Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Ho Ho The Mistletoe

Happy Friday! Last week I promised some more seasonally relevant cocktails and I’ve bringing it today. This week I made a great gin cocktail called Under The Mistletoe. What intrigues me is the addition of the fresh cranberries as a muddling ingredient and as a garnish. Good thing I’ll be down at FOB Cape Cod where fresh cranberries are in abundance this time of year…

Under The Mistletoe

4 cranberries
2 orange half-wheels
.5 ounce simple syrup
2 ounces London dry gin
Cranberry juice, to top
Club soda, chilled, to top
Garnish: thyme sprig
Garnish: 3 cranberries

In a Collins glass, muddle the cranberries and orange half-wheels with the simple syrup. Fill the glass with ice and add the gin. Top with a mixture of two parts cranberry juice to one part club soda. Stir with a thyme sprig, leaving it in the glass, and garnish with three additional cranberries.

Yes, I know those aren’t Collins glasses, but you make do with what you have right?

Thyme forward nose, which is a very good thing here. The juniper notes of the gin are very prevalent, but the fresh thyme garnish compliments and really emphasizes the gin’s natural aroma.

The taste is almost the opposite. The gin is there, but isn’t as strong as the aforementioned aroma would lead you to believe. The fresh cranberries are an excellent addition. They add a nice tartness to balance the sweetness from the cranberry juice. I tweaked the original recipe and omitted the simple because I had cranberry juice cocktail and not straight juice. As the writeup in the recipe’s link says, cranberry juice cocktail has added sugars, rendering the addition of the simple syrup moot. If you have pure juice, you need the simple as the tartness from the juice and the fresh fruit would be too much.

I also found that I needed a one to one ratio of club soda to the juice. I made the first batch following the 2 to one suggestion, but found the carbonation lacking, and an additional ounce of club soda got the drink exactly where I was expecting, without watering the cocktail down in a discernable way.

Overall, this is an excellent seasonal drink, that can very easily be scaled up. In fact, I plan on doing exactly that for my family’s Christmas festivities in checks notes oh god 8 days. If you’ll excuse me, I need to do some more shopping…

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)