Fall Blush Floral Cocktail Adventure

The borage flowers were practically hitting us in the face when we opened the front door over the summer. The edible blue and pink flowers grew in my mom’s plant-your-own-cocktail Christmas present. They clearly liked the weather.

Instructions with the kit suggested freezing the flowers in ice cubes for a gin and elderflower liqueur cocktail. Guillaume became adept at making the sweet-celery-like drink, which called for muddling sizable borage leaves and throwing fresh flowers in at the end.

Before we could blink, summer was over and our planter got covered in snow. But we still had the flowery ice cubes and a bottle of Lillet Rosé in the fridge. I decided to experiment.

Lillet Rosé is a French apéritif that Martha Stewart Living featured in 2012 with a gin-based spring cocktail. I’ve made that a few times over the years, usually omitting the edible flowers since it was casual sipping on the porch. I’d pick up some nice ruby red grapefruit juice and prepare the cocktail with different gins for variety.

During the recent World Series, I came up with the Fall Blush cocktail using leftover Lillet Rosé, borage flower ice cubes, elderflower liqueur, and Q Drinks grapefruit. The bitingly tart grapefruit soda ended up being annoyingly essential.

I did try the cocktail with other grapefruit sodas and they were way too sweet, although a squeeze of fresh lemon juice helped slightly. If you can’t find the Q grapefruit, look for something with low sugar, plenty of pucker, and adjust your expectations accordingly.

When we got low on frozen borage flowers, I felt clever buying a variety pack of edible flowers from Whole Foods in the herb packet section. They looked so beautiful in ice. Yet, not all edible flowers belong in this cocktail. Borage flowers are sweet. The nasturtiums now filling our ice tray are intensely peppery and completely wrong for a Fall Blush. This was a lesson I learned the rush-to-the-sink way.

Frozen edible flowers aren’t required for this cocktail. However, the right ones do make for a fancy presentation, whether celebrating a holiday, a birthday, or just the fact that you found sweet blossoms in the winter.

Nasturtiums are not the right edible flower for this cocktail. Oops.

Fall Blush
Makes one cocktail

1½ oz. Lillet Rosé, chilled
3 ice cubes, ideally containing sweet edible flowers
½ oz. elderflower liqueur
Tart grapefruit soda, such as Q Drinks

Put the ice cubes in a stemless wine glass or rocks glass. Add the Lillet Rosé, elderflower liqueur, and top off with some of the grapefruit soda. Stir and serve.

Fall Blush cocktail preparations with the borage flower ice cubes.