Two Essential Cocktails for your New Years Eve Celebration.

Too often the host of a New Year’s Eve party worries about whether the guests will enjoy themselves. We would turn the tables: Let your guests worry whether they are good enough for your party.

Set the bar high. This isn’t a get-together scheduled at the spur of the moment or a chummy girls-night-out type of gathering. It is a party to celebrate 2018 and to ring in the New Year with the highest expectations.

It should be elegant.

For this article, the decorations, the food and the dress code are up to you. We will provide guidance about the drinks.

Yes, your girlfriends will invite boyfriends or one-off dates, and they will want beer. Have that on hand and give them the channel changer for a TV in a back room.

In order to properly entertain your true guests all evening and into the morning, one must surprise with beverages that will catch both the eye and the imagination. The Divas have chosen two cocktails that are essential for every successful New Year’s Eve gathering.

Set the New Year on Fire

This cocktail features an actual fire. It also requires more effort than prying the cap off a bottle, but if you are going to impress your guests, give them something they won’t give themselves.

Ingredients

• 3⁄4 ounce lime juice
• 1⁄2 ounce simple syrup
• 6 mint leaves
• 2 ounces Scotch
• 1⁄2 ounce Campari

Add the lime juice, cane syrup, and mint leaves to a glass and press gently with a muddler. Add the scotch and fill with crushed ice. Float the Campari on top and fill with more crushed ice. Garnish with a flaming lime shell.

How to make a flaming lime shell

• Half a lime per cocktail
• 1 sugar cube
• Rum

Squeeze the lime half. Top the drink with the lime shell and place the sugar cube inside. Douse the sugar cube with rum and carefully set on fire.

The classic martini

Everyone knows the martini, but few have experienced the classic. A martini is sophisticated, cool and elegant. Whether stirred or shaken, it is smooth enough for both the experienced and novice drinker.

Martini recipe (From Bon Appetit)

Ingredients

• 4 ounces gin
• ¾ ounce dry vermouth
• 1 lemon

Fill a Drinking Divas cocktail shaker with cracked ice. Add gin and vermouth and, using a bar spoon, rapidly shake 50 times. The outside of the shaker will become very cold and frosty. Strain martini through a strainer or a large slotted spoon into a Divas martini glass. Using a small serrated knife, remove a 1-inch piece of peel from lemon; it should be stiff enough to provide some resistance (some white pith is okay). Twist peel over drink to express oils, then rub around rim of glass. Float peel, yellow side up, in martini.

Before the stroke of midnight, call the boys from the back room and pop the champagne. The best way to chill your bottle is to fill an ice bucket with ice and one-third water and allow the champagne to cool for 15-20 minutes.

Before everyone heads home, make a pot of coffee and pour each driver a cup.