When I went to the grocery store two weeks ago, I was shocked to find that they still had fresh squeezed blood orange juice. From my research for the Year of the Ox blood orange cocktails, I seemed to remember that their season ended in late March - and now it was mid-May! Agricultural anomaly notwithstanding, I snapped up two small bottles of the ruby red juice for breakfast and for some experiments. I didn’t buy any fresh herbs to accompany the juice because I still had some in the refrigerator from my last bout of good intentions.
Thumbing through the research that I had done for my Year of the Ox dinner, I figured that there were at least six different cocktails that I could try with the ingredients in my house: blood orange rosemary screwdriver, blood orange rosemary gin cocktail, blood orange sparkling vodka, blood orange gin and tonic, blood orange elderflower gin cocktail, blood orange negroni. Unfortunately, when it came time to make the syrups required by the recipes, I discovered that the fresh rosemary had gone moldy in the refrigerator. That mess went directly into the trash, and the rosemary drinks were scratched off the list. The fresh thyme had browned a bit, but still looked and smelled good. The fresh tarragon looked bright and smelled amazing; I would definitely have to find something else to do with it before it went bad. Maybe add it to chicken with lemons?
After assessing the condition of my fresh herbs, I started the syrups. Fortunately, the recipes were extremely similar: bring half cup white sugar and half cup water to a boil, turn off the heat, add the herbs, steep for about two hours, strain out the herbs before using. I pulled two small saucepans from the cabinet, measured the sugar and water into each, and turned on the heat. It all came together in a snap. I left the pots with the steeping herbs uncovered on the stove as I put myself on a 90 minute break to recover from my super busy morning.
After my break, I strained the herbs out of the syrups and refrigerated them so that they would be ready to mix later in the evening, once I finished running errands and doing household chores. I almost didn’t wait, because one of my relatives gave me a bottle of zero-proof gin as an early birthday present. But I had promised a well thought out blog post on the merits (and demerits) of that bottle compared to regular gin, so I decided not to get ahead of myself.
Blood Orange Rosemary Screwdriver
The first drink on my list was the blood orange rosemary screwdriver, because it was so simple. I had to halve the recipe to make one serving, but it was basically shake six ounces of blood orange juice, two ounces of vodka, a rosemary spring, and some ice until chilled. The agitation was supposed to infuse the drink with the essence of the rosemary; however, to me, it tasted just like vodka and orange juice. Nothing special. I could have achieved the same result by stirring together the vodka and the blood orange juice in glass without dirtying my shaker. In fact, the one to three ratio of vodka to juice was a little too much, as the vodka overpowered the more delicate blood orange juice.
Blood Orange Rosemary Gin Cocktail
A few days into the week, I had a miserably late work day so I decided to try my hand at another blood orange juice drink from my list. The recipe for the blood orange rosemary cocktail was super straightforward: soak a sugar cube in orange bitters, muddle it with a few rosemary leaves, mix in two shots of gin, and add the juice of one blood orange. Of course, it took me a hot minute to find my bottle of orange bitters. The recipe called for four dashes, but I used eight dashes to make sure my sugar cube would be well soaked. I crushed the sugar cube and muddled really well it with the generous top of a rosemary sprig. Then I added two shots of Ethereal Gin (from Berkshire Mountain Distillers) and stirred until the sugar was dissolved. Since my blood orange juice was in a bottle, I guessed that four shots of juice would be about equivalent to one fruit. Then I gave it a good stir to blend everything together.
Unfortunately, despite the effort of finding the ingredients and following the recipe, the drink just tasted like gin and juice. It could have been because I didn’t use enough blood orange juice. Of course, I had no basis for believing that double the gin was enough juice to make a tasty drink. So yet again, I was led astray by a recipe that looked like it should yield a very good drink.
Blood Orange Sparkling Vodka
When I decided to try the Blood Orange Sparkling Vodka, I was batting 0 for 2 on the recommended blood orange juice recipes. Therefore, I didn’t have high hopes for a drink recipe written to promote Hangar 1 Straight vodka. However the recipe seemed simple enough: half part tarragon simple syrup, one part unflavored vodka, two parts blood orange juice, stirred with ice and topped with soda water. The question then became one of what constituted a “part.”
I was skeptical of the drink when I first tried it, but it was amazing. Just the right amount of herbaceousness and just the right amount of bubbles. It was neither too thick nor too thin. The sweetness of the syrup was just enough to cut the the bite of the vodka, but not so much to be cloying. I was very happy with that recipe, and even happier that I had had tarragon syrup leftover so that I could make it again.
Blood Orange Gin and Tonic
Having finally achieved cocktail success, I was excited to move on to the Blood Orange Gin and Tonic. This recipe looked extremely similar to the one that I had done a few days before. Where there was tarragon syrup, there was now thyme syrup. Where there was vodka, there was now dry gin. Where there was soda water, there now was tonic water. And, of course, there was blood orange juice!
Fortunately, this gin and tonic recipe was written in ounces, so there was no guess work needed to figure out the appropriate sized part. It was one ounce of thyme syrup, 1 1/2 ounces of dry gin, three ounces of blood orange juice, and four ounces of tonic water. So, I found my bottle of Bombay Sapphire London Dry Gin and followed the recipe exactly, right down to starting with an ice-filled tall glass (which, in my case, amounted to four ice cubes in a pint glass.) After I added the tonic, I stirred it all up and gave it a sip.
This one was a new favorite!!! Especially since my thyme syrup was extra strong - the recipe said to steep the fresh herbs for 25 minutes; mine steeped for roughly two hours. The drink smelled and tasted of thyme, but not unpleasantly so. And the sweetness of the syrup cut the usual astringency of the tonic water. So it was all the good parts of a gin and tonic, without that pesky quinine taste. I enjoyed it so much that I considered mixing another. But then I remembered that I should probably have dinner first.
It’s no secret that I love elderflower liqueur: I even wrote an entire post a few years ago that was dedicated to trying out elderflower liqueur cocktails from a Ten Speed Press advance reader copy. Therefore, I was super excited to find a cocktail that combined gin, elderflower liqueur, and blood orange juice. And I was super eager to try it...
I was so happy that the Blood Orange Elderflower Gin cocktail turned out as well as I expected from looking at the recipe. It was one ounce of gin, 3/4 ounce of elderflower liqueur, 1/2 ounce of fresh lime juice, and 2 1/2 ginger ale, topped with one ounce of blood orange juice. Of course, I was too lazy to approximate and rounded the elderflower liqueur to one ounce. And this drink was my favorite yet. The elderflower stood out nicely, without being too overpoweringly floral. Thanks to the ginger ale, the drink felt light and fizzy, just like a summer cocktail should.
Again, it’s not a secret that I do adore a good Negroni. It’s also not a secret that I tend to stray from the traditional equinox Negroni recipe. I prefer mine with more gin (1 1/2 parts) and less of the other stuff (3/4 part). I also prefer mine with Aperol, an Italian orange amaro, rather than Campari, a bright red Italian amaro made from a secret family recipe. So when I looked at the Blood Orange Negroni recipe, which was the traditional equinox Negroni recipe with one part blood orange juice added to the mix, I was faced with some tough choices. First, I decided to keep the equinox proportions because my shot glass didn’t have a 3/4 ounce mark (and I didn’t want to dirty anything else). Second, I decided to swap Aperol for Campari because I thought that would complement the blood orange juice and would also make it more drinkable. Finally, I broke the shake/stir rule, which basically dictates that pure alcohol drinks get stirred with ice and drinks with fruit juice, egg white, dairy, and so forth get shaken with ice. My cocktail shaker was in the sink, so I just poured the four ingredients over ice and stirred moderately.
I was sort of happy with my drink. I was happy that I used the Aperol because that lent only a slight bitterness to the drink. I was unhappy that the red vermouth that I used was more on the bitter side than on the sweet side. So that really amped up the overall bitterness to a point where I could taste it through the sweetness of the blood orange juice. If I mix this again, I’ll either use the adjusted proportions with the same vermouth or try it with the equinox proportions and a regular sweet red vermouth.
The Verdict
Only three out of the six blood orange cocktail recipes were clear winners, with one of the remaining three open to the possibility of rework. Two of the three winners required low effort homemade herbal simple syrups, so they weren’t necessarily easy to whip up on a whim (unless there were already syrups made in the refrigerator.) That leaves one decent anytime cocktail - which would be the Blood Orange Elderflower Gin Cocktail. But, despite the high fall-out ratio, I enjoyed the experiments over the past two weeks. And I look forward to revisiting some of these when the blood orange season returns next year. Or making them with regular orange juice until then!
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