Happy Hour Tuesday: Italian Fizz

Happy Hour Tuesday!

Today is la festa del papa‘ – Father’s Day- in Italy, as it falls on the same day of Saint Joseph’s Day. In consideration of such great celebration Rometti selected a drink made with ingredients such as Rye whiskey, port and, of course, limoncello: Italian Fizz.

Aged for a minimum of two years in charred, new oak barrels, Rye whiskey is distilled from at least 51% rye (a type of grass similar to barley and wheat). Dry, peppery and with notes of walnut, rye whiskey marries well with Tawny Port, a nutty, woody and dry dessert-wine made with grapes from Portugal fortified in grape neutral spirit aged for 10 years or more in porous wooden casks. The cozy, mellow taste of the two dry ingredients harmonically contrasts with awakening, bittersweet flavor of Rometti Limoncello.

Whether or not you are celebrating paternal bonds today, Italian Fizz is a modern drink to enjoy with your Father any time of the year!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 ounces Rittenhouse Rye
1/2 ounce Taylor-Fladgate 10 year old Tawny Port
3/4 ounces fresh lemon juice
3/4 Rometti Limoncello
the white of one egg (optional)
Club soda
Ice

Combine ingredients but ice and soda in a shaker and shake well. Add ice and shake again for 10 more seconds, then strain into a highball glass with 2 ice cubes. Add chilled club soda and stir gently.

~Enjoy!

Image from http://www.foodrepublic.com, Bryan Quinn

Happy Hour Tuesday: Champagne Lemon Cocktail

Happy Hour Tuesday!

with our displeasure, Christmas holidays have officially left us. It’s been fun to hang out for a little longer with our friends and family while enjoying some traditional cuisine. And now, all we have left of those cheering and cozy days spent cuddling up around a fireplace are a few more pounds to carry around. As reality hits back, it’s time to put away the comfy snowflakes sweaters we very much loved throughout the season and take out of the closets our work out clothes!
To start the new year with a sparkling drink that won’t ruin all of our work out efforts yet it will flavorfully give us an excuse to keep cheering with our beloved ones, we selected a simplistic, bubbly Champagne Limoncello Cocktail. Champagne unlike other alcoholic beverages has less sugar intake, furthermore Brut champagne – which is dry thus has an even lower sugar content- only has about 65 calories per pour (about 4 oz). Limoncello although syrupy, if added in the right amount will be enough to enrich the drink with its citrusy flavor without “enriching” it too much in calories. Because of this, after a great work out session, you can still meet up with friends and raise your glass without feeling guilty! Enjoy!

Ingredients (serves 8):
8 (3 x 1/2-inch) lemon rind strips
8 tablespoons Rometti Limoncello
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 (750-milliliter) bottle brut Champagne, chilled

Roll up the lemon rind strips and place each one of them in 8 champagne flutes. Add 1 tbsp Rometti Limoncello and 1/2 tbsp of lemon juice per glass. Pour in Brut Champagne and serve. This drink only has about 105 calories!

~Enjoy!

Recipe from http://playing2lose.wordpress.com
Photo credits: Mark Thomas

Happy Hour Tuesday: Rometti Sidecar

Happy Hour Tuesday!

There is a drink that talks about the 1920s, about an effervescent Parisian life that after World War I, started to transform into a modern, emancipated and more enjoyable lifestyle especially for the middle class, who for the first time was finally able to have fun and gather in places such as Music-halls, circuses and operettas as much as the aristocrats. Although the War with the lost of the beloved ones had a deep moral impact on the French, becoming in contact with different cultures helped the French society to open their mind and embrace a great variety of lifestyles.

It is in the middle of this social and cultural revolution that in Paris, at the Ritz Hotel (where Ritz is often associated to the term ritzy, “sumptuous, luxurious”), a drink called Sidecar in honor of an American Captain who used to ride a motorcycle with sidecar seems to have originated.

There are other theories that link the origin of this drink to the Buck’s Club in London, what is sure is that it appears for the first time in 1922 Harry MacElhone’s Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails and later on in 1948 David A. Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. In this last work the author mentions the American Captain, although it refers to the Harry’s Bar in Paris rather than to the Hotel Ritz.

Whatever the trusty is, Sidecar eventually became incredibly popular in England and France. It appears to be usually made in Paris with  equal parts of Cognac, Cointreau and Lemon Juice, while in England Cognac is used in two parts, Cointreau and Lemon in one. We at Rometti decided to give it a try and add a splash of Rometti Limocello instead of lemon juice, and lemon zest to top it off.

Every sip of Rometti Sidecar enlightens us with a taste of fanciness and joy accompanied by the glory of a hero of another time and place. And if you close your eyes, you might still hear the sound of the American Captain’s motorcycle cruising down the avenue.

Ingredients: 

1/3 oz Cognac 

1/3 oz Cointreau

1/3 oz Rometti Limoncello

Lemon Zest to garnish

In a shaker filled with ice combine Cognac, Cointreau, Lemon Juice and Rometti Limoncello. Shake well and pour into a martini cocktail, garnish with lemon zest or lemon peel.

~Enjoy!

Image from http://www.mylusciouslife.com

Happy Hour Tuesday Special Drink: Ruby Tuesday

Happy Hour Tuesday!

This week we’re doubling up: just for this week, we are having a second recipe that screams SUMMER.  Made with seasonal fruit, it’s the perfect drink for this playful and bubbling season: ladies and gentlemen, here is Ruby Tuesday!

Ruby Tuesday is made with cherries, that it is suitable only during this time of the year when cherries are available. The name has been inspired by a Rolling Stones song, and just like the rock band it is a bold drink appreciated by both men and women.

It’s narrated that Ruby Tuesday was made on a Tuesday while listening to the homonymous song by Rolling Stones. This involuntarily soon-to-be-popular drink is made with rye whiskey, Benedictine, simple syrup, lemon juice and muddled cherries or puree cherries. We are also going to add just a splash or Rometti Limoncello to increase the citrusy flavor of the lemon juice while keeping all of its sweetness.

Ingredients:
1 ½ oz. rye whiskey
1 oz. Bénédictine
5 ripe black cherries
3/4 oz. splashes of Rometti Limoncello
Ice cubes
Tools: muddler, shaker, strainer
Glass: cocktail
Garnish: lemon twist

In the shaker base muddle the cherries. Add remaining ingredients and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled glass and garnish.

~Enjoy!

Happy Hour Tuesday: Latin Lover

Whether you are married, engaged, in a relationship, or even single, this week there is nothing you can do to avoid this crazy little thing called love! It’s Valentine’s day week people, and we at Rometti are ready to celebrate. If you’re already taken this week’s cocktail could be like a cherry on top, a sparkly detail pre-dinner to share with your significant other, and if you’re still looking for that one person that will awaken the butterfly in your stomach don’t miss on such a delicacy to the palate, just call up on your friends, take chances and cheer to life.

The drink we selected this week is called Latin Lover. The original recipe does not include limoncello, however we thought it would work extremely well with the lemon and pineapple juice, in a combination of sweetness and citrusy which balances the pungent, earthy agave aroma of good tequila. Another ingredient of this drink is Cachaca, a Brazilian liquor obtained from fermenting sugarcane juice. Cachaca contributes to the sweetness of the cocktail, with its rum-similar taste, yet when combined with limoncello it enhances the strong, warm, zesty flavor. Cacacha differs from rum though because it is not made from molasses but from distilled sugarcane, which is why back in the day it was considered the poor people’s rum.

Latin Lover is very simple to prepare, and if presented nicely, garnished with a cocktail cherry, will bring a smile on your lover’s face.

Ingredients:
3/4 oz Tequila
3/4 oz Cachaca
3/4 oz Rometti Limoncello
1/4 oz Lemon Juice
3/4 oz Lime Juice
2 oz Pineapple Juice

Fill half of a cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Pour in tequila, cachaca, Rometti Limoncello, lemon juice, lime juice and pineapple juice. Shake vigorously. Serve into a highball glass or martini glass, and garnish with either a pineapple slice or a cocktail cherry.

~Enjoy!
Image from http://www.sheknows.com/

Happy Hour Tuesday: Limoncello Collins

Happy Hour Tuesday!

This week we are going to present you with a timeless, classic cocktail, adequate for every occasion, including holiday parties, this cocktail is a perfect anecdote to break the ice and start a conversation: Limoncello Collins.

Limoncello Collins is a variation of the classic Tom Collins, which appeared for the first time in Jerry Thomas’ “The Bartender’s Guide”. It is also possible that the name was taken after the British writer John Collins, as some claim, although both drinks are listed in Thomas’ masterpiece.

What is known with certainty about this drink is its connection to a non-existing character, Tom Collins, who was portrayed as a mysterious man who in 1874 would go around and speak behind everyone’s back. “Have you seen Tom Collins?” became the most popular question for people living in New York, Pennsylvania and surrounding states, to make the listener agitate and look around for Tom Collins, while Tom Collins was nothing more than a prank! This joke eventually grew and became the Great Tom Collins’ Hoax, at the point that newspapers in order to get the attention of the media of the time started publishing articles about Tom Collins’ sightings.

The herbal taste of the gin marries very well with the sweetness of the limoncello (originally the Tom Collins cocktail uses only lemon juice), and together with mint leaves create an explosion of freshness and zesty flavors.

Ingredients (8 drinks):

16 oz Rometti Limoncello
12 oz Gin
8 oz Fresh lemon juice
24 Lemon slices, thin
16 oz Club soda, chilled
8 Mint springs

Combine Rometti Limoncello, gin and lemon juice in a pitcher. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Take 8 collins glasses and press the lemon slices against the inside of each of them. Add ice. Stir the Rometti limoncello and gin mixture and pour it into the glasses. Stir 2 oz of Club Soda in each glass and garnish with mint.

~Enjoy!

image and recipe: http://www.foodandwine.com

Happy Hour Tuesday: Clementine Lemon Champagne Cocktail

Happy Hour Tuesday!

We are only a few days away from Thanksgiving and we all know what that means: that after reuniting with our families around a well dressed table to give thanks and enjoy a piece of stuffed turkey, it’s time to put turn the page and prepare for Christmas! And with that, all of our pretty orange decorations will disappear in favor of warmer red tones. So this week, in honor of the Fall and its fun, pumpkin-tinted shades, we decided to take in consideration a delicious, sweet and refined champagne-based drink called Clementine Lemon Champagne Cocktail.
This drink uses three different kind of citrus fruit, which means that other than enjoying our palate we also intake vitamin C and other nutritional citrus contents that can impact our health in a beneficial way. Pomegranate for example helps preventing from heart disease and is a good antioxidant; clementines contain calcium, vitamin A (also an antioxidant and fundamental for the bone growth), and fiber. Lemon juice contains also a good amount of iron, potassium, copper and calcium.
Clementine Lemon Champagne Cocktail is a celebration of sweet and sour, and its fun orange color will only brighten up your days (or nights). So buckle up for winter my friends, and in the meantime enjoy this effervescent drink which of course always tastes better in good company!

Ingredients (2 servings):

250 ml (about 8.5 oz) Champagne, chilled
1 pomegranade
150 ml (5 oz) clementine juice
20 ml (0.6 oz) Rometti Limoncello
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp sugar cane

Cut the pomegranate in half, save some of the red berries for decoration and squeeze the rest with a citrus-fruit squeezer until you have about 100 ml. Add fresh clementine juice, lemon juice and Rometti Limoncello. Add Champagne and sugar. Pour in a glass filled for half with ice and stir.

~Enjoy!

Recipe and image from http://www.undejeunerdesoleil.com

Happy Hour Tuesday: Limoncello Margarita

Happy Tuesday everyone!

We hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend! For those of you who follow us regularly, you know that the party is not over yet, as we have a tasty, fun, refreshing drink on the spotlight this week: Rometti Limoncello Margarita.

Margarita’s are one of the most popular American drinks, dating back to the 1940s. As it typically happens with cocktails, popular anecdotes present not one but a few versions of how the drink came to be. The Margarita has at least four! One of them attributed the name to Margarita Henkel, daughter of a German ambassador, thought to be the first one to taste a new drink made by bartender Don Carlos Orozco in Ensenada, Mexico.   Some believe that the Margarita was created by another bartender Carlos Herrera’ Margarita who worked at the Rancho La Gloria hotel, near Tijuana, Mexico it was there that he dedicated the drink to dancer Marjorie King. There was also popularity around Albert Hernandez’s Margarita, a bartender at La Plaza restaurant in La Jolla, San Diego, whose owner, Morris Locke, brought back a traditional recipe from Mexico frequently meeting up with the above mentioned Carlos Herrera.   An other version claims the birth of margarita to bartender Santos Cruz in Galveston, Texas, who created his version for singer Peggy Lee.   At last, the Margarita seems to be the latino version of an American drink, the Daisy, which was made with tequila during the Prohibition times. The name changed then to “Margarita” which is the Spanish for “daisy”.

Whichever story you decide to believe, one thing is true our Rometti Limoncello Margarita recipe is a fun, refreshing, fruity, delicious variant of the Margarita, we hope we can all agree on that!

Ingredients:

2 oz tequila

1 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz Rometti Limoncello

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

1/2 oz fresh lime juice

1 oz Sugar syrup (you can add less if you want it less sweet)

salt

ice cubes

If you like, prior to pouring, you can wet the rim with some lime juice and add salt.  Combine all the ingredients into a cocktail mixer. Shake well, and pour into a margarita glass.

ENJOY! ~