When the weather turns cold, people often turn to rich, aged spirits like whiskey, brandy and dark rum. These are fine choices, but they're not the only choices at your disposal. Enter: gin. With its bracing botanicals, gin is regularly reserved for warm weather, making an appearance in G&Ts on hot summer nights or whenever you want to indulge in a classic Martini. But you can take this spirit to new levels during the winter. Gin has notes of pine, florals, citrus, roots and warming spices, making it the perfect choice for cold-weather cocktails. This includes the Golden Purl. A purl is an old-school English drink classically involving hot ale. It can be served with or without warming spices and a nice dollop of gin. In this recipe from Denver-based writer Linnea Covington, the ale is replaced with warm sparkling cider. The fizzy apple cider adds refreshing effervescence to the drink and works well with the dry gin and the sweet, bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup, which brings a hefty, buttery quality to the mix. Take a sip of the Golden Purl, and you may think it's laden with citrus, but save for the bitters and garnish, there's none. All that fruit-forward acid is courtesy of the cider alone. Note that if you want a drink with a little less oomph, you can opt for nonalcoholic cider and still create a well-balanced, similar tasting cocktail. 5 Gin Drinks Perfect for Winter Sipping