Flavored liquors are a big part of the resurgence of the cocktail. Infusions are an easy way to add more flavor to drinks without adding sugary mixers. And they're so simple to make that, starting now, you can easily have several ready for holiday entertaining or gift-giving.

Making your own also can be less expensive. Depending on the price of the vodka, rum or gin you select for infusion, you can save $3 to $4 a fifth. And you can go wild with your own distinctive flavor combinations.

Bartender Doug Koppenhaver at Bogart's in Raleigh traces the infusion craze back to a single source: "Sex and the City."

"It really popularized that stuff," Koppenhaver says. "[The characters] used to drink Cosmos and Flirtinis. Young ladies really ate that up."

Bogart's infuses 14 flavors of vodka, plus a pineapple rum and five-olive gin, in house. Some of the most popular are vodkas infused with strawberries and with sour apple or watermelon flavors of Jolly Rancher hard candies. The sour apple candy infusion is the base of the bar's sour apple martini, which also includes commercial lemon vodka and sour mix.

At Lantern in Chapel Hill, bar manager Kristen Johnson's exotic infusions are less about party drinks and more about creating cocktails that complement the Asian-influenced restaurant's menu.

"I want to use fresh ingredients, because fresh product is what the restaurant prides itself on," Johnson says.

"People don't want powdered sour mix anymore. They want things that are handmade and to know where things are from."

Some recent cocktails on her menu include The Cunning Kimono (jasmine flower-infused vodka with a little honey and a lemon twist) and Meyer Lemon Drop (lemon-infused gin with Meyer lemon juice and sugar). Vodka infused with dried hibiscus flowers, which turns a vivid, deep magenta, is so popular that Johnson has to constantly replenish the stock.

Johnson raids the Lantern kitchen for ideas, and kitchen staff members come to her aid. They prepare many flavored sugar syrups for the bar, including one cooked with fresh ginger.

Cinnamon, cardamom, Kaffir lime leaves, dried orange peel and Thai basil have all found their way into infusions. One favorite is gold rum infused with a couple of cinnamon sticks, half a vanilla bean (scraped and scrapings included), two or three Thai chiles and about four black peppercorns, which is used in a cocktail mixed with pear nectar.

There was a time when it seemed as if everyone had a bottle of homemade coffee liqueur steeping in a dark pantry.

Today, that spot belongs to the popular limoncello. The Internet is full of recipes for this lemon peel-infused vodka, which originally was an Italian liqueur made with special Italian lemons.

Vivace, a restaurant set to open in Raleigh's North Hills in December, plans to center its bar menu on house-made limoncello. Frazier's in Raleigh has offered limoncello martinis.

Infusion cooking

If you'd like to have everything coming up lemons -- or other flavors -- at home, it's really easy.

Some infusions, such as the candy ones, take mere days -- long enough for the candy to dissolve into the vodka. Others, such as limoncello or ones using fresh fruits, take several weeks.

There's debate on the quality of vodka, gin or rum to use. Some think it doesn't matter and use the cheapest because of the added flavors; others think you should still use quality liquors and consider potato vodka to have the purest flavor. If you're experimenting with a flavor combination, start with the less expensive stuff, at least until you perfect your infusion, then see if you can tell a difference. But 100-proof vodka will bring out flavors faster than lower proofs.

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