The Red Era (Kansas City Chiefs)

After quite a number of Chiefs cocktails, I was frankly starting to run low on inspiration (see: The Jazz Bath), so I for one was delighted when Taylor Swift entered the Chiefs orbit, because it teed up this cocktail name perfectly.  That defaulted the color to red (which was just as well, since I did a yellow KC cocktail last year. A friend also requested a tribute to Patrick Mahomes’ helmet getting cracked during the Wild Card round, which led me down the path to the smash as a drink style.  As I learned during my research, “a smash is a julep, but a julep is not always a smash. The difference between the two, primarily, is the muddled fruit…a julep doesn’t require muddled fruit, and a smash does.”  I also hit on the idea of using sake, since Taylor Swift was flying in from a tour stop in Japan to attend the Super Bowl.  I took all of that and played around with some flavor references from a few different smash recipes I found online, which eventually led me to this quite delightful creation.