Lavender Martini

Lavender Hill Farm - original watercolor by the Cocktail Artist
Northern Michigan is filled with gorgeous scenery - clear blue lakes, pine forests, and idyllic family farms. In mid-summer, the sea of purple blooms at Lavender Hill Farm is absolutely stunning. This lavender farm is located in Horton Bay (Boyne City), Michigan - a small hamlet where Ernest Hemingway spent many summers and the setting for his story "Up in Michigan". If you are anywhere near this part of the world during the month of July you shouldn't miss visiting the farm. Not only will you be treated with the visual beauty of the lavender fields, but the scent is utterly intoxicating (in a completely non-alcoholic way). Research shows that lavender produces soothing effects when its fragrance is inhaled, and we can verify that this place fills you with a sense of calm. Coming from Washington, DC (where we live most of the year) we are quite desperate for some calm.

We picked fresh lavender at the farm and also purchased a container of dried culinary lavender buds. Now that we're back in DC we decided to work on a new lavender cocktail in hopes of conjuring up some of those soothing effects. We have used lavender in cocktails before (see our Tom Collins recipe). It's easy to make a simple syrup using the lavender buds. The recipe for the syrup can be found in the Tom Collins blog post. If you're looking for a non-alcoholic drink, lavender syrup is a very nice addition to plain club soda with a squeeze of lemon. There are some pre-made lavender simple syrups out there, but you can find plenty of other ways to use culinary lavender and the dried buds keep for a very long time. If you don't have access to a lavender farm, you can purchase the buds in specialty food shops or online.

So here's our Lavender Martini. It's somewhat herbal, slightly sweet, and completely calming - a nice aperitif after a hard day or an attractive cocktail to serve your over-stressed party guests.

Cheers!


Lavender Martini

2 1/2 oz. Vodka (We like District Made Vodka. If you can't get it, use a nice local craft vodka, or iff you're a gin lover you could also substitute gin for the vodka.)
3/4 oz. Blanc vermouth (Dolin is our preference)
3/4 oz. Lavender simple syrup (see recipe for the syrup in our Tom Collins blog post)
2 dashes lavender bitters (Scrappy's Bitters)
2 dashes orange bitters (Scrappy's Bitters)

Shake all ingredients with ice cubes in a cocktail shaker for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a lavender sprig and lemon twist.


Lavender Hill Farm in July 2017


The Lavender Martini and the ingredients


Lavender - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist


You can make a nice non-alcoholic spritz with lemon, lavender syrup and club soda.


Popular posts from this blog

The Last Call

Image
This post is a week late, but this blog is our hobby (not our real job) so we’re not going to worry about it. Anyhow, we came up with this drink for Mardi Gras as the “last call” before the beginning of Lent – a time when some of us stop drinking for 40 days (we’ll let you know how that works out). The name “Last Call” also references the classic “Last Word” cocktail. The Last Word is really a perfect cocktail. It’s equal parts of four ingredients (gin, Green Chartreuse, Maraschino Liqueur, and lime) and a superb balance of tart, herbal, and sweet. It’s one of our fallback cocktails – one that we mix up when we can’t make up our mind about what we want to drink.  Another classic that we regularly enjoy is the Aviation Cocktail. The Aviation is another gin cocktail and is one of the few that uses Crème de Violette – a sweet, floral liqueur that is typically a deep purple hue. It takes mixing quite a few Aviations to go through a bottle of Crème de Violette, so it’s probably
Read more

Lemon Bergamot Gimlet

Image
In case you don’t know us personally, or haven’t read the bio on our blog , you may not realize the “The Cocktail Artist” is really a partnership between two architects (who also happen to be married to each other). One of us comes up with the recipes, does the photography, and writes the blog posts – the other one creates all of the original artwork and offers opinions on the cocktail recipes. Being architects, we sometimes let our design-sense get the better of us – meaning we have been known to purchase a bottle of booze because we like the design of the bottle.  Occasionally this backfires, but rest assured (with some creative mixology or a bit of barrel-aging) we have always been able to make use of the contents of those impulse-buy bottles. Right now, two of the most attractive bottles in our liquor cabinet contain Italian spirits – Malfy Gin Con Limone and Italicus . Italy has always been a design trendsetter, so it’s not surprising that these bottles stand out (they ev
Read more

Amalfi Martini

Image
Darn! Why didn’t we buy those airline tickets to Italy when they were cheap? It would be so nice to be lounging in a beautiful Italian seaside town right now.  The Amalfi region, on Italy's west coast, is known for it's production of lemon liqueur and fine writing and art paper - sounds like the perfect place for us! Oh well, maybe it would be better to be there during the off season. Italy is probably packed with American tourists right now. Let's  just pull out the watercolor paints and the cocktail shaker and bring a bit of la dolce vita  to our patio. Our Amalfi Martini (naturally) features limoncello. It's a fairly low-alcohol liqueur, so we boost the proof of this cocktail by adding our vodka of choice - District Made Vodka by One Eight Distilling. If you are using a vodka that doesn't have much flavor on it's own (which, honestly, is most vodka) you may want to add a couple dashes of citrus bitters to this recipe. This just wouldn't be an Ita
Read more

Cherry Capital Old Fashioned

Image
Cherry Capital Old Fashioned - original watercolor painting by The Cocktail Artist If you've read some of our previous posts (such as the Up North Raspberry and Rye or the Grand Mariner Cocktail) you know that we're fans of the bourbon and rye produced by The Traverse City Whiskey Co . Traverse City, Michigan is known as the "Cherry Capital" for being the area with the largest production of tart cherries in the United States. In Traverse City, you will find wonderful freshwater beaches, lots of summer tourists, and (of course) cherries! You can attend the Cherry Festival in July, go to the Cherryland Mall, and fly into Cherry Capital airport. So the folks at Traverse City Whiskey (naturally) produce an American Cherry Edition of their bourbon. Here in the Nation's Capital we were lucky enough to find this cherry bourbon at our local liquor store. It's a nice bourbon for sipping neat, but during #OldFashionedOctober we also tried it in an Old Fashioned and
Read more

The Chesapeake Bay Cocktail

Image
The Chesapeake Bay is well known for it's seafood - particularly crabs. It's a summer ritual in Maryland to enjoy a bucket of steamed Chesapeake Bay crabs  caked  with Old Bay Seasoning. Old Bay has been produced in Maryland by McCormick & Company since 1939. It's a spice blend with a very distinct flavor - which includes paprika, pepper and celery salt. Old Bay no longer seems limited to crabs and it has been showing up in some new and interesting places, in mayonnaise, beer, and in chocolate, among others.  We decided to get on board this Old Bay renaissance and give it a try in a cocktail, and we were pretty pleased with the results. Our Chesapeake Bay cocktail uses rye whiskey and aquavit. We have tried it with several ryes, and particularly like how Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye works with the other ingredients. This rye is produced in Virginia, not that far from the Chesapeake, so in addition to giving the cocktail the right flavor, it seems like a good
Read more