It was time to pick my summertime cocktail, but I was torn between two lovers.

One one side of the ring, weighing in at equal parts grape juice, lemon lime soda and vodka, sits the Transfusion. This grapey sip comingles memories of the grape popsicles of my childhood with the loss of memory due to vodka in my adulthood. A perfect combo.

On the other side of the ring, weighing in at 2oz of vodka with the juice of half a lime and some ginger beer, never to be confused with ginger ale, sits the Moscow Mule. There is something about drinking out of a cold and dripping copper mug on a sunny day that screams, “One more please!”. I love that the Moscow Mule is a super American drink. Don Draper would approve. Scroll down for the history, lifted straight out of Wikipedia.

What these two cold beverages have in common besides vodka, is how easy they are to make. I leave mixology to the mixologists… I, for one, believe in the pour-stir-drink school of bartending.

Both the Transfusion and the Moscow Mule are perfect summer cocktails for watching your pedicure shine by the pool. Luckily, there is no Facebook status for ” Current Cocktail” because I’ll be drinking both, often.

To make one, the other, or better yet, many of each – check out the video…

– Claudia

For more of my… tasty bits™… check out my site and stay tuned for more on DIVAlicious.

NOTE: This post is not sponsored. All thoughts are unbiased and my own. All photos and videos are my own.

PS, the history of the Moscow Mule, lifted directly from Wikipedia:

The cocktail was invented in 1941 by John G. Martin of G.F. Heublein Brothers, Inc., an East Coast spirits and food distributor, and “Jack” Morgan, President of Cock ‘n’ Bull Products (which produced ginger beer) and proprietor of the Cock ‘n’ Bull restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles popular with celebrities.
George Sinclair (2007) quotes from an article run in the New York Herald Tribune:
The mule was born in Manhattan but “stalled” on the West Coast for the duration. The birthplace of “Little Moscow” was in New York’s Chatham Hotel. That was back in 1941 when the first carload of Jack Morgan’s Cock ‘n’ Bull ginger beer was railing over the plains to give New Yorkers a happy surprise…
The Violette Family helped. Three friends were in the Chatham bar, one John A. Morgan, known as Jack, president of Cock ‘n’ Bull Products and owner of the Hollywood Cock ‘n’ Bull Restaurant; one was John G. Martin, president of G.F. Heublein Brothers Inc. of Hartford, Conn., and the third was Rudolph Kunett, president of the Pierre Smirnoff, Heublein’s vodka division. As Jack Morgan tells it, “We three were quaffing a slug, nibbling an hors d’oeuvre and shoving toward inventive genius”. Martin and Kunett had their minds on their vodka and wondered what would happen if a two-ounce shot joined with Morgan’s ginger beer and the squeeze of a lemon. Ice was ordered, lemons procured, mugs ushered in and the concoction put together. Cups were raised, the men counted five and down went the first taste. It was good. It lifted the spirit to adventure. Four or five days later the mixture was christened the Moscow Mule.