Ultimate Guide to Blood Orange Cocktails

As promised, here are the best cocktails you can mix up with blood orange eau de vies! Of course, a Blood Orange & Tonic is a great, refreshing highball. However, I also took a look at (modern) classic cocktails and added a bit of blood orange eau de vie to them. On top of that, I matched the flavour profile of the cocktail to the different eau de vies, because of their quite big differences in taste.

Blood Orange & Tonic

OK, I said, I would write about other great drinks with blood orange eau de vies, besides the Blood Orange & Tonic. However, this is just the most basic and also an excellent way to enjoy this citrus spirit in a drink. On top of that, I want to show you two different ways of preparing them:

The classic way

First, Wilhelm Marx also produce their own tonic water, so it was just logical to mix up a gin tonic with their eau de vie distilled from fermented blood oranges. As you might expect, the drink was quite citrus forward. I enjoyed it very much and their tonic water works great with the spirit. The Marx Tonic is slightly sweeter than the basic Fever Tree Tonic Water, but not as sweet as your standard Schweppes. Nevertheless, I have to mention that all blood orange eau de vies also work fine in this highball.

 

 

 

Modern and unconventional

So, what is the other way of serving Blood Orange & Tonic? It is slightly more complex. You just have to freeze the tonic water in a large ice ball or big ice cube. Of course, you lose the carbonation, but you are rewarded with a blood orange eau de vie taste slowly diluted with tonic water flavours. I first encountered this method of serving a “B & T” in Bamberg at the Edelfrei Restaurant. There you can get a Faude Blood Orange eau de vie with a Fever Tree Tonic Water ice ball.

 

 

 

Blood Orange Daiquiri

Another rather obvious cocktail with blood orange eau de vies is a Blood Orange Daiquiri. Just add a little eau de vie to the classic recipe and basically you are finished. However, I wanted to turn the drink slightly red. Therefore, I added 1/4 oz of grenadine to the mix. If this is too much tampering with the original recipe  for you, you of course can also omit it. As the base spirit I chose the rather ester forward Veritas Rum, but in my opinion it works well with the orange flavour. Especially, when paired with the Satoshi Blood Orange eau de vie.

 

 

Blood Orange Margarita

Of course, when you think about a citrus enhanced Daiquiri it does not come as a surprise that the next step is a Blood Orange Margarita. In this case I chose a smooth, but yet fruity blanco tequila. Instead of grenadine, I added a slight reddish colour (I know that it is just an orange hue) with hibiscus syrup. For a blood orange eau de vie I chose the Engel Geist von der sizilianischen Bio-Blutorange.

 

 

Blood Orange Espresso Martini

The rather pronounced marzipan notes of some of the eau de vies distilled from fermented blood oranges gave me the idea of pairing them with coffee. The first cocktail that sprung to mind was the Espresso Martini. So, I used the Feller Blood Orange eau de vie. The resulting drink is made with a 100 % Arabica dark roast and some homemade cold drip coffee liqueur, which worked perfectly.

 

 

Naturally, the possibilities of adding citrus eau de vies to classic cocktails are endless. For example, it is also fun to add some to your Negroni. However, you have to be careful to balance the flavours so that the blood orange notes do not get lost in the final cocktail. So, do you have any blood orange cocktail suggestions? Let me know!

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product.