This unseasonably warm week has me longing for even warmer days, and summer cocktails. Mmmmmmm.  I’m celebrating Friday with a cocktail recipe!

This is the Martin Voiron (definitely a lighter, slightly sweeter drink, but oh-so-delicious) with recipe adapted to our liking.

You will need:

St. Germain

Yellow Chartreuse

Hendricks (or other rosewater) gin

Grapefruit (or cherry) bitters

A fresh lemon

Other things you’ll want include a shaker,  a jigger, cocktail strainer, and if you want to get fancy with glassware, a coupe :-)

Mix 1.5 ounces Hendricks gin, .5 oz St Germain, .5 oz Yellow Chartreuse, .75 oz lemon juice, 1 dash of cherry (or grapefruit) bitters. Pour all into shaker, shake until it’s cold (pictured below, usually about 30 seconds) strain into coupe, garnish with lemon peel.

St Germain is a deliciously sweet ingredient that you will find in a lot of cocktails. I’ve even heard it referred to as “bartender’s ketchup.”

Yellow Chartreuse is definitely the sweeter of the two chartreuses, but I think is most delicious neat.

Hendricks was the first “fancy” gin I tried. And I fell hard and fast. This is still my favorite gin for a gin and tonic (garnish with cucumber instead of lime).

A fresh lemon is CRUCIAL. If you’re using bottled lemon juice it is packed with preservatives and just isn’t anywhere near as delicious. Honest to goodness it will mess up your cocktails.

The original recipe called for grapefruit bitters which we didn’t have. So we substituted one dash of cherry. (Grapefruit is on the Binny’s list now ;-) ) Debbi Peek, the Bristol’s award winning mixologist calls bitters the salt and peper of cocktail mixing :-)

The left is when you’ve just put everything into the shaker. Right is cold after about 30 seconds of hard shaking.

Pour into coupe and garnish with a little bit of lemon peel :-)

 Cheers! XXOO and a very happy weekend to you all :-)

PS if you haven’t commented on yesterday’s post yet, you can still enter for the Starbucks giftcard!