I was standing at the farmer’s market waiting to check out when a woman asked the clerk, “what in season right now?” There are many things to be grateful about using locally grown ingredients, but being in tuned with seasonal produce is my favorite part. The clerk responded, “Mulberries!” and she said, “No, what’s in season in Arizona?”
It’s sometimes hard to wrap your head around something fresh growing in the valley when we’re already reaching 100-degree weather. But the farmer was right, Mulberries are certainly in season here in Arizona. For the last couple of seasons, we’ve tried to get our hands on some fruit to make a special batch of Mulberry Rose. The first time we made it, we even hand-picked the fruit of our friend’s tree.
Since then, we’ve been lucky enough to work with Holiday Farms who vend with us at the Phoenix Public Market. We wait patiently until his trees are perfectly ripe with Persian Mulberries. This variation of mulberry is similar to blackberry with a midnight purple hue. When fully ripe, the berry is long, tender, and juicy and farmers beware, the fruit is known to stain anything it touches.
When making this mixer, we wanted to extenuate the dark berry flavor by pairing it with subtle rose. With a little amount of pure cane sugar and a touch of citric acid, Mulberry Rose is a unique flavor that pairs perfectly with neutral spirits like vodka or tequila but we believe that Mulberry Rose will shine the brightest with a botanical forward gin like Bombay or Beefeater.
Because this season is short in Arizona, we only make a few batches of Mulberry Rose with the fruit that is available. The labels have limited information on the bottle so you’ll have to hunt in places like our blog to learn more. We spend as much time as we can building recipes with this flavor but they are just as limited as the mixer. We trust you’ll be creative when mixing but here’s a Mulberry Smash cocktail recipe we made with Frankly Orangic Vodka.
Savor every sip of this year’s mulberry season with Iconic’s Mulberry Rose Extra Small Batch Mixer. Bottles available online for an extremely short time!
MULBERRY SMASH
-
1oz Iconic Mulberry Rose
-
1/2oz lime juice
-
Fresh mulberries
In a shaker, muddle mulberries with lime juice.
Add whiskey and mulberry rose.
Shake with ice.
Strain into rocks glass with fresh ice and garnish.
