The Happy Birthday Page St. Germain Elderflower Sangria

In the world of mixology, St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur is Kind of a Big Deal. In the 2009 edition of the book of cocktail recipes that Food & Wine magazine publishes every year, there are 10 different cocktails featuring St. Germain. (For comparison, there were only 9 with vodka.) So St. Germain is new now and super trendy, and, like many people who were nerds in high school, I have a certain suspicion of anything incredibly popular. So it was with a bit of reluctlance that I bought my first bottle.


My mind began to change when I first held the bottle in my hand. I know, it's a bottle of liquor, not a baby, but seriously - this bottle is gorgeous. Just it being on the counter was enough to give my kitchen a certain air of sophistication. And the taste - is beyond incredible. Fruity and floral, sweet without being too heavy. Other bloggers have attempted to break it down into its component parts, but I just thought - "I bet this is what ambrosia tastes like". (I just looked up ambrosia on Wikipedia, to make certain it was what I thought it was, and the article described it as "a kind of divine exhalation of the earth". St. Germain elderflower liqueur is a divine exhalation of the earth.)

It has a pretty cool story, too - the flowers used to make the liqueur are handpicked, in the foothills of the Alps, during only a few days every spring, by only 40 or 50 different guys, and then transported to the distillery by bicycle. By bicycle. Each bottle has a little label with the vintage year and its own individual number, which should make you feel a little better about paying as much for it as you did.

In other news, Page had a birthday (on July 3rd, which tells you how behind I am with these posts), and Jessie had a party for her, part of which was a talent show. Well, my talents are...singing Total Eclipse of the Heart at the top of my lungs, and making cat noises. So I made sangria. Of course it had to be something original, since Page is an original, and I had that lovely bottle of St. Germain sitting on the counter, beckoning to me. And it was right there on the box, all helpful-like, how great St. Germain is with white wine. And St-Germain is light and fruity and sweet, just like the wines Page likes (I've drunk a lot of wine with Page), so really it was a no-brainer.

People keep asking me how I knew which fruits to add to the sangria, and the answer is: I am a culinary genius. No, the answer is, I looked at a few other blog posts about St. Germain, and people were saying things like "hints of peach!" "hints of pear!" "hints of citrus!", so I started there. The one thing I didn't see was "hints of elderflower!" because apparently nobody else knows what an elderflower is supposed to taste like, either.

St. Germain White Sangria
1 bottle dry white wine*
1 cup Gt. Germain
3/4 cup pear nectar
1/4 cup poire william eau-de-vie (pear-flavored brandy), if you have it**
2 peaches, pitted and sliced***

1 pear, cored and sliced****
1 cup red grapefruit, cut into wedges
1 cup green grapes, cut in half

2 tablespoons simple syrup

*Sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio are good choices for a white sangria. I used Messina Hof's pinot grigio. Yay Texas!

**If not, go ahead and add a full cup of pear nectar.

***I used white peaches, for a more subtle peach flavor, but yellow will work, too.

****Pears aren't very good at infusing, hence the eau-de-vie and the pear nectar. The sliced pear is really more for looks (and post-sangria snacking).

Mix it all up (make sure your pitcher is big enough before you start adding the ingredients!), cover the pitcher, and allow to steep in the fridge overnight (or for at least eight hours).

Verdict: Peach and pear and all sorts of flavors meld together seamlessly into something indescribably sweet and light. Pretty much the perfect summer drink.

Texas Summer Sangria

I am obsessed with this book. Seriously. Since buying it I have become such a sangria fiend that I now think of sangria as a season. In much the same way that some people welcome the coming of fall because it means the beginning of football season, I welcome spring because it means that I can make sangria again.

Hello, lover.

I've made almost every sangria recipe in the book, so it was sort of inevitable that eventually I would create my own. I wanted to do a flavor combo that I hadn't tried before, and I wanted to use fruits that are in season in Houston right now - a little taste of Texas summer in every sip. Here's what I came up with:

1 750 mL bottle red wine*
1.5 cups blackberries**
3 peaches, pitted and sliced**
1/2 cup simple syrup
1/4 cup cognac***

*I used a Messina Hof shiraz, in keeping with the whole Texas thing, but really any red wine will do as long as it's not too sweet. Good bets are shiraz/syrah, cabernet, or merlot. One of the great things about sangria is that you don't need to use expensive wine - I've made sangria with four-dollar wine and loved it.
**See the last post for info about where to get farm-fresh fruit in Houston.
***It's okay to use cheap cognac, too.

Put the berries and simple syrup in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes. The goal here is to release some of the berry flavor, so you'll know it's ready when the berries start to lighten in color just slightly and the syrup starts to thicken. Take off the heat and set aside. Pour the bottle of wine into a pitcher (I always end up tasting a little at this point because hey, wine is delcious), and add the cognac, peaches, and syrup/berry mixtures. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or for at least 8 hours) - this will let the flavors marry. (And don't flavors deserve happiness just like anyone else?)

The Verdict:
I took my first sip of my first pitcher of my first sangria, fully prepared to have to add some OJ or peach liqueur or something to get that perfect balance. I was blown away. It was like heaven in a glass. (I know I say all my drinks are good - because I wouldn't post them if they weren't - but seriously, this will blow your mind.) Sweet burst of peach, hearty red wine, nice berry finish. I took it to a party and it was a huge hit and disappeared almost immediately. I was very flattered, but also a little disappointed - because I sort of wanted to drink the whole thing myself.

Easy to make. Hard to share.

Peachtree Street Mule

Named for the street Scarlett O'Hara lives on in Atlanta. I might be just a little obsessed with Gone with the Wind. (Thanks Paul for the idea.)

Inspired by the bounty of delicious peaches I got at the farmers market, I decided to try more peach drinks. There's one, the Peach Donkey (I'm guessing it's called a donkey because of the habit of calling mixed drinks with vodka and ginger ale a "mule") from this book that I'd been wanting to try. The original recipe calls for peaches, vodka, ginger liqueur, and ginger beer. Ginger beer, it turns out, is like ginger ale, but with a stronger ginger flavor, and a lot harder to find. I finally hunted down some ginger beer (thank you, Central Market), mixed up the drink, and tried it. Instead of love at first sip, my feeling was one of a resounding....eh. I was bored. It needed something else. Something like...mint.

Tried it with the mint. Warm, spicy ginger, cool mint, sweet fresh peach. Perfection.


So here you go:
One ripe, juicy peach, pitted and sliced*
6 mint leaves (fortunately the mint in my garden is undergoing a sort of explosion, so I did not need to look far for this)
1.5 oz vodka
1 oz chilled ginger beer (ginger ale will do in a pinch, but you'll need to use a little bit more.)
crushed ice

*How do you spot a ripe peach? A ripe peach may have red and orange shadings on its skin, but underneath the other colors it will be a bright yellow. Ripe peaches also have a stronger peachy smell than not-so-ripe peaches. If the peach is so juicy it falls apart as you're trying to slice it that's a good sign.

Muddle the peaches and mint together in the mixing glass of a shaker. (You may want to try muddling half the peach first, and then adding the other half. A muddler will work, but a large spoon comes in handy when trying to extract as much juice as possible from the peach.) Add 5-6 ice cubes to the shaker and add the vodka. Shake it all up and strain into a collins glass. Fill the glass about 2/3 of the way with the crushed ice, and then add the ginger beer. Pop in a straw, give it a little stir, and you're done. Yum.

Backyard Peach Daiquiri

I have created the drink that will boost me to greatness.

To which you say: "Surely you are exaggerating."
To which I say: "You gotta try this."

My flavor inspiration: I have a little weber grill. It is blue and I love it, and sometimes people come over on Sunday nights and everyone brings things for the grill. Once Cyndy brought peaches, and after all the burgers were finished grilling she put the peaches on the grill, each with a scoop of brown sugar in the pit. Half an hour later, they were one of the most amazing things I've ever tasted.

Anything you can eat you can drink, right? I had to give this a try. The peaches and brown sugar were obvious. I added a little lemon juice to the mix, to balance out all that sweetness. What to do for a base? How about rum? A nice aged rum, to impart a little smoky/woody flavor, like being cooked over the grill. After I had already made the first version of this cocktail, a thought popped into my head: hey, what about that peach bitters I bought a while back? I added in the bitters. It was brilliant. It was like the discovery of vulcanized rubber: accidental genius.

This is an okay time to start salivating.

You will need:
5 slices of delicous, fresh Texas peach (peach season is almost over in Houston (didn't it just start?), but if you hurry you can still get some at the farmers market.)
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
2 oz aged rum (I used Flor de Caña gold. Turns out there is light aged rum, and gold aged rum - and maybe dark aged rum? I used to think there was just rum.)
.5 oz lemon juice (love your cocktail, make it fresh)
2 dashes Fee Brothers' Peach Bitters

Muddle the peaches and brown sugar together in the mixing glass of your shaker until you have a delicious sugary peach mush. Fill the glass with ice and add the rum, lemon juice and bitters. Shake until it hurts. Strain into a cocktail glass. (Rimmed with brown sugar, if you're feeling fancy.) Enjoy the hell out of it.

White Peach and Basil Margarita

Here's a little history on this cocktail - I was inspired by a drink called "Peaches and Herb" from this book (which I love and totally reccomend, btw). The original drink called for peaches, sage, and brandy, but the peach and sage combo didn't really do it for me (peaches - delcious; sage - meh), so I decided to try it with peaches and basil. And substitute tequila for the brandy, since peaches and tequila are always a winning combination. I used white peaches because - that's what they had at the grocery store. So there you go. Necessity is the mother of invention?

Peaches and Basil: A good start.

For starters:
5 slices of white peach (a little more than 1/4 of the peach)
3 basil leaves (harvested from the back porch!)
splash of agave nectar (what the heck is a splash, I always want to know? here's what I do: about 1/8 of an ounce.)
splash of lemon juice
1.5 oz tequila
.5 oz triple sec

What you do:
Put the peach slices, basil leaves, and agave nectar in the mixing glass of your shaker. (I'm assuming you have a boston shaker, but a plain old shaker will work just as well.) Muddle (or smoosh with the back of a spoon) the peaches and basil until they make a nice mush. Fill the glass with ice, and then add the tequila, lemon juice and triple sec. Shake it all up. (Most people will say shake until a frost forms on the shaker, but I like to shake until the shaker is so cold I can barely hold it anymore. The ice melting into the cocktail is important because that's what smoothes out the burn of the alcohol.) Strain into a cocktail glass. Cheers.

Verdict: The color is beautiful, pale and peachy, and the flavor is kind of similiar - lovely, smooth, more subtle than you'd expect from a margarita. I'd like another.