Wild Moon Cocktails - Cucumber, Rose, and Cranberry

One Tuesday night after work, I found myself in the gigantic liquor store a few towns over, looking for a hostess gift for a girlfriend who would be hosting me overnight at her place after my “sisters’ weekend” in New York City. I had it in my head that I wanted to get her a bottle of Wild Moon Liqueur from Hartford Flavor Company, but the gigantic liquor store had all six flavors in stock, so it was a mind boggling choice. I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to get her Birch or Chai Spice. Those just seemed too harsh to enjoy. Cranberry was probably out as well; it didn’t seem to be all that unique in New England. But that still left Cucumber, Lavender, and Rose to decide among. Just as I was nearing decision paralysis, a very friendly salesman approached and informed me that the store carried a Wild Moon sampler, which had sample sized bottles of each of the six flavors. That was perfect!! I bought two: one as a hostess gift for my girlfriend, and one to experiment with at my house.

Flipping through the recipes on their website on my cell phone in the liquor store parking lot, I immediately found two that I couldn’t wait to try at home. The first was a gin and tonic enhanced with the rose and cucumber liqueurs. That seemed like it would taste incredible and be super easy to make. The second was a bourbon Manhattan, made with the birch liqueur and a touch of orange liqueur. While I do have a mostly full bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon, I also have a bottle of Bulleit rye. So I was debating swapping out the bourbon for the rye. Unfortunately, my nutritionist cut me back to three drinks maximum per week, so I would have to wait a few days until the new week to start experimenting. Of course, after the “sisters’ weekend,” I decided to skip alcohol for a week entirely! But that gave me time to plan.

The sample bottles of liqueurs were 100ml each, which translated into 3.38 ounces. Seeing as most drinks use 1 to 2 ounces of liqueur, I could probably make 2 to 3 drinks from each bottle – if I chose wisely and measured carefully. The enhanced gin and tonic that I had been lusting after on my cell phone required 0.75 ounces of each rose liqueur and cucumber liqueur. So that would leave me about 2.5 ounces of each liqueur to play with. The Manhattan would use about 1.5 ounces of birch liqueur, so that would leave me about 1.75 ounces for additional experiments. Flipping through the images again in the comfort of my own home, I thought a Connecticut Cosmopolitan might be a good choice, but when I read the recipe, I realized that it would not be. It required both maple syrup and a specific brand of local “lemon sour.” Elizabeth’s Rose also looked like an inviting drink in the picture, but it required rose wine (not rosé wine) which I had no idea where to get. Then I turned to the recipe book enclosed with the sample box, which turned out to be a re-organized version of the distillers’ favorite recipes from the website. Unlike the random organization of the “all recipes” portion of the website, these recipes were ordered by liqueur flavor. The first thing I learned in the book was that, if I didn’t like any of the cocktail recipes, I could always mix ¾ to 1 ounce of the liqueur with prosecco!

Cucumber Liqueur

For the cucumber liqueur, I definitely had my heart set on making the RC&T. Otherwise, I was torn between the Happy Richard and the Ay Cuke-a-Rumba. The Happy Richard was just cucumber liqueur and good gin – nice and simple – while the other was twist on the margarita with tequila and lime juice. The gin cocktail would leave me with about an ounce of cucumber liqueur for another experiment, and the margarita would leave me with about half an ounce. Since there weren’t any other cucumber liqueur cocktails that I was really interested in, I decided to try the margarita, and drink the remaining half ounce straight to get a good taste of the liqueur.

Prior to mixing the RC&T, I taste tested a mouthful of both the cucumber and the rose liqueurs. Frankly, the descriptions on the box were of no help for either of these two liqueurs. The cucumber was described as “a light, refreshing liqueur” and the rose was described as “an aromatic, rich liqueur.” Neither tells me anything about what taste to expect when I actually put the liqueur in my mouth! The cucumber liqueur definitely smelled like a fresh cucumber, not boozy at all. Drinking it straight was a little rough. The first taste was very sweet, followed by the taste of raw moonshine, then followed by cucumber. But that didn’t turn me off because I wasn’t planning on drinking it straight.

After I cleansed my taste buds with some tonic water, I tried the rose liqueur. It smelled of roses and sugar, but not so strongly of roses to be reminiscent of a floral shop. It was kind of pleasant. The first taste was definitely of rose petals, then of sweet, then just a hint of raw moonshine. I thought it was more pleasant than the cucumber, but I am not too sure that I would enjoy drinking it straight.

The RC&T should have been as easy to mix as a regular gin and tonic; instead the recipe wanted the scant 2.75 ounces of liquor to be shaken with ice before pouring into a glass. I figured I would just pour my liquor into the glass and stir well before adding the tonic water and stirring again. (If you checked the recipe, you’ll know that I skipped both the ice and the lime wedge; I didn’t have either in the house.) I decided to use fancy tonic (Fever Tree) instead of normal tonic (Schweppes) because I wanted to give this drink the best possible chance of being good. And it was very good! I could definitely taste the cucumber liqueur, which added a fresh cucumber juice flavor to the drink. Without the laborious effort of juicing cucumbers! The raw moonshine taste that was so prevalent when tasting the straight cucumber liqueur was completely absent. Unfortunately, aside from imparting a nice rosy tinge, the rose liqueur was absolutely undetectable. I was disappointed by that because I was looking forward to seeing how the fresh cucumber juice taste worked with the fragrantly sweet rose petal taste. I think if I were to mix this drink again, I would try it with just the ¾ ounce of cucumber liqueur (in addition to the gin and tonic) and conserve the rose liqueur for another purpose.

I decided to mix the Ay Cuke-a-Rumba on the Friday night before my friend’s farewell party. I was having a little trouble motivating to get elbows deep in tomato sauce that evening, so I thought turning on loud music and mixing a drink might help get me excited about cooking. Since I didn’t have any cilantro leaves or ice, I simply poured the tequila, the cucumber liqueur, and the lime juice into my shaker and stirred it to combine prior to pouring it into a coupe glass. I thought to add some simple syrup, because that is a key component of your typical margarita, but I decided to at least try the recipe as written before I messed with it. Was I glad that I did! The cucumber liqueur was sweet enough to both soften the roughness of the tequila and sweeten the drink without any simple syrup. The drink had a pleasant clean cucumber taste to it, with none of the heat from the raw moonshine that I tasted in the straight liqueur. The clean cucumber taste seemed unusual paired with a sour drink, but it worked.

Overall, the cucumber liqueur was a nice treat, but I’m not sure that I would actually be so into it that I would want to buy a whole 375ml bottle of it. Unless I was hosting a party and was serving the cucumber margaritas as the signature cocktail. That’s a thought for next summer…

Rose Liqueur

I had already gotten a decent taste of the straight rose liqueur prior to mixing the RC&T. Now, I wanted to use my remaining rose liqueur as prudently as possible. Of the five recipes in the book, only the Rosebud seemed remotely appealing, and I even had a bottle of grapefruit juice in the house! The Hurricane Rose recipe from the website looked good, but I would just barely have enough rose liqueur for it, and I might have to gather some additional ingredients. The Rosy Peach used just as much rose liqueur, but seemed simpler. However, I felt like if I was going to put forth the effort of mixing a drink, I might as well mix a good one!

The recipe for the Rosebud online only listed the ingredients and the garnish, so I was left to my own devices to devise a method. True to form, I opted for the simplest method possible. I measured the gin, rose liqueur, grapefruit juice, and lemon juice into a mixing glass, stirred to combine, and poured into an etched coupe glass. Although I did enjoy the combination of gin and grapefruit juice, I couldn’t taste the rose liqueur in the mix. (I couldn’t taste the lemon juice either, but I assumed that was heightening the tang of the grapefruit juice.) For me, tasting the rose liqueur was the whole point of the mixing the drink, so I was disappointed by the Rosebud. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I used bottled juices instead of the fresh juices called for by the recipe; however, I don’t think that difference was what obscured the rose liqueur.

Since the rose liqueur was hidden in the Rosebud, I didn’t hold out much hope for tasting it in the heavier Hurricane Rose. It was basically one part rose liqueur, one part light rum, and one part dark rum (although I opted for Sailor Jerry over Goslings). And then there was another three ounces of juice – passion fruit, orange, lime – on top of that. So, although the drink itself was terrific, I couldn’t taste the rose liqueur at all. Yet another disappointment.

While the straight rose liqueur was quite pleasant, it was much too delicate to be mixed into a drink. It couldn’t even hold its own mixed with cucumber liqueur into a gin and tonic.

Cranberry Liqueur

There were no limitations on my use of the cranberry liqueur; I had the full 3.38 ounces to play with! Of the five recipes in the booklet, only the Welcome Back Codder appealed to me (despite the cheesy name!) It had cranberry liqueur, vodka, a touch of lime, and a topping of soda water. Sounded pretty refreshing to me. I was really tempted to use my remaining ounce to mix with prosecco in order to test drive a possible signature cocktail for family Thanksgiving. If I was going to do that, on the website there was a recipe for a Cranberry Refresher, which was cranberry liqueur, prosecco and San Pelligrino Limonata soda. What I really wanted was a recipe with cranberry liqueur and gin, but there wasn’t one to be found.

I was curious as to what the straight cranberry liqueur tasted like before mixing it with anything. In perhaps its best description, the box described this liqueur as “a fresh drunken cranberry…[a] balance of tart and sweet.” Oddly enough, when drunk straight, it tasted more like black cherry cough syrup than anything cranberry.

I mixed the Welcome Back Codder on a Friday night after a fairly challenging day of work – at the end of a long work week. It seemed super simple and I knew that I had all four ingredients on hand. So, I broke into the special cabinet and fished out a highball glass in order to mix the drink properly. Per my usual mode of operations, I mixed the vodka, cranberry liqueur, and lime juice right in the bottom of the glass rather than shaking them with ice. However, since my really good friend had brought ice to the Fall Feast a few days earlier, I was able to fill the glass with ice before diluting the drink with seltzer water. Once mixed, the drink clearly tasted like cranberry rather than the black cherry that I had tasted when I drank the liqueur straight. It was like drinking a cranberry juice spritzer – both the vodka and the alcohol in the liqueur were completely imperceptible.

Over the following weekend, I went to the grocery store and bought some San Pelligrino Limonata so that I could mix the Cranberry Refresher. Since I already had the open sample of the cranberry liqueur and an orphaned mini bottle of Prosecco in the refrigerator, I decided to mix the drink before dinner (but well after noon!) I didn’t have the orange wedge to squeeze into the drink or the lavender stalk to garnish the drink, but I still had ice to fill the highball glass. The Cranberry Refresher tasted very similar to the Welcome Back Codder, except that the Cranberry Refresher had a distinct citrus undertone. It tasted like cranberry juice diluted with lemon seltzer. The alcoholic bite of the liqueur and the edge of the prosecco were both totally absent.

Just for fun – and because I had exactly one ounce of cranberry liqueur left – I mixed a glass of cranberry liqueur and leftover prosecco. Because I was using one of my small tag sale flute glasses, the cocktail was roughly equal parts cranberry liqueur and prosecco. Without the ice and additional dilution of the seltzer or soda, the syrupy character of the cranberry liqueur was more evident. But that diminished and eventually disappeared as I added more prosecco to the glass and shifted the proportions in favor of the prosecco.

Overall, the cranberry liqueur mixed really well. In fact it mixed so well that I’m considering the acquisition of a full 375ml bottle so that we can serve one of the cranberry and prosecco cocktails as the signature cocktail at Thanksgiving.


The Verdict

For a number of reasons, it has taken me from our “sisters’ weekend” in late August to early November to test the first three samples from Wild Moon Liqueurs. But the write up of those results was already considerably lengthy. So I decided to publish what I had written and save the results of the Lavender, Birch, and Chai Spice taste testing for a later post.

Of the three liqueurs that I taste tested, I would recommend the Cucumber and the Cranberry based on the drinks that I mixed with them. While the Rose was the most pleasant tasting of the straight liqueurs, it was definitely too delicate to be mixed into a cocktail. The Cucumber stood up well to gin and tequila, which muted the raw moonshine taste of the straight liqueur. The Cranberry was great in spritzes, which transformed the black cherry cough syrup taste of the straight liqueur into something very pleasant.

Unfortunately, I have no idea whether these liqueurs are available outside of New England. However, I would assume that, with some tinkering, the recipes would work for other brands of similarly flavored liqueurs. Like the bottle Onyx Cranberry Moonshine that made its way to the Pacific Northwest …