Welcome To Wonkette's Juneteenth Happy Hour, With The Watermelon Mule!

Something red, cool, and refreshing for the newest American holiday.

It’s more pink in person, I promise.

Happy Juneteenth, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I was asked about a red drink for the holiday early last weekend, but I was too exhausted to find a recipe. After a Father’s Day off and a few glasses of rum, I’m finding my groove again. Let’s enjoy a Watermelon Mule for the holiday and talk a bit about the “red drink” tradition. Here’s the recipe:

Watermelon Mule

2 oz Tito’s Vodka

4 oz Simply Watermelon juice cocktail

½ oz lime juice

Barritt’s Bermuda Ginger Beer

Add the vodka, lime juice, watermelon, and ginger beer to an iced pint glass, in that order. Stir gently with a straw and serve.

We can date the tradition of red drinks for Juneteenth — as you know, the commemoration of the time in 1865 when the country’s last enslaved people, in Texas, were finally told they’d been emancipated, only two years late — to at least 1933, when the Dallas Morning Star reported that “watermelon, barbecue and red lemonade will be consumed in quantity” during the holiday. It’s been suggested that hibiscus syrup was part of the “red lemonade” reported by the Morning Star. I’ve tasted iced hibiscus tea in the South, and it is truly delicious. Hibiscus is a bit tough to acquire in Ohio, however, and I’m short on time. Maybe next year.

Instead of focusing on the classic “red lemonade” this Juneteenth, I decided to craft a cocktail that easily scales up for a crowd. Above all else, Juneteenth is a community holiday. A fiddly craft cocktail that only makes a single drink wouldn’t quite fit the bill. This watermelon mule is extremely easy to make, can be churned out by the bucketful, and cools off a hot day wonderfully. Far too many “red drinks” focus on red soda or artificial punch. That can get you a lot of very red drinks quickly, but I draw the line at serving anything blatantly artificial to guests.

The cocktail is a simple variation on the Moscow Mule, an all-American cocktail that has nothing to do with Russia. A Vegas bartender found himself with an excess of vodka and ginger beer in his back storeroom. His girlfriend was a copper merchant. Necessity combined all these ingredients into a bar classic. Lots of bars will toss another fruit juice into the classic mule to make a unique cocktail; it’s almost as versatile as a margarita in that regard. At the county club, we serve a pomegranate mule; I’ve seen strawberry and blueberry mules in my time as well. The watermelon in this drink provides the red color we need and ties back to that Dallas picnic in 1933.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. My daughter helped this cocktail vanish mysteriously after this photo was taken.

Tito’s Vodka: Use your favorite vodka. Tito’s is ridiculously popular with the country club set, so I use it more than anything else. If you can get your hands on Loft & Bear vodka out of Los Angeles, by all means use their product. This minority-owned distillery puts out some stellar vodka well worth your time. If you’d prefer a non-alcoholic cocktail, please skip this; the cocktail won’t suffer in taste with the absence of booze.

Simply Watermelon juice cocktail: “Juice Cocktail” means there’s a smorgasbord of juices, predominantly watermelon, in this bottle. Cherry and lemon are also present, presumably for color and tartness. Juicing a whole watermelon for this cocktail would be a messy project, but there are worse ways to spend a hot summer day. I suspect it wouldn’t make a drink as red as this bottled juice provides.

Barritts Ginger Beer: This is a fairly mild ginger beer; if you want something stronger, I’d recommend Reed’s Ginger Beer. Reed’s is bottled in Connecticut, but the Jamaican recipe provides a real kick. Ginger beer is a uniquely American beverage, dating back to the 18th century, and has its place in a very American cocktail. The spice offsets the sweet watermelon wonderfully in this glass, making for a uniquely refreshing drink.

Lime Juice: Always fresh. Plastic limes provide plastic juice.

We aren’t linking to Amazon anymore, because fuck that coward Bezos with a rusty bar spoon. Go drink with your friends instead. This is a holiday meant to be enjoyed together.

You can find me on Bluesky at @samuraigrog!

OPEN THREAD! DRINK!