultures, the grandmother is the primary figurehead, the person through which all of the family recipes and traditions are passed through. She is the grounding force that keeps family returning home, for holidays and birthdays and funerals, no matter how far away everyone may live.

My grandmother was no exception to this. Her house was a place that felt warm, even in the dead of winter. Booze flowed plentifully there and food even more so. There were card games and cartoons, ‘Nilla wafers eaten at the kitchen counter. It smelled like...mothballs, and meatballs, and her. So when she died, it felt like the death of something much larger than a person.

But in the months that followed my grandmother’s passing, my aunt bought her house and moved in, replacing the decor but keeping a place for family to come and gather. So we did, slowly at first, uneasy to embrace my grandmother’s house as a place separate from her. Doing so felt something like betrayal. But over time, and out of simple necessity, we began showing up there for holidays, gifts and drinks and food in tow, ready, finally, to celebrate with each other.

On the first Christmas after my grandmother’s death, we pulled out a deck of cards and played Pinochle–my grandmother’s game–for the first time in a long time. My dad and his three sisters sat around the kitchen table and played under yellow light while I perched myself beside them, trying my best to learn a game in which the rules constantly seemed to be in flux. Snow piled outside as they drank freely, and I watched their grins grow bigger and bigger until their cheeks dappled red like the wine.

I don’t know if it was the booze or the game or the simple fact that we were together after a period of separation, but I noticed a shift in us that night. My dad brought out old tape recordings from when he and his sisters were kids, and we listened to the crackly voices of a much younger family. There were my dad and his sisters excitedly talking about school and sleepovers–kid things–and then there was my grandmother, her tongue sharp and biting, a looming figure even on tape.

It was a portal into a version of my family I did not recognize, or at least had not seen in quite some time, and I wanted to linger in their shared history for a while. We laughed a lot, listening to those tapes. I cried a little, too.

From that night forward, we were a family bound by alcohol and a deck of cards, these simple, human things that somehow allowed us to discover each other again. My grandmother’s old house became marked as a place where we could continue in her absence–I could keep trying and failing to learn the rules to Pinochle, the wine could keep flowing, and, most importantly, we could keep coming together again.

There are a lot of reasons I love Thanksgiving. I love that the holiday spurs people to come together, gather around a table, and give thanks. I love eating pie and drinking wine and laying on the couch wearing sweatpants and socks while the Cowboys play on the television. I love the pride a family can have over a dish of sweet potatoes, how a bowl of cranberry sauce can be so much more than a bowl of cranberry sauce. It’s a day that aligns so strongly with my core values (family and food, namely) that I feel the temptation to ignore the rest. It’s easy to pretend Thanksgiving is devoid of problems when, up until pretty recently, there was little to no public discourse saying otherwise.

For a long time, the story of the first Thanksgiving has failed to acknowledge the very real story of colonization and massacre. It has glossed over the unpleasant realities and instead painted a picture of turkey and camaraderie, of a false friendship between the Pilgrims and the Native American people they displaced. And I feel a growing hesitancy to continue pretending that Thanksgiving is a day about coming together and holding hands when I can see, quite plainly now, all the ways it’s not that.

This growing hesitancy to celebrate Thanksgiving is a collective one, as evidenced by the general decline in young people taking part in holiday traditions. Even here at AMASS, with a team that loves nothing more than gathering together over food and drink, several members of our team have chosen to opt out of traditional Thanksgiving festivities, citing the holiday’s problematic history as the predominant reason. One member of our team spends the day making an assortment of dishes from all over the world, while another simply takes advantage of the time off work to visit her family in Northern California.

But for those of us who do celebrate, whether that be because of familial obligation or a genuine desire to spend a day giving thanks, how are we supposed to reconcile Thanksgiving’s gruesome history with our own passed-down traditions? And more importantly: is doing so even possible?

Having a day to gather with loved ones and reflect on what we’re thankful for is not, at its essence, a bad thing. In fact, it’s an essential practice, regardless of whether that moment of reflection takes place on the last Thursday of November or any other day. But if we are going to use Thanksgiving as a day to eat, drink, and give thanks with the people we love, it’s our responsibility to do so in a way that respects and acknowledges the pain felt by many in the Native community.

I’ve found through articles like this one and conversations with friends that there are actually many ways to acknowledge the problematic history of Thanksgiving. By remembering and talking about the first Thanksgiving as it really happened, taking the time to not only give thanks but to reflect on the lives lost, and donating to indigenous-rights organizations like these, we can work to reframe the narrative of Thanksgiving.

I grew up in a house where my dad cooked dinner almost every night. He worked full-time and the meals he made for us were not particularly groundbreaking (read: meatloaf was often on the menu). He did not plan elaborate grocery lists or shop from artisanal stores or cull recipes from cookbooks written by esteemed chefs. He just cooked, simply, with the intent of eating food that would curb both hunger and cravings, every day.

Most nights when I get home from work, I make myself a meal and pour myself a drink. It’s nothing revolutionary, but in a cultural moment where cooking often means an assembly-line-style Sunday meal prep, making a single, thoughtful meal on a Tuesday feels like a small act of rebellion.

Sometimes the word “make” means cutting up a rotisserie chicken and placing it atop some rice and arugula, but there is still something important happening there, even if what I’m doing could barely be considered cooking.

As I stand over my kitchen counter, alone, for likely the first time after a busy workday, I feel something like release. The term “self-care” is overplayed at this point, but that is, to some extent at least, what I’m talking about here–the process of slowing down my mind and my body and making something to nourish myself with.

It’s not about the drinking or eating itself though–it’s all of the chopping and pouring and simmering that leads up to it. Lately, I’ve been making risotto, a dish that, in its very design, forces me to slow down. In fact, besides butter and rice and wine, that it is all it really asks of me–to slow myself and pay attention, to taste and smell and stir. It asks me to notice when the onions have softened and mellowed, when the rice is soft but not yet mush.

It’s a level of care that I think we are tempted to rush through. And that is a warranted temptation–we are all tired and overworked and at the end of a likely stressful day, we want to avoid, at any cost, taking on an additional, attention-demanding task. It is far easier to toss a bunch of ingredients in the oven on Sunday and call it a day.

But the act of creating something to be savored on a more regular basis, whether that be a martini or macaroni and cheese, is work that is, simply put, worth it.

It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to take a long time. The act of doing it at all is enough.