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Wineberry Shirley Temple
I grew up sipping on sickly sweet Shirley Temples that stained the tongue the shade of Red Lake #40. Every time the adults busted out their exclusive 'adult-only beverages' my sister and I would fashion a little drink of our own, one that no adult would dare sip for fear of a perma-red ring forming around their lips. A splash of 7-Up, a swig of electric red grenadine, and as many maraschino cherries as our grubby fingers could fish out of the jar - this was the recipe for our ultimate kids-only drink.
This summer, as I longed for the days of my youth (minus the inevitable crash from the sugar-high) I dreamt of a Shirley Temple with a natural red hue that was bursting with the flavors of the wild. I schemed and plotted in anticipation of wineberry season, sure that July would bring the perfect replacement for the maraschino cherry. With the cherry replacement down, all I needed was a newfangled grenadine to splash over some seltzer water, but I struggled to find the right recipe.
I stumbled upon just the grenadine I sought in This is Camino, a cookbook about a seed-to-stem restaurant out in California. I had tried several grenadine recipes before but was unsatisfied with their high sugar levels and lack of flavor. This recipe, however, relied on reduced pomegranate juice to create a depth that you just can't get from red sugar water. The Word Nerd part of me was pleased as well - the name grenadine comes from the French word grenade, or pomegranate, which was the original base of the syrup.
Once I had the base recipe down I decided to swap out the conventional orange peel for some spiceberries, the fruit of Lindera benzoin. I often think of spiceberries as Orange-Plus or even Warm Spice-Plus. Spiceberries have notes of citrus, allspice, clove, and more, all packaged in one teeny tiny berry. I added just enough to give the grenadine a mysterious note, but not so much that it overpowered the pomegranate.
Once wineberry season rolled around, I gathered up some of the sticky-sweet fruits to figure out the best way to finish off my foraged Shirley Temple. The first attempt, lightly muddled wineberries, left me with a mouth full of seeds, cursing the fact that I had just used my last piece of floss. This led me to try juicing them. Despite their minute stature, the wineberry packs a hefty flavor punch, so even just pressing a small handful through a strainer yielded enough juice for a single Shirley Temple.
With that, my creation was complete! Sipping happily on my patio, it felt like I had done my best to transform my childhood nostalgia through the lens of the wild realities of my current life. I can only imagine how my summers would have been had I sipped on wineberry Shirley Temples as a child instead of a drink more suited for a hummingbird feeder.
Wineberry Shirley Temple Recipe
You can easily scale this recipe to serve a crowd.
- Makes: 1 small glass
- Active time: 5 minutes
Wineberry Shirley Temple Ingredients
- Small handful of wineberries (about 20 berries)
- 6 ounces unflavored sparkling water, chilled
- 2 teaspoons spicebush grenadine (recipe below)
- Wineberries for garnish
Wineberry Shirley Temple Instructions
- Extract the juice from the wineberries by mashing them with a spoon against a fine mesh sieve set over a bowl. Pour the juice into your serving glass. Discard the seeds (don't compost them!).
- Pour in the sparkling water and grenadine and give everything a good stir. Add some ice if you would like and garnish with a few wineberries!
Spicebush Grenadine Recipe
A tart and deeply flavored grenadine syrup with a hint of the wild. Be sure to use 100% pomegranate juice for the best flavor. This grenadine is also great in alcoholic drinks such as Tequila Sunrises or Hurricanes! The recipe is adapted from This is Camino.
- Makes: 1 ½ cups grenadine
- Active time: 5 minutes
- Inactive time: 30 minutes
Spicebush Grenadine Ingredients
- 2 cups pomegranate juice
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 10 spicebush berries, crushed (fresh or frozen)
Spicebush Grenadine Instructions
- Bring the pomegranate juice to a boil in a small saucepan, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, or until the liquid is reduced to 1 cup. If you accidentally reduce it too far, just add enough hot water to bring the total volume back up to 1 cup.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir the sugar, lemon juice, and spiceberries until the sugar is completely dissolved.
- Steep for 10 minutes then strain out the spiceberries. Pour into a clean bottle and store in the fridge where it should last for a few weeks.
Spicebush Grenadine Recipe Notes & Substitutions
For juicing larger quantities of wineberries, you can use a potato ricer lined with cheesecloth, or a food mill.
You can replace the spiceberries with half of the peel from a medium-sized orange.
"Pomegranate Love Grenade" illustration courtesy of Studio Gooz
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