Golden Crans

A totally nonalcoholic drink to tantalise your tastebuds.

Mocktails are having a revolution. After years and years of your best nonalcoholic option being a lime and soda, suddenly brands have stopped and taken notice. No matter your tipple of choice, you can now be pretty confident that there will be a good alcohol free version out there.

This drink features some of the nonalcoholic brands I love, and builds around an acidic shrub to create a drink that is complex and far from saccharine. Have you ever tried a shrub before? It mixes fruit with vinegar and sugar to make a sweet/sour combination which has been popular for centuries and is often used as a stand-in for alcohol. As an additional bonus, they can be thrown together with left over fruit, like these grapes and cranberries I'd had in my freezer.

---

Ingredients

• 50 ml sea buckthorn nonalcoholic spirit (https://www.baxbotanics.com/)

• 25 ml grape and cranberry shrub

• 20 ml lemon juice

• 1 full dropper New Orleans bitters (https://allthebitter.com/)

• White peach and jasmine tonic (https://www.londonessenceco.com/en/)

• Blueberries

Grape and cranberry shrub:

Put 50 g purple grapes and 50 g cranberries into a bowl with 30 g white sugar, muddle them to combine. Leave to macerate for a day. Strain the mixture and combine with 30 g red wine vinegar - add slowly to taste. Shake the mixture well to insure all sugar has dissolved and then enjoy!

---

Method

• Add the first four ingredients to a shaker with ice and shake well.

• Fine strain into a wine glass.

• Top with the tonic.

• Garnish with blueberries.

---