An Easy Rhubarb Cocktail Syrup Upgrades the Gimlet and More

In case you haven’t heard, it’s rhubarb season. The vegetable’s pink stalks are among the many most recognizable harbingers of spring, with its bountiful produce, and a magnet for drink creators in all places. In case your Instagram feed is something like ours, it’s troublesome to flee the blush-hued cocktails popping up on seasonal menus the world over. 

There’s the force-carbonated rhubarb Margarita from Lab 22 in Cardiff, Wales; the Champagne Rhubarb Gimlet made with fermented rhubarb wine from Little Mercies in London; Sauced, a clarified rhubarb-infused rum cocktail created by Nico de Soto for a pop-up in Toronto; and the Serpenti, from Humain in Athens, Greece, which calls on each a rotovap and a centrifuge within the making of the clarified drink with gin, rhubarb and goat cheese, to call a number of.

However you may’ve additionally come throughout a video from Jeffrey Morgenthaler, through which the Portland, Oregon, bar proprietor, educator and creator provides his personal method for bringing rhubarb’s shiny, tart, subtly vegetal taste to cocktails at house. In its simplicity—no cooking, no high-tech tools, prepared in lower than 5 minutes—the recipe provides an unbeatable strategy to on-demand rhubarb taste and doubles as an antidote to the dominant pattern of prep-heavy cocktails. 

“I used to be impressed to make that video after seeing a lot high-concept stuff on the market from my friends and colleagues,” explains Morgenthaler, whose strategy to drink-making has at all times favored simplicity, although by no means on the expense of high quality. 

Placing his recipe to the check, the Punch employees made a batch of his syrup. True to his declare, it was prepared in lower than 5 minutes with its signature pink hue, which doesn’t fade because it sits within the fridge. We threw it into a Gimlet in lieu of straightforward, the place it introduced not solely an appetizing pop of coloration, but additionally a refined fruit taste and a lingering, pleasantly bitter end. However its purposes are far wider-reaching than simply the gin bitter. As Morgenthaler explains, “The syrup is nice in something that requires a stable glug of straightforward syrup.” Whereas it may not fare too effectively in an Outdated-Customary, the place its delicate taste can be overpowered by the spirit-forward construct, many basic constructions are honest recreation. “A Tom Collins? Whiskey Bitter? French 75?” says Morgenthaler. “Something like that’s tremendous superior with that rhubarb syrup.”