A Bitter Twist for Sparkling Water
I remember it as if it were yesterday, a sweet, bold, tangy, lemony liquid revelation that I drank straight from the bottle. It was sometime in 1995, and I was visiting a friend in Birmingham when Hoopers Hooch was being launched to the world. Until then, I'd struggled to engage with the drinks category; beer was too bitter, spirits too strong, and wine too fancy for the students union! Looking back, I think I have to credit the then owned Bass brand for my interest in drinks. It seemed to kick start a period of creativity and innovation in the drinks industry, and suddenly, there were a range of flavoured, fizzy alcoholic beverages, known as RTDs (ready to drink), that I was interested in drinking. Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer, and what was to become my favourite Ginzing, a mixture of Gordon’s gin with herb extracts and citrus.
My interest in the sweet alcoholic soda didn't last. Over time, as my palate evolved, I started looking for drier drinks, I began to enjoy bitterness. Black coffee, IPA, gin with tonic and red wine found a place in my drinking repertoir.
The appreciation of bitterness is not the same for all tasters. Our tolerance for the five tastes, sweet, sour, savoury, salty, and bitter, comes down to the number of taste buds we have. The taste buds on our tongues contain cells referred to as taste receptors that are responsible for perceiving taste. Tasters with a higher number of taste buds are likely to be less tolerant to certain tastes, particularly bitterness. These “supertasters” typically find that bitter food and drinks have a sharp and unpleasant effect on the palate. It’s a relatively simple test to determine whether you’re a supertaster, I suspect, given my love of all things bitter, that I fall into the category of an “average taster”.
Bitterness is an important component in wine and cocktails. It adds balance, complexity, vivacity and freshness, offering the taster a bracing and stimulating taste experience. Bitterness in drinks comes mainly from plant-derived polyphenols, and flavonoids. Tannins in grape skins, catechin in tea, caffeine in coffee, naringin in orange peel all offer bitterness.
The most bitter of cocktails, the Negroni, owes its signature taste to Amaro, specifically Campari. Amaros are made by macerating plants, fruits, roots and barks in neutral spirit and are typically brightly coloured to reflect their bitter origins. The boiling points of the compounds responsible for bitterness are too high to be extracted by distillation and are left behind in the still. The exact recipes are complex and a closely guarded secret but bitter oranges, quinine, and rhubarb, are known to be amongst the ingredients. Similarly colour cannot be distilled so colouring is also added post-distillation. Amaro are favoured for their ability to sharpen the palate and aid digestion and are therefore often consumed as aperitifs and digestifs and particularly noted for their importance in Italian drinking culture.
Bitterness is usually balanced in drinks with sweetness. In coffee and tea, milk and sugar provide the sweetness. Ask a supertaster how they take their coffee, it’ll probably be with milk and sugar. Amaro are sweetened to varying degrees, Aperol is notably sweeter than Campari, accounting for its wider appeal. Tonic water is sweetened to balance the bitter quinine. In cocktails, sweetness can be added using vermouth or liqueurs eg sweet vermouth in the Negroni or triple sec in the Sidecar. Sweet malted barley off-sets the bitterness of hops in beer. Bitterness can also be balanced using salt, such as the salt rim on the Margarita glass or the olive in a martini. In wine the bitterness from tannin is achieved in the vineyard, by ensuring the grapes are picked ripe and with concentrated fruit flavours. Tannins in wine polymerise and become less bitter given time in bottle. Flavour complexity and alcohol also contribute to balancing bitterness as seen by the addition of gin to tonic water. Possibly the easiest way of balancing bitterness is by dilution, this technique is used to enormous success in the Spritz, where sparkling wine eg Prosecco and soda water are used to lengthen and dilute.
Knowing my interest in drinks, a friend recently got in touch to canvas my thoughts on a brand of alcoholic soda water he was working on. In the US, these RTDs are often referred to as hard seltzers. Hard seltzers are typically spirit-based or malt-based and fruit-flavoured soda waters resulting in a low alcohol and low calorie beverage. Whilst I’ve not really engaged with the hard seltzer category since their introduction to the UK in 2020, when my friend explained they were bitter-flavoured and wine-based, I was intrigued.
Named to celebrate the Italian fondness for bitterness and New York’s vibrant drinks scene, Mulberry Street New York Seltzers are a blend of Italian white wine, citrus fruit and soda water. Their wine-base gives them a peach and apricot core with a lightly floral note. Bergamot, a small, green-coloured bitter citrus adds a herbal fragrance, sharpness, and pithy complexity to the Sicilian Lemon’s tangy core. The orange-coloured fruit Chinotto, known for being an ingredient in Campari’s secret recipe, adds a bitter spiciness to the softness of the Sicilian Orange. Served in a highball glass over ice, they add a delicate fragrance and bitter twist to sparkling water.
But it was the cocktail recipes on their website that caught my eye. By adding a can of Mulberry Street Sicilian Orange, and omitting the vermouth, the Starry Negroni, dials down the bitterness of the classic Negroni, pushing it closer to a Campari Soda and offering a soft, fruity balance. It got me thinking, perhaps this would be a more appealing option for supertasters who want to explore the flavour complexity and stimulating experience of Campari and other Amaros or bitter-led drinks but want to avoid the pain!
So I opened the Claire Drinks test bar and started experimenting!
Tinkering with the classic spritz formula, 1 part soda water, 2 parts amaro or liqueur and 3 parts sparkling wine, I came up with the Limonata Spritz, a riff on the Gallicus, a spritz centred on Italicus, a floral- and herb-based liqueur, and the Limoncello or Amalfi Spritz.
Clap a couple of lemon balm sprigs between your palms to release the aromatic essential oils, and drop them into a wine glass filled with ice. Add 60 mls of chilled Limoncello and top with 120 mls of Mulberry Street Sicilian Lemon, using the seltzer to replace the soda and sparkling wine. Garnish with whatever herbs and citrus you have to hand. Lemon balm and borage have done particularly well in my herb garden this summer and lime wedges added a nice contrast of colour. The delicate bitterness of the Bergamot sets off the sweetness of the Limoncello resulting in a sophisticated and elegantly refreshing spritz.
Might this work in a Hugo I thought? I wasn’t convinced, the St Germain elderflower liqueur was very sweet and there was insufficient acidity in the seltzer to balance it. Maybe adding some lemon juice or lime juice would have helped. Which is exactly where I went next.
Limonata Spritz
Lemon Balm Gin Smash
For the Lemon Balm Gin Smash, muddle 10 lemon balm leaves with half a lemon cut into three wedges in the base of your cocktail shaker. Add 20 ml honey syrup, 50 ml gin and 50 ml Mulberry Street Sicilian Lemon and shake. Serve in a coupe with a sprig of thyme. Muddling the citrus wedges helped lend an extra bitter note as the essential oils and bitter characters were released from the skin and the pith. The fizz of the seltzer give an attractive foamy texture.
The Manhattan gets its bitterness from the vermouth. So I wondered whether it might worked lengthened with the Sicilian Orange. My first attempt didn’t work. The rye whiskey was too intense and spicy detracting from the delicate orange. But, when I used a Scotch Whisky, it worked perfectly. Glenmorangie is noted for using tall stills that produce a light, smooth, fruity Scotch which settled in nicely with the seltzer.
Stir 50 mls Glenmorangie Aged 10 Years 25 ml Sweet Vermouth, and 2 dashes of orange bitters with ice in a wine glass. Top with half a can of Mulberry Street Sicilian Orange. Garnish with a dried orange slice. Perfect as the vibrancy and zest of summer gives way to the mellow, earthy scents of autumn. Autumn in New York seemed an apt name, celebrating the drink’s NY roots and giving a wee nod to the glorious (particularly Billie Holiday’s version) jazz standard.
La Nobildonna was inspired by my love of Aperol. Whilst still bitter it is sweet and lower in alcohol than Campari. I’ve based my recipe on the Contessa, or Aperol Negroni. Stir 25 ml Aperol, 25 ml dry Vermouth and 25 ml gin with 2 dashes of orange bitters. Strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice. Top with half a can of Mulberry Street Sicilian Orange. Garnish with orange, a fresh wedge, dried slice or piece of peel.
Autumn in New York
La Nobildonna
My palate has changed considerably from the sweet and fizzy indulgences of my 20s to the more pungent and sharp bitterness of cocktails like the Negroni, that I now prefer. Bitterness has become a key player in my enjoyment of drinks adding depth, balance, and vitality to my taste world.
The diversity in human DNA means that my journey from sweet to bitter might not be the same as yours but an understanding of how bitterness can be balanced with sweetness, salt, and dilution and a willingness to explore can open doors to exciting new experiences for all.
I love that the creativity and innovation that got me started on my drinks journey thirty years ago is still evident, and the world of drinks continues to evolve, Mulberry Street New York Seltzers are evidence of this.
Whether you're a supertaster, an average taster or non-taster, the world of drinks has something bitter and beautiful waiting for you.
