We made it! Summer is here in full swing and I, for one, am thrilled. This is the season where crafting cocktails is effortless because summer’s bounty has so much to give. Pop into any farmers market and you’ll see vendors lined up with baskets of fresh strawberries, sweet cherries, and my personal favorite – the quintessential summer fruit: The Watermelon.
It’s hot! Let’s cool down 🙂
Once the temps start rising above 80 I start daydreaming about really, really good tequila cocktails. The best tequila drinks start with a high-quality tequila of course, but after that it’s dealer’s choice to steer the drink to a true place of greatness. After all, the most famous tequila cocktail, The Margarita, focuses on three basic ingredients to create a cocktail worth sipping all day.
Tequila
We recommend Espolon Blanco. It has got a great price tag and because it is un-aged, it allows other ingredients to mingle with it harmoniously. Because tequila is made from plants, it’s important to pair it with a liqueur that complements its vegetal and grassy aromas and this spirit does just that.
Lime
The fresh stuff only! Your cocktail will taste so much better if you used fresh-squeezed lime juice. You don’t need anything fancy— a handheld citrus juicer (like the one we have available in the Bottle Shop) will work beautifully. It will only take a minute to cut and squeeze a lime or two.
Something Sweet
While most margarita recipes call for sticky sweet curacao, I like swapping out that mass-produced sweetener for small-batch New Deal Ginger Liqueur. It’s made from fresh, crushed, raw organic ginger root, cane sugar, and agave and gives my cocktails an unsurpassed fresh edge.
Once you’ve got this basic formula down, that’s when the fun, creative magic happens. With the Ginger Liqueur doing the heavy lifting of transforming a basic margarita into a brilliant margarita, I start thinking about seasonal, juicy watermelon to enhance the next layer of flavor in my cocktails. There’s something special about the brightness of muddled fruit and the generous wave of spiciness from that ginger that will keep you begging for another sip all summer long. Try out the delicious combination of tequila, Ginger Liqueur, and watermelon in my Ginger Watermelon Margarita.
