Mission Craft Cocktails and open faced sandwiches

Do you love a classic Margarita, a sophisticated Cosmopolitan, or a smooth Espresso Martini— but you don’t want to mess with making them from scratch or searching out the ingredients?  Mission Cocktails is on a Mission to deliver bar-quality, ready-to-pour drinks, AND to make a difference: every bottle sold helps fund meals for families in need, with over 100k meals provided so far. Wow! And today May 13 is World Cocktail Day! No better way to celebrate this Mission than with a Mission cocktail and light bites! 

We recently enjoyed taste testing a sample box with five of Mission’s award winning cocktails, elegantly packaged together in a shipping or travel friendly gift box; I took mine to Lake Tahoe where we celebrated my son’s graduation and Mother’s Day with a selection of stylish cocktails and beautiful views of the Lake— and it’s certainly more affordable to make your own! Each  375ml bottle yields four bar strength drinks to produce up to twenty craft cocktails. We also blended some cocktails with lots of ice and sometimes soda to lighten up the alcoholic punch. Overall, we felt that these cocktails were done well enough that they only needed a bit of garnish to take them to a craft cocktail quality level. That is not always the case when it comes to premade or premixed cocktails out of the bottle.

Bonus: Mission Cocktails are made right here in Ventura using local ingredients! 

Mission Cocktails

So then what food to enjoy with cocktails? 

We decided to go for “light bites”— in this case, Sue created three open faced sandwiches, plus she brought over two desserts. These sandwiches and desserts are a fun way to enjoy cocktails with friends! The kit offers a range of cocktails, and we suggest offering a range of bites to go with them. The sandwiches and the RTD cocktails would be great for a picnic at the park, beach, BBQ, or to take to any summer outdoor event. They would also go great with a taco bar. Cheers!

Mission Cocktails

• Mission Cosmopolitan

• Mission Jalapeño Pineapple Margarita

• Mission Margarita

• Mission Old Fashioned

• Mission Espresso Martini

Light Bites Meets 3 Open Faced Sandwiches for Cocktails

• Avocado whole grain toast topped with mezcal lime salami, chopped greens, sun-dried tomatoes, pepitas, toasted pumpkin seed oil
• Ciabata topped with pesto, cardamon orange salami, sun-dried tomatoes, chopped greens and grated parm
• Whole grain toast topped with cream cheese, smoked salmon, chopped greens, capers and salmon roe

2 Desserts for Cocktails

• Bread pudding with cognac custard sauce
• Spiced chocolate souffle  topped with Duce de leche (caramel sauce)

Mission Cosmopolitan

Appearance: Floresent pink.

Aroma: Strawberry, cranberry, sweet fruit.

Palate: Tart cranberry, fresh lime, the vodka is nicely integrated, if you wanted to lower the abv it would respond nicely to a lime seltzer water. This cocktail has a good balance between tart to sweetness as well as the tart red fruit to the citrus.

Pairing: Nice with the sandwiches; it especially liked the seeded bread and the rich avocado. It also responded nicely to the rich cream cheese smoked salmon, the cocktail loves rich decadent appetizers.

Mission Jalapeño Pineapple Margarita

Appearance: In the bottle it is a pretty rich apricot, in the glass it is a lighter lovely expression of that color,

Aroma: Lifesaver pineapple, lifesaver coconut, fresh jalapeno,

Palate: Tropical fruit with slight heat, balanced between sweet and tart, just a bit of a bite from the jalapeno which is then balanced by the sweet fruit. Sue is really fussy about artificial tasting flavors and she was impressed with the fresh flavors in this drink.

Pairing: The smoked salmon sandwich was great with this drink, a good ceviche would also work. Especially good with the avocado toast loving the sun-dried tomatoes mezcal salami pepitas and toasted pumpkin oil. Not as great with the pesto sandwich but absolutely brilliant with the other two sandwiches.

Mission Margarita

Mission Margarita

ABV: 25%
SRP: $88 for box with 5
Ingredients: Tequila, orange liquor, lime
sample for my review

Appearance: Pale yellow, bit of cloudiness that turns to a glow when on ice in the glass,

Aroma: Honey sweetness, citrus not hugely aromatic

Palate: Lots of sweetness, it doesn’t taste like sweet and sour, but it is a bit too sweet for our liking, it would benefit from a lime seltzer water and a squeeze of lime, if you don’t like bubbles in your margarita it would make a nice frozen margarita, the addition of blended ice would also benefit this cocktail.

Pairing: Alright with the pesto sandwich, lovely with the smoked salmon sandwich, it has great richness and texture that is cleansed and enhanced by this cocktail, pretty darn good with the avocado toast sandwich cilantro on top of the sandwich would have put it out of the park.

Mission Old Fashioned

Mission Old Fashioned

ABV: 40%
SRP: $88 for box of 5 375 ml bottles
Ingredients: Bourbon Whiskey, Rye Whiskey, bitters, sweet orange zest
sample for my review

Appearance: Amber in the bottle, golden copper in the glass

Aroma: Orange spice, vanilla, barrel, sweet caramel,

Palate: Orange bitters, orange oil, smokey, vanilla, while it is nice on its own, but it would be enhanced nicely by a lovely amaro cherry garnish and a splash of that amaro cherry juice.

Pairing: Perfect dessert cocktail, Sue loves chocolate desserts  with an Old Fashioned, the chocolate soufflé  was divine with the drink, bread pudding and whiskey is a classic pairing so why not have this dessert with an old fashioned.

Mission Espresso Martini for dessert for the win

Mission Espresso Martini

ABV: 20%
SRP: $88 for box of 5
Ingredients: Cold brew coffee, Vodka, hint of chocolate and salted caramel
sample for my review

Appearance: Beautiful coffee brown,

Aroma: Brown sugar, coffee, chocolate, caramel, brown butter, coffee ice cream

Palate: Yummy, iced coffee with a kick, much better than kaluha, silky on the palate, definitely taste the cold brew,

Pairing: While the Old Fashioned went perfectly well with the chocolate soufflé calming the spicy garam masala in the dish, it’s absolutely perfect with this bread pudding and cream sauce.