Happy Friday one and all. This week I’ve got a gin based cocktail I’ve been wanting to try. With it getting warmer finally, I’m once again looking for more seasonally appropriate drinks that are easy to make while spending time outside that are also refreshing. The Dirty Blonde recipe seems to fill those requirements nicely. The equal parts lemon juice to the other ingredients seems like an interesting choice, but I want to see where this is going:

2 oz. Lemon juice (around a whole lemon)

2 oz. Lillet

2 oz. St Germain or Thatchers organic elderflower liqueur

2 oz. gin, I like Hendricks or St George

1 length of lemon rind – I use a potato peeler to get mine

Mix all the ingredients in a jug with a large cube of ice, taste and adjust. If you want more sweetness add more St Germain. Strain into an iced glass and add the length of lemon peel. If you need to pace yourself, add some sparkling water.

A very mild nose leads this one off. Nothing particularly stands out. I can pick up hints of the lemon and elderflower up front. That combination gives this a nice, bright aroma, without any hints of booze  I can already tell this is going to be a good summer drink. 

The sip is cold, and mostly smooth, with a citrus-y sour dominant flavor that is a constant all the way through the sip. The gin flavors are lost here. They stand no chance against the twin attack of the lemon juice and the garnish. The elderflower is the sweetener, and is almost undetectable. Which I think is for the best here. For those that don’t like elderflower, This one might be a good one to try since it is relegated to the background.

This is very similar to the gin sour I made a couple years ago. The main difference is more lemon juice and the elderflower instead of the simple syrup as the sweetener. I think I might prefer this version. With the scales tilted toward the sour acidic lemon flavor, as opposed to the  more sweetness which is much more prevalent in the gin sour.

As an advisory note here, the sour lemon flavor can build up over a bit of time, which made me pace myself sans the sparkling water. I think this is a good thing since I really enjoy this one, and I could easily see crushing a few of these in one sitting. I would try this again with a little float of sparking water, just to see how that goes. I don’t think it needs it, but a little effervescence and carbonation could change the profile and make it just as good, but different. 

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