Dry January notwithstanding, the holiday season needn’t end abruptly with the famous ball dropping in Times Square.

Concurrently, while mocktails are dandy, tippling doesn’t necessarily denote excess.

The Cocktail Contessa’s end-of-year libation creations, as documented in our most recent print edition of Food & Dining Magazine (Vol. 76; Winter 2022), can be enjoyed well into the New Year, one at a time, as you’re curled up with a good book, listening to Sonny Rollins, or piecing together the Kentucky Derby Churchill Downs poster jigsaw puzzle your aunt gave you for Christmas.

Issues of the magazine are available for pickup in the usual food and drink establishments and can be read at issuu. If you don’t know Heather, you should.

Cocktail Contessa columnist Heather Wibbels is an award-winning whiskey and cocktail author and Managing Director of Bourbon Women. She is a digital content creator and photographer creating whiskey drinkers one cocktail at a time. In addition to her writings here at F&D, her creations can be found in Bourbon Plus, American Whisky Magazine, Drinkhacker, Insider, The Manual, Alcohol Professor, and The Bourbon Review. You can find her book, Bourbon is My Comfort Food, online or order it at independent booksellers.