Happy Friday one and all! I’ve mentioned in this space before that I need to start experimenting with creating my own drinks, as opposed to making established recipes from my library of cocktail books. Well dear readers, this is a week where I finally did some experimenting and came up with something that is tasty and delicious.

My original plan with this was to use gin and elderflower in this combination, but I felt like I’d done something very similar with those two recently so they took a back seat. I remembered I had some tequila, and then I went to work. I chose the Canton because I was concerned that if I used plain simple syrup here, it would be too close to a watermelon margarita. Not knowing how the tequila and Canton would play, I poured a taster and gave it a shot and was pleased to see the ginger and tequila play very well together.

After that it was all about ratios. I usually default to 2 ounces of the base spirit because I like a stronger drink and that is no different here. Plus, I figured that the two watermelon slices I muddled in the shaker would add a lot of liquid (spoiler alert: they did) and I didn’t want to water the drink down with that and the added Canton and lime juice I was going to add. So here is the final recipe for this concoction:

2 oz. Blanco tequila

2(ish) Slices of watermelon

.5 oz Lime juice

.5 oz. Domaine de Canton

Muddle the watermelon slices in a shaker. Add the tequila, lime and Canton. Add ice and shake. Strain into a rocks glass with a single large ice cube. Garnish with another slice of watermelon

Fruity nose. I get all watermelon up front. Of which is a good thing here. Sometimes having the base spirt aroma lead the way can be overwhelming, especially if the base is tequila. Since that has such a pronounced smell a heavy tequila nose would be a bit unpleasant. One other point before moving on to the sip. Be sure to fine strain, or at least double strain into the glass if you can. I thought I would be able to strain most of the watermelon out using the shaker and the glass, but some bigger chunks made it through. While this doesn’t affect flavor at all, it can be a bit surprising to take a sip and get a semi solid piece of watermelon. The bigger pieces blend in so they can be surprising when you get one.

Now, on to the sip. It is light and refreshing. Heavy on the watermelon juice and flavor up front. About midway through the sip I can finally start to detect some of the tequila cutting through, and it lingers all the way to the end and then some. The lime and the Canton help mellow out the tequila to help keep this extremely drinkable. That’s the flavor profile that stays with you all the way to the end. As mentioned before, the tequila kind of hangs around at the end of the sip for a few seconds or so. Just enough to let you know that yes, you ARE drinking booze, and you should keep track of how many you’ve had, because this is very easy drinking and could be dangerous after about 3 of them. Of which, is very tempting to do on a Friday afternoon now that I think about it…

(Banner image found here)