Hello and happy weekend everyone! In my cocktail project, I’ve featured a handful of drinks I’ve come up with on my own, and it is still very much a goal of mine to explore mixing my own drinks,  as well as continue to pick and choose recipes from my library of books. In that vein, this week I was talking to a bartender friend of mine, and bouncing a couple ideas for a homemade drink. Instead, he gave me a martini he came up with that they serve at his bar on Beacon Hill. His drink is a gin martini (according to him, all martinis should be made with gin. In fact, it is his opinion that any drink with vodka can be improved by swapping it out with gin. That is a theory I intend to put to the test at a later date, don’t you worry) with elderflower, lime and pineapple. Given that is in the high 80s/low 90s again today, and will be even warmer this weekend, I think this will be a refreshing way to beat the heat and try something new. He didn’t give me a name when I asked what it was, so we’re going to go with the Bartender’s Special:

Bartender’s Special

2 oz. Gin

1 oz. Elderflower liqueur

.5 oz. Lime juice

Splash of pineapple juice

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Add a lemon twist for garnish.

*Muddle some fresh pineapple in the shaker if you have some fresh slices on hand. 

The nose is limey and citrus forward. The lime juice is only half an ounce, but the citrus aroma easily overpowers the neutral-ish elderflower, and even the gin doesnt stand up to the lime. It also helps that the garnish throws some lemon notes in there contributing to the overall fruit aroma coming off of the glass.

The sip starts out with a nice mixture of lime flavor and juniper-y tones from the gin. However the gin surprisingly gives way to a more sour type taste relatively soon after first sipping. The elderflower acts as a restraint to the lime here. I get a hint of the sweetness and flavor it brings but it mostly acts as a check on the sour. A nice touch actually. The elderflower is not as saccharine as simple syrup would be in an application like this. A bonus here is that since the flavor is mostly muted, if someone did not like elderflower, you could have them try this and see if they could be eased into the spirit again.

My original thoughts of this being a hot weekend drinker were proved correct. While I unfortunately did not have the fresh pineapple to muddle in the shaker, I would recommend getting some and adding that step in when you go make this one. It would only enhance the overall flavors. Plus in my experience, fresh ingredients always taste better. But in a pinch, the canned juice works just as well here.