IRIDESCENT
Not only do we get to try Japanese Roku gin for the first time at home, but we also get to do it in our original recipe for the Iridescent cocktail.
We started off by trying the Roku neat, and enjoyed it tremendously. It is a gin with very evident citrus notes, so we thought it would work nicely with some kind of citrus liqueur. In the end we opted for mandarin liqueur, and we also added Riesling vermouth from Belsazar.
The pièce de résistance in this cocktail though is the red wine syrup sink. The idea is to get wine syrup (made by melting together equal parts red wine and sugar) to sink to the bottom of the glass without colouring the rest of the cocktail. We achieved this by freezing the wine syrups into cubes and then let one of these cubes sink into the drink. Then we just left the cocktail for a few minutes while the syrup cube melted. This created exactly the effect we were looking for, a thick red velvety carpet at the inside bottom of the glass.
Iridescent
Recipe
Ingredients:
1,5 oz Roku gin
0,75 oz Belsazar Riesling vermouth
0,5 oz mandarin liqueur
0,25 oz frozen red wine syrup
Mixing:
Stir the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a small rocks glass. Add a frozen red wine syrup cube. It will sink to the bottom of the glass and slowly melt, creating a cool visual effect as well as gradually flavour the cocktail.
Glassware:
rocks