Category: Mary

The song inspiration for today's cocktail is the German carol, Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming. The text dates from around the late 16th century and was originally a carol about Mary, comparing her to the mystical rose of Sharon. There is also a source that states the true origin of the hymn is an apocryphal story of a monk in Trier, Germany who found a rose blooming on Christmas eve. He picked it and placed it before a statue of the Virgin Mary – which also explains the Christmas connection. But then the Protestants got ahold of the carol and made it all about Jesus. We're taking back the original meaning and inspiration in our boozy celebration of Mary! 

Given the title of the song, we wanted rose to be one of the dominant flavours in the cocktail but also didn't want it to taste like grandmother's Avon order (are we dating ourselves?). To avoid a perfumey pitfall, we created a very straight-forward gin sour that uses oleo saccharum, a popular ingredient in 19th century cocktails. Oleo saccharum (or "sugar oil") is a mixture of sugar and essential oils; the most common version is derived from lemon rind, but can be created from other ingredients. For this drink, we extracted the essence from the rose petals to create a rose oleo saccharum.

Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming Cocktail
2 oz gin, preferably Hendricks
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz rose oleo saccharum
1 oz egg white
3 drops Fee Brothers Rhubarb Bitters
Cocktail glass

Pour all of the ingredients into a cocktail shaker and dry shake for approximately 30 seconds. Then add ice to the shaker and shake until cocktail is chilled. Double stain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a rose petal.

Cocktail Notes
The cocktail is a straightforward gin sour.  We used Hendicks gin because it is infused with Bulgarian Rosa Damascena.

Originally, we intended this cocktail to be a variation on a Ramos Fizz with rose and pink peppercorn syrup. But the flavours weren't jiving well, so we pulled back and went with something fairly simple to highlight the rose.  We added the rhubarb bitters to help enhance the citrus and berry notes of the rose oleo saccharum.

We generally followed the instructions from London Eats in making the rose oleo saccharum. It took about 36 hours to make ours; we used the following procedure:

Rose Oleo Saccharum
8 edible roses
1/2 cup Castor or Superfine sugar

1. Pull the petals off of the roses and wash them, removing any that are damaged. Lightly dry.
2. Divide the petals and sugar between two resealable plastic bags. Seal the bags, squeezing as much of the air out of the bag as possible. Gently massage the sugar into the petals.
3. Leave petals in the bags for approximately 36 hours, massaging them into the sugar to facillitate their wilting and breaking down. After about 18 hours if no liquid has begun to form, add about a tablespoon of water to each bag and massage the petals more frequently.
4. After 36 hours, there should be a thick red liquid forming in the bottom of the bag. Cut a corner off the bottom of bag and strain the liquid through a fine sieve or cheesecloth. Squeeze the petals to extract the remaining syrup. If the syrup looks cloudy, add a couple of drops of lemon juice. The syrup should be very sweet and have a complex flavour of roses. It will also be quite vegetal on the nose. This sorts itself out once the syrup is used in a cocktail.

Listen along

This guy playing Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming on harmonica rocks our world!

Today's cocktail inspiration comes from the contemporary song, Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song). Christian country singer Amy Grant first heard a version of the song when the composer, Chris Eaton, was a member of her touring band. Pregnant at the time, Grant thought the music and the chorus fit perfectly with the idea of a frightened young girl who was told she was going to bear the Messiah. She reworked the verses and turned the song into one with a Christmas message.

Breath of Heaven brought to mind something light and airy with a bright flavour. We started with a riff on the Twentieth Century cocktail which is a combination of gin, lemon and touch of chocolate; we used Godiva White Chocolate and added egg white to create a lighter texture. As noted below, we eventually changed out the lemon for orange and added a bit of sasparallia flavour to create a unique and fresh-tasting drink.

Breath of Heaven Cocktail
1 oz gin (we used Beefeaters)
1 oz Cointreau
1 oz Godiva White Chocolate liqueur
1 oz egg white
1 bar spoon of rootbeer liqueur (we used Art in the Age's Root)
1 dropper Apothecary Bitters Eldergrowth Bitters
Coupe glass
Orange zest for garnish

Pour all ingredients into a shaker. Dry shake for approximately 30 seconds. Add ice and shake until chilled. Double strain into a coupe glass.

Cocktail Notes
This cocktail underwent several trials (and some tribulations .. like Mary). We started with the lemon juice and Lillet Blanc (ala the Twentieth Century cocktail) but found that they didn't mix well with the Godiva. Eventually, we switched out the lemon for orange and went with a liqueur (Cointreau) instead of using any fruit juice.

The Root adds some caramel and sarsaparilla notes to the cocktail that reduce the sweetness and round out the flavour. Adding more than a barspoon causes the Root to overpower the cocktail. The cocktail is not necessarily meant as a dessert drink since it isn't that sweet. But it does have a unique creamsicle taste with a little bit of rusticness from the Root.

We tried three different types of bitters, all from Apothecary Bitters.

• General Ambrose: Brings out more of the Root spiciness.
• The Darkness: Keeps the Root but decreases the orange.
• Eldergrowth: Keeps the orange and brings out the sarsaparilla finish.

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