Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Cardamom Cocktail?

Happy long weekend to everyone south of the Canadian border. Sorry Canada, your long weekend was last week. This week I wanted to move off of the island/rum theme I’ve had going the last couple of weeks. I picked up a bottle of Lillet Blanc to make more Vespers and I wanted to see if I could find a creative way to use that more. Some initial cocktail book searching left me wanting. Side note, more cocktail books need to have a second index of ingredients, along with an index of cocktail names. It would make searching for drinks by ingredient a lot easier.

I digress. Turning to Google, I came across an interesting mix of Lillet, gin and cardamom pods. Having all of those things on hand, I went for it.

Cardamom and Mint Cocktail

5 mint leaves, plus 1 or 2 leaves for garnish
2 teaspoons sugar
2 cardamom pods
1 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice (from 1 lime)
2 ounces Lillet Blanc
1 ounce gin, like Hendricks

Muddle the mint leaves, sugar, cardamom pods and lime juice in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice and add the Lillet Blanc and gin. Shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Strain the cocktail through both the cocktail strainer and fine-mesh strainer into a cocktail glass. Garnish with mint leaves and serve immediately.

There really isn’t much of a nose here. I mostly get mint from the garnish, and even that is fairly faint. Speaking of mint, I cannot stress enough the need to double strain this as the recipe calls for. Muddling mint breaks it down to the point that a single strain from the shaker isn’t enough, and you’ll be chewing on muddled mint towards the end of the drink. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend picking up a small fine strainer for cocktailing. It’s worth it. Trust me.

Anyway, on to the sip.

Holy damn. This is fantastic. The sip is cool, clean and most refreshing. I felt the sip drop after I swallowed which enhanced the enjoyment. I hardly taste any alcohol flavor in this. In fact, the most prominent flavor is the ounce of lime juice. Even then, its just pure lime flavor that comes through. Hardly any citric bitterness comes through here. The Lillet and gin do a good job of keeping it in check. The flavors stay fairly consistent all the way through the sip. No real changes in the flavor at all. The closest flavor I can compare this to is a less sweet melted lime popsicle. I do kind of miss the cardamom here. Maybe my pods were small or not as potent, but I don’t really get their flavor.

I finished this way too quickly. Like the vermouth spritzer last year, this might be the drink of the summer. Not to boozy, and extremely refreshing. I recommend trying with Hendricks as the recipe suggests, to add a little more brightness to it. Not that it needs any, but it cant hurt. In lieu of Hendricks, a cucumber slice or two should give the same effect as Hendricks would.

(Banner image found here)