To Your Heath

Can you have 12 cocktails and still feel fine the next morning? You bet, says Alex Ott otherwise known as Doctor Cocktail. Ott has an extensive collection of herbs, teas, and spices for his drink recipes and cooks up vitamin-filled concoctions in his secret lab in New York, above a seedy Times Square peep show where the likes of Susan Sarandon and Alan Cummings have paid a visit. 40-year old Ott was born in Germany, and when he speaks there’s a slight mad-scientist cadence of his voice, yet the biochemist-turned mixologist says his recipes are designed to prevent an ugly morning-after and it doesn’t involve an IV drip or gimmicky sports drinks. And if you’re feeling anxious these days try taking some Xanax in a Glass, an elixir with a bourbon base, raspberries, lemon, and chamomile and damiana teas. No addiction issues there.

Ott sees himself as much more than a bartender and when he talks about making a drinker feel good, he actually means it. He uses fruits, teas, and extracts while shunning anything with artificial flavoring and this cocktail magician- Merlin behind the bar- has even worked for NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory. His day job is crafting bar menus for more than 300 venues including Sushi Samba– where he worked for 6 years and even became notable enough to appear as himself in two episodes of Sex and the City– and the Refinery Hotel. Ott can make a cocktail that will take you back 30 years, and he boasts there isn’t a person in Hollywood that he hasn’t made cocktails for. In 2012 he published Dr. Cocktail: 50 Spirited Infusions to Stimulate the Mind and Body, and not long before that he launched Mercy, a natural hangover protection drink sold in Whole Foods that is funded by Gwyneth Paltrow. Take that Goop haters.  www.facebook.com/flavorguru