Meet the natural love child of the popular local-foods movement and craft cocktail scene. The Wildcrafted Cocktail (Storey Publishing, 2017) is here to show you just how easy it is to make delicious, one-of-a-kind mixed drinks with common flowers, berries, roots, and leaves that you can find along roadsides or in your backyard.
You can purchase this book through the Mother Earth Living store: The Wildcrafted Cocktail
This cocktail includes both Oregon grape and licorice fern, a plant native to and symbolic of the Pacific Northwest. It’s a mighty tasty beverage wherever you make it.
Oregon grape is a shrub grown primarily for its ornamental value; most gardeners don’t realize the fruit is edible. On their own, Oregon grapes are face–twistingly sour but combined with sugar, they make a balanced, sweet-tart flavoring.
Sour cocktails generally contain a base spirit, citrus juice, and a sweetener. A bit of raw egg white is optional. If you have an aversion to raw egg whites, you can skip that part, but you’ll be missing out. The egg whites, when properly shaken, add a silkiness to the drink, creating an emulsion that is slightly thick and very smooth. The bitters are a finishing touch, not only adding another layer of complexity but also keeping the egg whites smelling fresh.
- 2 ounces rye whiskey
- 1 ounce grape verjuice
- 1/2 ounce Oregon grape syrup
- 1 tablespoon egg white
- Licorice fern bitters
To Make One Drink
- Combine the rye, verjuice, Oregon grape syrup, and egg white in a shaker and dry-shake for 30 seconds.
- Add ice to the shaker and shake again for 30 seconds to thoroughly chill the cocktail.
- Strain into a rocks glass and top with a few drops of licorice fern bitters for an extra burst of PNW flavor.
For another foraged cocktail recipe, see:
Excerpted from The Wildcrafted Cocktail © by Ellen Zachos, photography by © Keller+Keller Photography, used with permission from Storey Publishing.
