Spring Cocktail Recipe: Rhubarb Basil Cocktail

With warmer weather inching its way into New York, I felt inspired to make a fresh spring cocktail. Well, I did some experimenting, and while my first inclination was to use strawberries, I found piles of rhubarb at the farmers market — and came up instead with this lovely pink concoction.

Rhubarb definitely needs to be sweetened up from its natural state, especially for a warm-weather cocktail, so I cooked it down with some sugar and made a purée.

I cut some basil into ribbons, bruised it a bit with the back of a spoon, and stirred in the rhubarb, liquor, and club soda. In the name of, ahem, thorough research, I tasted two versions — one with gin, one with vodka — and determined that the complexity of rhubarb and the herbal flavor of the basil needed a less flavorful alcohol. Vodka it was.

With its preppy palette of blushing pink and grassy green leaves, I have to say that this is one of the prettiest cocktails I’ve had in a while.

Elizabeth certainly knows how to ring in spring. Tart rhubarb and fresh basil blended into a refreshing cocktail — I’m more than happy to follow her lead.

It’s still a little early for rhubarb here in New York, so the few stalks I found at my local market didn’t quite have the tart, punchy zing I’ve come to expect from rhubarb. That should all change in a few weeks, though. But even so, this cocktail is light and refreshing. It’s the exact kind of drink I crave this time of year, and what I want to be sipping on hot summer afternoons.

What I really love about this pretty cocktail is that it’s equally wonderful served as is, or made as a non-alcoholic spritzer.

– Kelli, April 2015