13 Sep Our Summer in France Cocktail Recipe

Our Summer in France Cocktail Recipe

When we were ordering our brunch drinks at Bearnaise, one drink caught our eye that we didn’t end up ordering, mostly because we’re on a tireless search to find the perfect Bloody Mary; so one of our drink slots is always taken up by that at brunch, limiting our other choices. By the way, this was before tasting the pickle-infused genever Bloody Mary at the Three Day Blow, which may in fact be the perfect Bloody Mary–then again, we’ll never know until we try them all.

Anyway, that drink we didn’t order has stuck with us, probably about 69% because of its name: Summer in France. Basking in the fading glory of our recent trip to France was most of the reason we went to Bearnaise, after all. Thirty-one percent of our attraction to Summer in France is because of the ingredients: gin, elderflower, and lavender. These are three of our favorite things in cocktails. And two of them are among our favorite things about France. We maybe don’t even use all of these ingredients all that frequently; in particular, even a lavender lover can only use lavender in cocktails rarely. But we do look for the opportunity. So to see a drink with all three elicited an outsized joyful response.

Eventually, we had to try it out. Sometimes when we share a recipe, we’ve gotten it exactly from the bartender. Other times, we try to replicate based on taste. This time, we don’t even know what the drink tastes like; we’re just going off of a notion and a list of ingredients. To reflect our greater uncertainty as to the actual relationship between this drink and the one they serve at Bearnaise, we’ve slightly changed the title, to Our Summer in France, which was lovely by the way.

Ingredients

• 2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz elderflower liqueur–St. Germain or a substitute
• 1/2 oz lavender liqueur
• a few drops of lemon juice (our addition. It felt like it needed a little sour)
• 4 oz seltzer
• lemon wedge, for garnish

Instructions

• Combine gin, liqueurs, and lemon juice in the bottom of a highball glass. Be sparing with the lemon juice; too much and you start to loose track of the lavender, which you definitely don’t want to do.
• Add ice and seltzer.
• Garnish with lemon wedge.