It’s time for another Mixology Monday event, and this month the booze-blogging community is led by the very talented Mark Holmes of Cardiff Cocktails (please spend some time in reading his other posts, as this fellow is one of the most clever professional you can find in the web). The theme chosen by Mark is “Witches Garden”, and as it often happens, it’s a topic that I love. I’ve always loved playing with herbs, I found that they can add many little nuances to a drink and they always give an exotic feeling to the cocktail.
For this MxMo I decided to use rosemary, which grows abundantly around my house, and a new homemade gentiane liqueur that I purchased few weeks ago.

Rosemary Glory

Ingredients:
1.5 oz. Bols Z.O. Genever
0.5 oz. Gentiane liqueur
1 oz. Peach and Rosemary Shrub
0.5 oz. Egg white
0.5 oz. Lemon juice
3 dashes of Underberg Bitters

Garnish:
Rosemary sprig

Prep:
Combine all the ingredients except the bitters in a shaker, shake without ice and then vigorously with ice. Strain over ice, add Underberg bitters and garnish with a rosemary sprig.

I’ve always wanted to try to make a shrub, but never really had a chance to make it, so I decided this was the perfect excuse to have a go at one. Making shrub is quite easy, and I followed the recipe posted by Micheal Dietsch on Serious Eats.
I decided to go for the cooking method, because I needed the rosemary to give out as much flavor as possible, and also time was an issue.
This peach and rosemary shrub turned out a beauty, providing a great herbal yet fruity backbone to the drink, complementing the bitterness of the gentiane liqueur. The genever always works great with herbs and I would recommend Underberg bitters to anyone who wants to try some strong herbal notes in their drink.
It is always fun to create sours, I found them great afternoon drinks, but it is even more fun to make them at home: this was my first MxMo drink concocted in my small house and it was an incredibly relaxing experience.
That’s all I’ve got for this one, I’d like to thank Mark for hosting and choosing such a cool theme and also all the MxMo participants for always coming up with amazing recipes. Let’s see if I’ll be able to try them all this time!!