When you throw some booze and strong flavors together, it can only be so bad, in the same way putting a hot dog on a bun can only be so bad. Personally, I hate that mentality. Life’s too short to limp your way through a poorly made cocktail; I don’t care how tolerable it is. And that’s exactly why we brought on Westin Galleymore a ways back—he’s not only intolerant of bad cocktails, but I’m pretty sure he’s incapable of making them, too.

So, as I tend to do when I have cocktails on the brain, I pull up a chair to Westin’s bar and generally run up one hell of a tab. In this article, I wanted to explore the ingredients that built both of our cocktail syrups—Caliché Cruiser and The Wingman—to show off Westin’s process for curating the perfect cocktail syrup, and hopefully inspire you to potentially do the same. Speaking of which, we have a companion article to this one, where Westin shares his philosophy for making cocktails out of thin air.

Either way, I know two things. We’re going to get a buzz on, and we’re going to learn a lot about how to do it in style with the perfect cocktail.

Levi Goode: Let’s dive right in. What was the vision behind the Caliché Cruiser?

Westin Galleymore: We made this cocktail syrup to be insanely citrusy and refreshing, but not one-note. It wasn’t just meant to be a margarita mixer. So many mixers on the market are hyper-specific—either made exclusively for high-end margaritas or designed only for a Tom Collins. We wanted this to be a high-quality base starter.

LG: What goes into it?

WG: We keep the ingredients pretty simple: fresh lemon and lime juice—which gets pasteurized to make it shelf-stable—a little bit of honey, and classic cane sugar. We use powdered grapefruit and citric acid to help stabilize it. Then we grind up makrut lime leaves and infuse them into the syrup before straining it off.

Finally, we add a little bit of vegan pectin to give it a better mouthfeel so it isn’t super thin. There’s nothing worse than a thin cocktail. The pectin creates a texture almost like an egg white, so if you’re making a sour and shake the hell out of it, the drink holds great weight and body.

LG: What spirits pair best with it?

WG: It’s built for pretty much any clear spirit: rum, gin, vodka, or tequila. It’s fantastic with tequila. You can use anywhere from half an ounce to a full ounce, add your spirit of choice and soda water, and make a great ranch water because it isn’t overly sweet.

Or, if you add a bit more syrup with your tequila or vodka, you get a balanced margarita or gimlet that isn’t too sweet or too acidic.

LG: How about more off-the-wall recipes?

WG: Absolutely. It gives you a strong foundation to start crafting your own drinks. If you have a bottle of Chartreuse sitting on your bar cart that you bought for a single recipe a year ago, you can combine a half-ounce of Chartreuse, a heavy pour of gin, and the Caliché Cruiser to get a drink that tastes just like a Last Word.

If you were feeling adventurous and made a homemade watermelon syrup, the Caliché Cruiser won’t overpower it because it isn’t cloying. You can layer in other syrups you’ve made or bought. It’s extremely versatile. Equal parts with gin or vodka makes a great shaken gimlet, or you can top that same ratio with sparkling water for a fantastic Collins.

For ranch water, use two ounces of tequila, a splash of Caliché Cruiser, top it with Topo Chico, and add a pinch of salt. We wanted it to be simple enough for a quick two-ingredient drink, but versatile enough to act as a cheat code when hosting so you don’t have to squeeze fresh citrus or make simple syrup from scratch.

LG: Alright, let’s move on to the next one—The Wingman.

WG: The Wingman was designed specifically to be an Old Fashioned cocktail syrup. That is one of the hardest things to execute without getting caught up in red tape.

LG: Yeah, that’s a thing.

WG: We wanted to make sure this syrup didn’t contain any actual alcohol. Traditional Old Fashioneds rely heavily on bitters, and bitters contain alcohol. It’s hard to get products approved as non-potable—meaning not intended for direct consumption. That classification is why a 16-year-old can walk into a grocery store and buy Angostura bitters without an ID, even though it’s high-proof, much like almond or lemon extract.

We wanted to avoid those regulatory hurdles while still creating a syrup that wasn’t overly sweet and delivered authentic bitter notes without requiring customers to buy extra ingredients.

LG: And the scientist gets to work…

WG: It took a lot of experimentation, but we landed on a blend of blackstrap molasses, pecan extract, dandelion root, gentian root, allspice, cinnamon, damiana leaf (an herbal leaf native to Texas), roasted chicory root for a subtle coffee note, and brown sugar.

Gentian and dandelion roots provide the structural backbone of classic bitterness. Gentian is the bittering root derived from cinchona tree bark, which is the same agent used to make tonic water. Damiana adds a distinct nutty, bitter note. Chicory brings that roasted flavor we love in the South, famous in New Orleans coffee at Café Du Monde.

It turned out really great. You can mix a half-ounce of Wingman with rum, bourbon, rye, or Canadian whisky. You don’t need an expensive bottle of bitters or a muddled sugar cube. If you have a bottle of whiskey on your bar cart, just add a quarter to a half-ounce of syrup, stir, and garnish with a flamed orange peel or star anise.

LG: I’m just glad this isn’t a spelling bee. How did you track down some of the wilder ingredients?

WG: For the Wingman, it became a personal mission to study botanical bittering agents. I looked at the core components of Angostura bitters, Genepy from the Swiss Alps, and Italian amaros like Braulio, Campari, and Green Chartreuse—even Jägermeister. People give Jäger a bad rap, but it’s essentially a German amaro; people who turn their nose up at Jäger will happily drink Fernet, but it’s really just a matter of style preference.

I researched which bittering botanicals were safe to use. For instance, you have to be careful with raw cinchona bark or tobacco leaf because improper dosing can introduce toxic chemical properties and make people sick.

Damiana was an easy choice early on. Revolution Spirits out of Austin makes an amaro called Amico Amaro that uses pecan and damiana, which served as inspiration. To source the raw materials, I started at local spots like Canino’s Farmers Market in Houston and various traditional Mexican hierberías, where these botanicals are readily available.

We brewed them into concentrated teas to test extraction times. At first, the plain tea was intensely astringent and bitter—it hit every side of your mouth. But once we balanced it with pecan, brown sugar, and blackstrap molasses, all the pieces fell into place.

LG: Were any of those ingredients particularly difficult to source consistently?

WG: Dandelion root was easier because dandelion greens are widely used in culinary kitchens, so suppliers routinely dry and sell the roots for herbal teas. The same goes for damiana. Many of these ingredients have natural medicinal uses—calming the stomach or reducing stress—so sneaking those healthy properties into a cocktail mixer felt like a win-win.

Gentian root was the hardest to secure in consistent, high-quality batches. You can find spice vendors online, but finding reliable supply chains for commercial production is tricky—you can’t just pick it up in the spice aisle at the grocery store. But that’s kind of the whole point. We found it for you.

LG: Ten years ago, most pre-mixed cocktail products were seen as low quality. That perception has started to shift a bit.

WG: 100%. A decade ago, I would have told you that any canned cocktail was going to be garbage. Back then, your options were basically Jack and Coke in a can.

Around the pandemic, when everyone was drinking at home, the category exploded. Hard seltzers paved the way as a beer alternative, but then premium brands started using real distilled spirits instead of neutral grain spirits packed with flavor blockers, artificial aromas, and aggressive carbonation. Consumers have embraced that shift because they want higher quality when drinking at home.

Cocktail syrups and mixers followed a similar trajectory. Growing up, the standard was Jose Cuervo margarita mix, which was full of artificial flavors and overly sweet. People assumed all pre-made mixers were cheap backyard junk not suitable for a real cocktail party.

While cocktail syrups are still catching up in terms of broad consumer awareness, the market has transformed. Boutique shops and farmers’ markets now feature high-end mixers made with real ingredients. Consumers are realizing that these products are convenience shortcuts, not quality sacrifices. Our syrups contain no corn syrup or artificial preservatives; they use natural stabilizers. They won’t sit on a shelf for four years like a Twinkie, but that’s the trade-off for real ingredients. Trust me, it’s worth it.

A big thanks to Westin for sharing his insights and, more importantly, his love for craft cocktails. Truly, that’s the ingredient that matters most to me. He loves his job and his craft. So do I. We’re not developing products just because we can; we’re developing them because we want to have them, too. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments about our Cocktail Syrups (or anything else we make) please reach out. We want to hear from you, even if it just means throwing some ideas around for the next great cocktail recipe.