Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Black Shirley!

An NA cocktail for grownups.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. It’s well past time for me to talk about non-alcoholic drinks. Without alcohol in a glass to pick up and bind flavors, it’s difficult to make a balanced cocktail that adults will enjoy. I worked hard and finally settled on this rather sarcastic, deeply flavorful take on my least favorite cocktail. I call it a Black Shirley. Here’s the recipe:

Black Shirley

2 oz POM 100% pomegranate juice

2 oz fresh lime juice

1 oz honey syrup

1 oz pomegranate molasses

1 dropperful (1/8 oz) sea salt saline

2 dashes Angostura bitters (optional)

Topo Chico sparkling water

Maraschino cherries

Shake all ingredients but the sparkling water. Pour over crushed ice into a rocks glass. Gently pour the sparkling water into the glass. Garnish with maraschino cherries.

I loathe Shirley Temples. They’re the standard “virgin” cocktail in most bars, and they don’t amount to much more than a glass of red syrup and a landing pad for maraschino cherries. You think a biker gang can trash a dive bar on Friday night? Try five bored, sugared-up kids at a Sunday afternoon country club bar.

What really bugs me about a Shirley Temple is how condescending it is. “Real” drinks are complex, sophisticated, maybe even pretty. The Shirley Temple is syrup in a glass. It sends a message: If you aren’t drinking alcohol, you don’t deserve a seat at the grownups’ table. It’s a nasty way to treat the designated driver at a big table, and it’s an infuriating response to someone who avoids it for any number of personal reasons.

The industry’s gotten better at this. Companies like Ritual are making sophisticated analogs to spirits for cocktails, and high-end bars will compose quality NA drinks for the menu. But the majority of watering holes are still stuck in a rut when it comes to non-alcoholic options. We can do better.

I decided to express my annoyance with the Shirley Temple in this cocktail. We’re leaning hard into the sour pomegranate that’s supposed to be the heart of grenadine, swapping the corn syrup for honey, and adding bitterness, acidity, and saltiness. A small amount of sparkling water tamps down some of the unruly flavors and makes the drink look dangerous. The final result is bittersweet, complex, and definitely grown up. Don’t forget the cherries on a spike — they send a message.

Let’s talk ingredients:

I can take cocktail pictures in my backyard again! Yay! Matthew Hooper  

POM Pomegranate juice: Don’t get me wound up over Rose’s Grenadine. Grenadine is supposed to be pomegranate-flavored. Rose’s is red food coloring and corn syrup. Homemade grenadine is sour, floral, and flavorful — everything Rose’s isn’t. POM is branching out and making pomegranate-cherry and other flavors; only use “pure” pomegranate juice for this drink. Sour cherry juice or all-natural cranberry juice would also be great starting points.

Fresh lime juice: We want a ton of acid in this glass to cut through the sweetness. Only use real limes. Repeat after me — plastic bottles give you plastic juice.

Honey syrup: Honey supports fruit flavors wonderfully. It’s also less sweet than white sugar, which is useful in this glass. Honey syrup is 1: 1 honey to water, heated until the honey dissolves. If you don’t dilute the honey, it’s difficult to pour or shake in a cocktail.

Pomegranate molasses: Middle Eastern and Asian ingredients are killer secret weapons for NA cocktails. Pomegranate molasses has bitter blackstrap notes, but it’s also very fruit-forward. Perfect in this drink, and a useful ingredient in barbecue sauce down the road.

Saline: I keep an eyedropper of dissolved sea salt behind the bar. It’s a terrific tool to enhance flavors, especially in sweet drinks. I only use a drop or two in drinks that aren’t “salty”; this glass deserves a whole dropperful, roughly ⅛ oz. The higher the salinity of your saline, the better. I go with a 1: 1 ratio.

Angostura bitters: If you absolutely must avoid a single drop of alcohol in your beverage, skip this ingredient. We’re only adding two drops, but bitters are 100 proof. The herbal notes are very welcome, but a few dashes of orange blossom water would be just fine.

Topo Chico sparkling water: Use a good sparkling water if you can, but seltzer from your SodaStream is acceptable. Don’t put a lot of soda in here; just an inch or two works. Seltzer mutes flavors like nobody’s business.

Garnish: The drink needs a little dilution. Crushed ice, as opposed to ice cubes, will cool and mellow the drink quicker. Spike as many maraschino cherries as you like (which could be none at all).

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