Pimm's & Lemonade

Perhaps because it was the first mixed drink I ever tasted, or perhaps because I found it on my first, exciting trip abroad, but Pimm’s & Lemonade has always been my favorite cocktail*. I encountered it at a dinner party in Exeter, UK, while I was visiting my older sister at college. Served in a large pitcher and adorned like punch with floating slices of lemon, small cubes of cucumber, and edible purple and yellow flowers, I was instantly attracted. Although I was unaware it contained alcohol until tasting it, my uneducated palate still found joy in the layers of flavor found in it. It was only after returning home and, years later, reaching the age of legal consumption in the US, that I figured out what it was that I had tasted, that lovely, congenial drink I will forever associate with proper accents and small English towns.

             Simple and low-alcohol for a cocktail, but nonetheless absolutely delicious and very flexible to personal taste, Pimm’s & Lemonade goes something like this: 1 part Pimm’s No. 1, two parts lemonade (this MUST be good lemonade. Most sources recommend you make your own, but I used Newman’s Own from a carton, which is almost as good), sliced cucumbers and fruit, and mint. In full summer style, I make it in large canning jars and let slices of cucumber, green apple, lemon, lime, and orange, along with crushed mint, mull in the mix for a day or two before consuming: this makes the finished cocktail not only taste like the perfect iced tea-lemonade, but infuses it with delectably juicy cucumber and mint flavors. (If you care for licorice, add a sprig of tarragon.) For those unfamiliar with Pimm’s, it is a uniquely flavored liqueur produced in Great Britain: No. 1, the most commonly used variety, is Gin-based and flavored with a secret combination of herbs that makes it smell and taste very much like a dark herbal tea. The traditional Pimm’s cocktail, as stated by the back label on the bottle itself, is a tall glass of ice and ginger ale, topped with an ounce and a half of Pimm’s and a slice of lemon.  I tried this once and found it much inferior to the Pimm’s & Lemonade, which bursts with flavor and is surprisingly quenching, while not being overly sweet like a soda. The longer the fruit is left to mull in the cocktail, the stronger the flavors come out- the jar that got left in my fridge for a week came out tasting more like mint-cucumber juice than anything else (not a bad result, in my opinion). I highly recommend the freshest cucumbers you can find, if not from the back yard then at least from the farmer’s market. This is one drink that lends itself to its own seasonality: At the peak of summer, when all the ingredients needed are at their best, is invariably when I find myself most craving this cool, quenching cocktail.

*Closely followed by the Polar Bear, another beverage I discovered while abroad.