Sharkbaits Cocktail of the Week: Leaving on a Jetplane

Welcome back and happy Friday! I’m back in my usual time slot. For a week anyway. I’m off on a work trip starting tomorrow night and coming back in 2 weeks. Don’t worry, there will be filler here, like the last time I left the country. Anyway, I don’t know about all of you, but we’re just now coming to the end of our thanksgiving leftovers, and that includes the fresh cranberries I got to make a cranberry tart for dessert. As I’ve done in the past, I wanted to incorporate them into a drink and since I’ve done variants on an old fashioned and a Manhattan, I figured a martini would be the best move. Learning from other drinks, I muddled way more cranberries than the 4 or 5 I did before to get a more intense flavor. As to the base, I chose the Savoy sweet martini. With the rationale that sweet, combined with sour cranberry would be the best move. Also some orange bitters in there for good measure, since orange and cranberry are a good combination

Cranberry Martini

2 oz. London dry gin

1 oz. Italian sweet vermouth

Large handful of fresh cranberries

3 dashes orange bitters

Muddle the cranberries in a cocktail shaker until all cranberries are burst open. Add the gin, vermouth, orange bitters and fill  the shaker with ice. Stir and finely strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with more cranberries.

I get a combination of gin with sweet vermouth dominates the nose. It’s rather nice, and doesn’t hit you in the face like a regular gin martini could.

This is excellent. I expected it to be more on the sweeter side than it is, which is a pleasant surprise. The vermouth flavor itself comes through, but the sweet is blunted by the orange and the cranberries. The restraint also brings out a little more of the gin flavors. Of which,  London dry is the move here. A Plymouth or a different style may still end up getting lost in the sweet/bitter vermouth cranberry mix.

That mixture ends up taking over the palate at the end, as the gin fades into the background. Even more of a surprise is how quick the vermouth goes away as well, leaving a bitter cranberry finish, which is reminiscent of a negroni.

This was a creative use of leftover cranberries from Thanksgiving and I’m glad the experiment worked out. I was kicking around the idea of doing dry vermouth instead of sweet, but pivoted off of that, and I’m glad I did. Dry would be too intense with the raw cranberries and orange bitters. A sprig of rosemary as a garnish would go well for visual appeal and solidify this as a great seasonal drink to serve this season.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)