St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

Rating: 21/23 The bottle is incredibly unique. The ornate shape and colors combined with the odd contents make me think that someone unearthing this in 50 years would grimace and say "they had terrible tastes back in the day." N: Floral, fruity, sweet, and slightly tart. No alcohol, but the sweetness isn't sickly either. I get lychee and a bit of lemon, but I know there's more there. It's enticing and refreshing, and it draws me in. I could nose this for ages. There's honey in there as well - how did I miss that at first? I'm sure that this smells very much like elderflower, but I'm not sure what elderflower actually smells like. It's a fantastic nose. P: Tart, but sweet. Floral (some rose water, but not entirely), honey, the faintest vanilla, lychee, lemon. Nothing artificial and no sense that sugar was just dumped into this. There's maybe some nuttiness like toasted almond mixed with walnut, but not much. A bit of melon too and perhaps a tiny bit of grape jelly. No alcohol either. It's fantastically refreshing and incredibly complex. Viscous and sugary, but not as much as I remembered. F: The floral and fruity flavors linger for ages with the tartness grounding everything so that it isn't sickly sweet. The palate is better, but this is a finish that I could savor for ages. It's terrific. So, this is super viscous and sweet. It's kind of too much to drink on its own, but it goes great with some sparkling water. Add a little gin in there and you've got yourself a tasty and refreshing summer cocktail. Liqueurs can be hard to rate because I need to assess them both in terms of mixing and neat, whereas for most spirits I just rate them neat. In this case, neat is simultaneously out the window, but also sort of reduces to the mixed case. What do I mean by this? I mean that this isn't like many liqueurs that are used to add a flourish or fill out well-established cocktails (e.g. how orange liqueur fills out a margarita, but is not a dominant flavor). In this case, the liqueur is best playing a dominant role with a light spirit pairing with it and increasing its proof. I'm sure that there are some fruity cocktails that this enhances, but I don't have a whole canonical list in front of me, so from experimentation I've found that this works with variations on soda and light spirits. Yeah, I've seen some recipes for things like punches with lots of fruit juice and a little bit of St. Germain, but it's fantastic enough in the cocktails I've tried that I don't feel a need to try all of those to rate it. So the complexity, balance, and quality of the flavors are all top notch. This is an awesome liqueur, particularly now that I've figured out what to do with it. mixed into a toned-down state so that it is sippable without being overwhelming (e..g mixed with water), this is a big step up over the likes of Grand Marnier and Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao. It's hard to find other liqueurs to compare with this. Therefore, I'm sort of arbitrarily slotting this into the 21 bucket. Amazing! It could be as low as a 19, but I can't see it going below that. Really, I think it's at least a 20. I can imagine a 22 as well, but when I sip it I think "this is amazing, but I'd get sick of it if I tried to sip it all day", so it isn't a 23.

18: Elderflower liqueur seems oddly specific, but it pairs well with orange liqueur (e.g. Cointreau) and pretty much any column-distilled spirit (bourbon being the obvious exception) or Blanco tequila. On its own, St. Germain is not generally sippable, but the character of its flavor is clear. Mixed with other liquors, it has a delightfully fruity depth that makes any cocktail refreshing and summery.

The nose on this was completely unexpected: earthy, dirty, garden, and then evolves into grapefruit rind. There are flowers in here, you say? Ah. the taste is where they are. Ripe peach and clementine, very sweet but not as cloying as it could be, surrounding a floral arrangement in a vase. Daffodils, rose, and honeysuckle come to mind, but since I've never tasted an elderflower, it's probably just that... In any case, this is Mother's Day brunch in a glass!