Add This Soda To Blackberry Jack Daniel's For A 2-Ingredient Cocktail Worth Sipping

The divide between mixed drinks and cocktails is usually a cavern. In column A, you have obvious, two-part workhorses: your gin and tonics, your vodka crans, and your classic Scotch and sodas. In column B, you have fancier amalgams, such as the vieux carré, which can really start piling on the ingredients. But seldom the twain shall meet. Jack Daniel's, of course, offers another famous twofer via the iconic Jack and Coke. When applied just right, one of the brand's famous offshoots can tick more into that cocktail category than most.

Jack Daniel's Tennessee blackberry and lemon-lime soda (a blend admittedly suggested by the company) creates a tipple that seems a little more elaborate than its actual components. The soda is, also admittedly, doing a lot of the lifting here; its built-in marriage of sweet and barely sour provides a ready-made flavor combination that plenty of other recipes need more steps to complete.

This is literally two ingredients, so you just combine them, right? Yes, but the soda half of this equation can go in all manner of directions. Choose a can of the super mass market stuff, and it might come off as too sugary and even artificial tasting. In fact, in our ranking of the best Jack Daniel's varieties, we said the blackberry entry was already too sweet. You want a soda that swings in the opposite direction.

Spindrift's lemon-lime soda is explicitly only slightly sweet, which is an appropriate balance for blackberry Jack's more confectionery notes. The soda is made with zero added sugar, versus the high-fructose corn syrup in some of the alternatives you're more likely to find in a typical vending machine. Additionally, served in a rocks glass over ice, the blackberry citrus Jack approximates the more complicated blackberry bourbon smash convincingly enough. We won't tell anyone if you add a third element and introduce a lemon wedge to garnish.