Liquor Cabinet

— Issue No. 75 —

St. Germain

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.

12 Notes on “St. Germain”

  1. Wow great read. Thanks for that. Your Cuvee Des Fleurs Cock­tail sounds per­fect. Ok I’m off to the liquor store.

  2. Nice post about St-Ger­main. It’s fan­tas­tic stuff. Regard­ing the next pur­chase, I would prob­a­bly rec­om­mend Creme Yvette, anoth­er fan­tas­tic achieve­ment also by Coop­er Spir­its. Don’t get me wrong, I picked up a bot­tle of Domaine de Can­ton the moment I saw it on the shelf, but now that I have it, here’s my assess­ment: It’s not “gin­gery” enough. I know, that sounds crazy, but hear me out. Say you want to real­ly show­case that gin­ger fla­vor. You want to bright­en up a cock­tail with that char­ac­ter­is­tic burn–well, to get there you end up adding so much DdC that it over sweet­ens the drink. In oth­er words, used in mod­er­a­tion, it does­n’t car­ry enough fla­vor, and by the time you add enough to real­ly taste it, every­thing is out of bal­ance, which might be fine if you are going for a sweet result. Iron­i­cal­ly, fresh home­made gin­ger syrup packs a wal­lop, and even if you make gin­ger syrup at a rich 2:1 ratio, you don’t need to add near as much as you would Domaine de Can­ton to get the fla­vor. Con­se­quent­ly, I find myself reach­ing for gin­ger syrup far more often than the liqueur. I know, this is a St-Ger­main post, but it’s some­thing to think about when you write about your next pur­chase.

  3. I rather sus­pect that the leg­end of the army of French­men on bicy­cles tot­ing sacks of elder­flow­ers is a load of crap designed to appeal to cred­u­lous Amer­i­cans. But it sure is tasty liqueur, and a gor­geous bot­tle.

    For some rea­son I always want to com­bine St. Ger­main with Creme d’Yvette, but am afraid it’s going to taste like the kind of soap my grand­moth­er puts in her guest bath­room. Thoughts?

  4. Randy, I total­ly agree with you on Can­ton. Peo­ple go nuts for St. Ger­main and Can­ton. You bet­ter have them on hand at your bar. Peo­ple just start­ing out mak­ing cock­tails reach for these prod­ucts. I am glad it catch­es their inter­est. I too per­son­al­ly feel like you can make most of your own liqueurs or use syrups.

  5. Hanne, I feel like they would com­pete with each oth­er and you would have to be care­ful not to make your cock­tail too sweet.

  8. I real­ly enjoy Domaine with abso­lut Brook­lyn it brings out the gin­ger in both . It’s also very good in rye. I like prod­ucts like this because I don’t have the time to make my own, plus I work at a liquor store which makes pur­chas­ing very easy. I haven’t tried st. Ger­main yet but I would like to it sounds inter­est­ing

  9. I was in Cal­i­for­nia for busi­ness and had a fab­u­lous Wine spritzer with St. Ger­main. I live in corn coun­try and when I got home it took me 3 stores and “too“much mon­ey because the store I did find it at only keeps one at a time in stock but it’s worth it! Pinot, Slice, Soda Water, St. Ger­main, and Fresh Mint.
    Most refresh­ing sat­is­fy­ing cock­tail ever!

  10. A close friend clued me in that I live around thou­sands of flow­er­ing elder­ber­ry bush­es! I quick­ly went to work gath­er­ing up bunch­es of the flow­ers & bot­tling them in vod­ka. I processed as liqueuer after strain­ing the alco­hol. My results tast­ed like bit­ter tea, noth­ing like the won­der­ful St. Ger­maine. Ah, well… Will try again in the spring.

  11. “Once this is com­plete the mac­er­a­tion is mar­ried with eau-de-vie or grape spir­it. ”

    does the drink have wine / grape extract in it?

  12. After the mac­er­a­tion it should be mar­ried with grape spir­it and then blend­ed with cane sug­ar then you will have your liquor if you read the arti­cle it says it in there hope this helps you

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