Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Audience Participation

Leave it to New England to change seasons in a manner of weeks. It was a week ago when there was snow in the forecast, and today it touched 72 degrees. This is totally normal and not at all related to climate change right?

Anyway

This week’s drink comes from commenter Dunstan. You must have seen his drink updates in the open threads. I made a particular note of one he put in the comments about two weeks ago. I don’t know if it has a name, but I’ll defer to him on that. Anyway, here it is:

2 oz. Bombay gin
.75 oz. Lemon juice
.5 oz. St. Germain elderflower liqueur
.5 oz. Campari
.5 oz. Rosemary simple syrup (simple syrup with a sprig of rosemary steeped for 30 minutes)
Fresh rosemary for garnish.

Now there were no stirring or shaking notes, so I shook with ice and poured into a rocks glass.

Quick note, I don’t have rosemary, so no garnish or special simple syrup unfortunately. With that said there is no real nose to speak of. Even with the gin or the elderflower ingredients, there isn’t much to speak of. That might be a different story with the rosemary simple syrup however.

The sip has a slight taste of gin up front, followed by a slightly bitter mixture of campari and lemon. The simple syrup definitely helps offset the bitter campari, but leaves just enough flavor for it so come through. The syrup also mutes the citric acid from the lemon, and brings it down to the campari level. It maintains this balance the rest of the way through, with a bit of leftover campari bitter flavor leftover that lingers on the palate a little bit.

Overall, it is very refreshing. It reminds me of a slightly bitter adult pink lemonade. I will say the herb notes from the rosemary are not required per se, but would greatly enhance the flavor. If you can make the rosemary simple syrup, I suggest doing so. I will make this again once I get the garden going and grow my own rosemary.

I also might attempt to scale this drink up. It seems like it would be a very good beach drinker, or during a cookout. A pitcher of this could be dangerous once summer really hits.

(Banner image found here)