Spring is final­ly upon us. So lets kick it off with a bot­tle St. Ger­main Elder­flower Liqueur. If you go to the St. Ger­main web­site they’ll tell you the love­ly sto­ry behind their art­ful­ly com­plex liqueur. It all begins at the foothills of the Alps, dur­ing but a few fleet­ing days of spring. Locals will hand­pick wild elder­flower blos­soms and bike sacks of these blos­soms down the hill­side to mar­ket.  These sacks will be the entire­ty of what will become St. Ger­main Elder­flower Liqueur. Do I have your atten­tion yet? Good, because aparent­ly this stuff isn’t easy to make.

Dis­tiller Robert Coop­er takes on a com­plex process where speed is absolute­ly essen­tial. These frag­ile blos­soms quick­ly lose their fla­vor and fra­grance once picked. Since a tra­di­tion­al mac­er­a­tion process yields lit­tle fla­vor and the cus­tom­ary option of press­ing the flow­ers caus­es an unfor­tu­nate bit­ter­ness, an entire­ly new process was need­ed to prop­er­ly extract the essence of these flow­ers while pre­serv­ing their one of a kind fla­vor. Once this is com­plete the mac­er­a­tion is mar­ried with eau-de-vie or grape spir­it. Final­ly, the spir­it is blend­ed with enough cane sug­ar to enhance the nat­ur­al fla­vors of the blos­soms. This is a process passed down through three gen­er­a­tions of expe­ri­ence, dat­ing back to 1884.

If your favorite liquor store car­ries it you’ve prob­a­bly noticed this stun­ning, almost per­fume-like bot­tle, on their shelves. Twist off that bot­tle’s cap and you’ll smell the won­der­ful aro­ma of lychee, peach, grape­fruit zest; along with the flo­ral notes from the elder­flower. After you notice a strong pres­ence of lychee, a sip test will reveal a bal­ance of pas­sion­friut, pear and the cit­rus of lemon and grape­fruit… and of course elder­flower. The palette entry is soft and the mouth­feel is full of hon­ey. St. Ger­main Elder­flower Liqueur is clean, sweet, and refresh­ing.  Nev­er cloy­ing. It’s a well dec­o­rat­ed liqueur, tak­ing home dou­ble gold at the 2007 San Fran­cis­co World Spir­its Competition.

The most excit­ing part about this liqueur is its mix­a­bil­i­ty. You can com­bine it with cham­pagne, white wine (Gewürtz­tramin­er, my favorite white wine) or use it for a base in mul­ti­ple cock­tail recipes fea­tur­ing gin, vod­ka, pis­cos, or just about any­thing real­ly. My Cucum­ber­ous cock­tail recipe com­bines St. Ger­main Elder­flower Liqueur with fresh cucum­ber and lime juice, gin, rose­mary sim­ple syrup and orange bit­ters. It’s one of my most sought after cock­tails. Get this, you can even freeze it and use it to lay­er a shot. The new­bies in the cock­tail world 9–10 will start out mix­ing cock­tails with St. Ger­main. Is it the catchy pack­ag­ing and sto­ry, or just the sweet lov­able liqueur? Either way, It’s a very pop­u­lar liqueur and a great addi­tion to your home bar.  Your next pur­chase, I’m going to pre­dict you go with Domaine de Can­ton gin­ger liqueur. No doubt the bot­tles of St Ger­main and Domaine de Can­ton will look great next to each oth­er. If you are look­ing for a lit­tle more com­plex­i­ty in your liqueur my sug­ges­tion is you try Dim­mi Liquore di Milano.

Here is my newest cre­ation with St. Ger­main that I paired with a flo­ral beer from Southamp­ton.

Cuvée des Fleurs Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz Rye Whisky
• 3/4 oz St. Germain
• 1/2 oz of fresh lemon juice
• Top with Southamp­ton’s Cuvée des Fleurs (@ 2 oz).
• Gar­nish with thyme and a lemon wheel

Shake rye, St. Ger­main, and the lemon juice with ice. Strain into an ice filled high­ball glass. Top the cock­tail with Cuvée des Fleurs and stir to incor­po­rate. Gar­nish with thyme and a lemon wheel.