bringing drinks to life

As you will know if you have been following our recent travels we have been pretty busy what with Tales of the Cocktail and our American Whiskey trip, but we thought it was about time we combined some of what we learnt in New Orleans with some of the new ingredients we have picked up along the way and come up with a few drinks.

We met the guys from Boiron at Tales and they have been kind enough to let us have some samples to play with. They produce a fantastic range of fruit purees that are ideal for all your cocktail making needs. Their range consists of 48 flavours all of which are made from pure fruit and other than adding sugar (only when seasonal variations in fruit demand it) they are additive, preservative and colouring free, so in other words using them is like adding fresh fruit to your drinks only better. 

Why better? Well you don’t have to wait for the fruit to be in season, you don’t have to muddle, strain, press or chop anything and they come in a convenient squeezy bottle that makes them ideal to use.

With summer 2009 turning out to be a bit of a disappointment we owe our friends at Boiron a big thanks for helping us to add a splash of liquid sunshine to our drinks and taking our minds off of this grey British summer www.boironfreres.com check them out if you get a second.

Over the past few weeks we have been throwing around different ideas for drinks and finally we have found an evening to experiment so after raiding the drinks cabinet and the fridge here’s what we came up with.

Our first drink of the evening is inspired by our time in Kentucky, where we found there is still a slightly macho image around drinking Bourbon. We could be wrong but it seems that all too often women and non-bourbon-drinkers are a bit intimidated by the catagory, so here is our attempt at making a drink that is easy drinking but doesn’t hide the bourbon.

The Black n Blues cocktail

• 50 ml Bourbon (we grabbed the Wild Turkey 101 as it is ballsy enough to stand up to strong flavours)
• 15 ml fresh Lemon Juice
• 10 ml Boiron Blackberry puree
• 10 ml Gomme
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters

Pour all ingredients into a Boston glass and add cubed or cracked ice. Shake hard and fine strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with an orange twist and a fresh blackberry. This is surprisingly refreshing and you could easily find yourself drinking one after another and with a healthy splash of fresh fruit puree this is one that the ladies will love too.

Next up was the Supernova, a twist on a Cosmo using Boiron Pomegranite to replace the cranberry. The addition of this super-fruit also seemed to lengthen the drink without flattening out the flavour. I know we are biased but we think that this might just be better than the original.

The Supernova

• 40 ml vodka (use a good one like wyborowa or Belvedere)
• 15 ml lime juice
• 20 ml cointreau
• 20 ml Boiron Pomegranite

Add all ingredients to a Boston glass and shake well with cubed ice, fine strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a flamed orange peel.

We did shake up a few others, but they need a little fine tuning so check back next week and we will have something new to share with you. We are thinking of doing a few pitcher recipes just in case that barbecue weather decides to make a come back, and we thought we might put Boiron to the ultimate test… a blind tasting of fresh berry caipirinhas v’s Boiron fruit puree ones.

Hmmm, caipirinhas, now that sounds like a good idea. I’m off to shake one last drink before I call it a night. Dragonfruit and pear or raspberry? Such tough choices!