It’s no secret that I’m fond of odd liqueurs. A decade or so ago, I developed an affinity for ordering cocktails with unique ingredients at cocktail bars. If an Aviation showed up on a cocktail menu, I was almost certain to order it because I couldn’t ever see myself keeping a bottle of creme de violette in my bar cabinet. Any cocktail with St Germain or another elderflower liqueur was a close second choice - for the same reason. Not surprisingly, créme de cassis, Italicus, pamplemousse, and other sweeter liqueurs always caught my attention. Especially if they were mixed with gin and/or sparkling wine.
It’s also no secret that I have amassed quite the collection of odd liqueurs at the house since I returned from my latest round of graduate school (seven years ago?). I’ve actually lost count of how many bottles of elderflower liqueur and Pimms No. 1 liqueur that we’ve been able to finish. In fact, one of my early blog posts featured four odd bottles - creme de violette, buffalo grass vodka, maraschino, Pernod - but my research came up with so many good recipes that I couldn’t fit all my experiments into that one post.
Créme de Pamplemousse Rose is my latest acquisition. As much as I dislike grapefruit halves and grapefruit juice, I am totally a sucker for the sweetened grapefruit liqueur. I bought it at the monstrous liquor store during the winter holidays while I was there to get presents for relatives. When I saw the inviting pink bottle on the shelf, I initially passed it up. I was on a mission to find certain gift bottles and had quite a few other errands to run afterward. After several laps around the store to find what I needed, I decided to treat myself and plan some experiments.
The Research
A quick internet search for “pamplemousse liqueur cocktails” yielded a fair number of interesting cocktail recipes. The three top recipes were for a Ruby Red Pamplemousse Paloma, Grapefruit Gin Sour, and a Salty Dog. The Paloma was a tequila based cocktail with both grapefruit juice and the pamplemousse. The Grapefruit Gin Sour simply used a quarter ounce of pamplemousse to rinse the glass for a standard gin sour. The Salty Dog was a vodka based cocktail with elderflower liqueur and grapefruit juice. But it looked like I could either substitute or augment the elderflower liqueur with the pamplemousse.
I wasn’t quite convinced that these were the best recipes that the internet had to offer, so I went to my favorite drinks website to see hat they had to offer. There was one result for a Puebla Sour, which seemed to be a rather repulsive concoction of Anchos Reyes Chile Liqueur, pamplemousse, egg white, gin, and lemon juice. Definitely not putting that on my “must drink” list!
The one recommended related search that caught my attention was the pamplemousse Negroni. So I went deep down that rabbit hole, because I love creative riffs on the Negroni formula. Lots of clicks later, I discovered that this drink was properly called a Mae Rose, and required no grapefruit juice.
The Cocktails
I didn’t have any grapefruit juice on hand when I started my pamplemousse experiments. So, I improvised my first cocktail using the proportions of a St Germain Spritz in my storied glass pitcher. Back in 2016, a few of my military friends met up to celebrate the retirement of our favorite General on Fort Myer. At some point during the weekend, I seized the opportunity to organize a bottomless mimosa brunch with my sister, some local friends, and my military friends at a dim sum restaurant in the District. At some point during the brunch, the waiter decided we were no longer worthy of his attention. We ran out of orange juice, at which point I realized it was being served in a really cool promotional St Germain glass pitcher. Sure enough, before we all broke up after the weekend, someone presented me with the (clean) pitcher as a gift.
Because the pamplemousse tasted like a grapefruit version of elderflower liqueur, I figured I could use the measurements on the glass pitcher to mix a pamplemousse spritz. So I poured Prosecco up to the first line for champagne or white wine, then I poured pamplemousse to the second line for St Germain, and I finished the cocktail by pouring club soda to the top line. Rather than stirring, I just poured it straight into the glittery insulated champagne mug that my darling nieces and nephew shipped me for Christmas. (Yes, there is such a thing and it is fabulous!)
The pamplemousse spritz experiment worked out really well. The Prosecco and the club soda muted the alcoholic taste of the liqueur, so it just tasted like sweet grapefruit fizz. Which was delightful! If I had thought of it at the time, I should have checked my extensive bitters collection for a bottle of grapefruit bitters. A few drops of that would have taken the drink over the top!
Because the Salty Dog cocktail recipe was mostly grapefruit juice, I decided that I could mix a batch for Sunday brunch. I was still a bit bleary eyed when I started mixing, so I decided to just mix it all in a shaker with ice rather than do the math to divide the recipe in half. The original recipe used an ounce of elderflower liqueur (in addition to the grapefruit juice and the vodka); therefore, my choices were to substitute pamplemousse for the elderflower or to supplement the elderflower with an equal amount of pamplemousse. Naturally, I did the later. And since the recipe didn’t specify how much club soda to use to top off the mixed drink, I used about one third of the miniature glass bottles. Because I’m lazy, I skipped salting the rim of the glass.
This recipe worked out quite well using both the elderflower and the pamplemousse. I typically don’t like grapefruit juice based cocktails because I find grapefruit juice to be super bitter. The addition of the liqueurs tamped down that bitterness, which was further muted by the club soda. I’d say that it was a very pleasant low alcohol sipper, but there was a fair amount of vodka in the mix as well. Of course, there was absolutely no alcoholic bite to the drink because of the presence of such strong flavors and the use of a higher quality neutral vodka.
Upon further investigation, it turned out that the recipe for the Grapefruit Gin Sour was a complement to an article about using rinses to enhance cocktails. So the pamplemousse liqueur element of the cocktail was a about a quarter of an ounce swished around the interior of the coupe glass that I was going to use to serve the cocktail. The recipe said that was the first thing to do, which was super odd because the rinse almost immediately pooled at the bottom of the glass. So I set the glass aside to rinse it again as the last step before straining the cocktail into the glass.
The basic ingredients of a gin sour are fairly simple: gin (preferably Plymouth), lemon juice, simple syrup. Essentially a French 75 without the sparkling wine. Unfortunately, I was shocked to find out that I had none of those ingredients on hand. Especially the lemon juice, because I usually keep a spare bottle in the horde. But I had gotten myself so excited about having a Grapefruit Gin Sour while making my chicken marsala that I didn’t really want to abandon the idea. So I made some logical substitutions. For the three-quarters ounce simple syrup, I measured the same amount of blue agave nectar. For the ounce of lemon juice, I used an equivalent amount of ruby red grapefruit juice. Finally for the two ounces of gin, I used the rose lemon gin that I had made at the end of December. I stirred it all in a pitcher with ice, rinsed my glass with pamplemousse, and then strained in the cocktail.
Sure enough, my adaptation was amazing! It wasn’t too sour or too sweet. If anything, I was concerned it would be too sweet because of the blue agave nectar substitution. I’m definitely saving the recipe as I did it, perhaps with a bit of bubbly to make a Pamplemousse 75.
Although the Negroni may be one of the best known equinox cocktails, I prefer a modified recipe that is lighter on the Campari. I hate the taste of Campari, so the less of it in a drink, the better that drink is for me. In fact, I prefer a variation of the Negroni that completely substitutes the Campari with Aperol, an Italian orange amaro. Therefore, when I saw that the Mae Rose cocktail still contained some Campari, I was initially tempted to swap it for Aperol. However, since the ounce of liqueur was split between Campari and pamplemousse, I decided to leave it as is. After all, how strong can a half an ounce of Campari be? The only change that I did make to the recipe was that I stirred it rather than shook it. James Bond aside, common bartending practice is to stir drinks that are pure alcohol. So I measured all the ingredients over the ice in my mixing glass and stirred until the liquid was level with the ice. Then I strained it into a rocks glass to enjoy.
Unfortunately, Campari has a really strong flavor. That one-half ounce dominated the three ounce drink, despite stirring the heck out of it. I couldn’t taste either the rose lemon gin or the pamplemousse. Next time, I’ll follow my instincts instead of the recipe and use Aperol. Perhaps the orange will better complement the grapefruit so that I can taste some citrus.
The Verdict
While I wouldn’t recommend sipping pamplemousse liqueur over ice, I definitely recommend mixing it in cocktails - with and without a grapefruit juice base.
As for the Pamplemousse 75, I did eventually find a real recipe for that as well. The proportions for the base were a little different than what I used for the Grapefruit Gin Sour. I’m feeling like a post about variations on the French 75 may be in my future...
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