Paris Sweet Tea Bourbon 

This cocktail recipe is one we developed for our late summer wedding nearly three years ago. With a bartender friend of ours, we concocted "his" and "hers" cocktails. For mine, I crafted a unique black tea blend, and Caitrin wanted to use Paris for her cocktail. Both were fantastic, but there was something nice about the intermingling flavors of the Paris and the bourbon.

The trick is to make a really strong brew of Paris (you can use this recipe with a multitude of teas). We used eight teaspoons in a 2-cup pot resulting in a quadruple strength infusion. Make sure to press the leaves out to get the last drops. It's best to prepare the strong brew a day ahead so you can adequately chill the tea and make this cocktail as refreshing as possible. Alternative methods call for letting the tea sit for upwards of 15 minutes, but I find that sometimes an unpleasant bitterness accompanies this process.

For our sour mix, I followed a simple recipe given to me by my brother in law, equal parts lime juice to sugar. It's a useful thing to have around, even just throwing it in some seltzer gives you a cool refreshing sweet lime soda that you can control the sweetness.

Ingredients

• 25 ml Sour Mix
• 50 ml Bourbon
• 100 ml Paris Strong brew