Happy Friday everyone. This week I had two potential drinks I wanted to make, but yet somehow they both fell through due to not enough planning ahead. AKA I was missing key ingredients. Lucky me, I had a fallback: The Azalea.

Now I originally planned to make this for masters weekend, but I ended up making the Rosita instead. But, just because it isn’t Masters week, does not mean we still cant drink their official cocktail and be all pretentious about it right?

Exactly.

On to the drink:

2 oz. Gin or Vodka

2 oz. Pineapple juice

1 oz. Fresh lemon juice

Spoonful of Grenadine

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a tall glass filled with ice. Garnish with a lemon slice.

Housekeeping note: I used gin here, on the advice of a bartender friend who told me that any vodka based cocktail can be improved by using gin. That, and my vodka supply is out so gin was the only realistic option at the time of mixing/writing.

Neutral nose. Nothing stands out here. Not even the lemon garnish dominates. Which I am a bit surprised at.

The sip is very, very refreshing. The first flavors I get is a nice mix of the lemon juice and the pineapple. The citrus and the tropical fruit notes play very well with each other. The gin is somewhat muted. The equal part pineapple definitely obscures the more floral gin notes, but I don’t mind that here. Don’t get me wrong, you can still tell there is alcohol in this, not to mention that spirit is gin. But any kind of strong, in your face alcohol flavor is very much muted, which is normally a bit of a deal breaker for me. As has been well documented in this space, I prefer my drinks stronger, but in this application, subtlety is the way. This is very much a warm weather drink. The less in your face booze flavor the better. The grenadine adds a little touch of sweetness, but nothing too dominant. It also helps I used a half barspoon measure of Roses. Of which, the rule of “a little goes a long way” very much applies.

As mentioned above, this is refreshing, light and fantastic for the summer. I highly recommend making this one in the early afternoon and having 2 or 3 over the course of a hot day.

(Banner image found here)