Savour Cacique | Santa's Cough Medicine
“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”
It always feels like a little more magic enters the world around this time of year. Accents of color pop up all around us. Dashes of red. Strokes of forest green. Brilliant arrangements of lights on the porches of those vested in sharing the Christmas cheer. In addition to being a visual feast, the holiday season is a veritable party for the palette. In our latest #SavourCacique post, we teamed up with Kyle Jones from Young's Fine Wine to create the perfect holiday drink to warm your spirits - the Mulled Harvest Cider. This time, we 'did link up' with Kyle again to put our twist on the Holiday Cocktail.
Talking Cocktails with Shawn M. Sawyer & Kyle Jones
It's beginning to look a lot like cocktails
Cacique. Some really interesting scents coming together here Kyle. What was the inspiration?
Kyle. I wanted to find a way to incorporate as many holiday senses into one drink as possible. From the smell of a freshly cut Christmas tree, coming from the rosemary to a bright red cranberry syrup, to a bit of bubbly that most associate with celebrating, you get it all in one sip. I could have done it with gin because gin is so easily influenced, but I kind of like the neutrality of the vodka, so it's not so much Juniper-forward and you really get to taste the rosemary.
C. I know that when it comes to specialty cocktails - the fresher the better. How much of the ingredients used today are from the bottle and how much from the soil?
K. This rosemary is actually local Bahamian rosemary from Greenleaf Farms. Antonio Hall, awesome guy, does amazing herbs and has everything a cocktail maker could dream of. For the cranberry, we boiled down some cranberry juice and added sugar to create that kind of viscous syrup that has a little more sweetness. We infused the rosemary into the Sipsmith vodka, which is actually a barley vodka. They've since stopped making that specific type of vodka, but it's still one of my favorites. They have another option sold over at Young's that's actually pretty phenomenal.
C. So today we're using rosemary-infused vodka to spruce this festive cocktail up a bit. What else could we do to gear this cocktail more towards the holidays?
K. Maybe some sage, some mint, some tarragon would be nice as well. I always talk to the farmers and I like to see what they suggest, what they think is fresh and local and it kind of inspires what I create. For me, the scent of rosemary really expresses and accentuates that Christmas tree vibe.
Santa's Cough Medicine
“I love Scrappy’s for many reasons, one being their stance on using only the freshest ingredients to make their handcrafted bitters. Orange bitters have been around for nearly 150 years, I just love Scrappy’s version as it has a perfect blend of herbs, spices and oranges. ”
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz Rosemary infused Sipsmith Vodka
1 oz Cranberry syrup
3 dashes Scrappy’s Orange Bitters
Louis Picamelot Cremant de Bourgogne
How To:
1. Add rosemary infused vodka, cranberry simple syrup and Scrappy’s orange bitters to shaking tin filled with ice. 2. Shake until cold and strain into coupe glass. 3. Top with Cremant de Bourgogne and garnish with rosemary twig and cranberries.
Infusing (Christmas)Spirit
C. Infusing spirits with flavor may seem like a foreign concept to most people. How does this work?
K. Infusing spirits is so much easier than most people think. It’s as simple as placing fresh herbs, fruits or anything you want to impart flavor into a container with the spirit you want to infuse, shaking the bottle every so often and letting it sleep. Depending on how much you want your spirit to gain the characteristic of the item dicates how long you will keep it in the spirit. With rosemary being such a strong herb, I infused the vodka for 24 hours. Even an hour of infusing will impart some flavor, but for more noticeable notes you can infuse for up to a week.
Culinary Experiences
Open your mind to a world of new tastes with Cacique's Culinary Experiences - tailor-made to wow the most discerning of palettes. Looking forward to taking you on a gastronomic journey.
Happy holidays! SS ;)