3 Sustainable Garnishes To Elevate Your Next Cocktail!

Hi, Friends of Cocktails! They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to cocktails, the garnish is what catches your eye before the drink even touches your lips. That’s why today we’re all about garnishes, but not just your typical twist of a citrus peel. We’ll make onions pickled in Maraschino syrup, blue cocktail paint made with leftover pickle brine, and a grapefruit salt rim from leftover fermented grapefruits. 

These garnishes will play a bigger role than just decorating the cocktail, because we’ll make them with ingredients that would typically end up in the trash or down the drain. This is part of a sustainable approach that we’re taking with our partner and sponsor, Mijenta Tequila, whose Echo Verde ethos perfectly aligns with Cocktail Time. So if you’re ready to change the world, one cocktail at a time, then today’s techniques are for you. 

Before we start, let’s set some ground rules for the garnish game. First and foremost, always make sure you don’t serve drinks with dangerous garnishes. Nobody wants to lose an eye when drinking a cocktail because of a pointy garnish, and never use anything that could be toxic. As an infamous example, you might know that dry ice is just for show, but the customer might not. So I believe it’s best practice to use an edible garnish that adds something to the cocktail.

Also if you can use up the leftovers, that would otherwise be thrown out, all the better. Think of the pulp from juicing, sediments from filtering, leftover peels, pickling juice or syrup from candied cherries. Get creative and re-use something that will enrich the cocktail you’re making, and make sure it all ties into the story of the cocktail and its ingredients. Now let’s start with a fast one for a Paloma using ingredients from a previous episode. It’s Cocktail Time!

Paloma with Fermented Grapefruit Rim

● 45mL · 1.5oz Mijenta Blanco Tequila

● 15mL · 0.5oz Lime Super Juice

● 90mL · 3oz Grapefruit Soda

● Lactofermented Grapefruit Rim

To rim the glass first, combine salt and lactofermented grapefruit powder in a 2:1 ratio. This powder is what was left after making some DIY Fermented Grapefruit Sodas, and it is full of flavor. It also adds a subtle yellowish color to our salt, which will pair nicely with the gentle pink of Mexico’s favorite cocktail, the Paloma. A simple mix of Mijenta Blanco tequila, lime super juice and pink topped grapefruit soda. No need to cut apart another grapefruit for the garnish - it’s already on the rim of the glass.

This is a simple, refreshing, and enriched Paloma, but now let’s move on to something a bit more... hands-on. How many times have you thought about what you could do with all the rich, sweet, flavorful, leftover syrup from maraschino cherries? Sure, an Old Fashioned or two with cherry syrup is fine, but too often it happens that the syrup gets thrown away after you’ve used the final cherry for a Manhattan. Something fun you could do with it, is to mix it with vinegar and pickle baby onions in it. 

Pickling has a great property that if done correctly, it only gets better with time, making it a great garnish that can upgrade a cocktail, with its  balance of sweet and tangy flavors. In our case, the Maraschino syrup will add subtle cherry and almond flavor to our onions, balancing the sweetness, and imparting some color. Also a Maraschino onion sounds like a perfect garnish for a Reposado Manhattan!

Maraschino Pickled Onions

● 300g Baby Onions

● 6 Red Peppercorns per Jar

● 150mL · 5oz Maraschino Cherry Syrup

● 110mL · 3.5oz Red Wine Vinegar

● 30g Water

● 15g Sugar

● 0.4g Salt

I’ll be making these for personal use, so I’m using small 105mL or 3.5oz jars, but you can make this bigger depending on your needs. Keep in mind that the jars and lids should be thoroughly washed and pasteurized. It's best to do this with boiling water for the lids and an oven for the jars to avoid spoilage. Once that’s done we’ll start by packing some peeled baby onions into each jar, then adding 6 red peppercorns into each of the jars for a little spice - plus, the red color will fit right in.

Now in a pot combine the Maraschino Syrup, red wine vinegar, water, sugar and salt. We’ll bring this mixture to a boil, and we’ll pour the liquid over the onions while it’s still hot. Don’t turn off your oven, as we’ll need to place the sealed jars into a preheated oven at 120°C or 250°F for 15 minutes to seal. After that leave them in the oven to slowly cool down, and overnight, the vacuum should pull the lid in, indicating that the onions are properly sealed.

If any of the lids haven’t popped, it means air has entered the jar, and the shelf life of such onions is not in months or years, but only a few weeks. Use those jars first for snacks or for your cocktails… like a tequila version of the Manhattan, with a pickled onion in place of a cherry.

Tequila Manhattan with Maraschino Onions

● 60mL · 2oz Mijenta Reposado Tequila

● 30mL · 1oz Sweet Vermouth

● 2 dashes Aromatic Bitters

● 2 drops 20% Saline Solution

● Maraschino Pickled Onion Garnish

Start with a chilled mixing glass before we pour in the tequila, vermouth bitters and saline. Fill the mixing glass with ice, give it a good stir to chill and dilute the cocktail, and strain it into a well chilled coupe glass. Now for the garnish place one maraschino-pickled baby onion in the cocktail, and, this is the reason I love these small jars, add the rest of the onions alongside the glass for a little snack after the cocktail. Cheers!

As expected, reposado tequila and sweet vermouth promise a great start, complementing each other perfectly. Vanilla and honey notes of Mijenta Reposado are elevated with the help of vermouth, while the pickled onion, though unexpected at first, adds the perfect finishing touch to the Tequila Manhattan. This is something you need to try, especially if you can get your hands on a bottle of Mijenta Tequila. 

Another fun thing you can try is batching the Tequila Manhattan, but we’ll do that again with the next one: a freezer Dirty Tequila Martini. To enhance it we’ll create a cocktail paint made with leftover pickle brine, that will slowly add additional flavor and color to the Martini as you drink it. 

Pickle Brine Paint

● 250mL · 8.33oz Leftover Pickle Brine

● 2g Xanthan Gum

● 2g Blue Spirulina

To make the paint you’ll only need to blend these ingredients together until you get a thick mixture, place it in the refrigerator and it's ready to use. To create your art inside the glass, pre-chill the martini glass in the freezer for at least 15 minutes. Then thinly paint the inner edge of the glass with the blue pickle brine color and place the glass back in the freezer, to chill before you serve the drink. You can do this with any brine, so if you love olives, go with that, but pickles are the superior choice for tequila.

Dirty Tequila Martini

● 130g Mijenta Cristalino Tequila

● 67g Extra Dry Vermouth

● 4 dashes Orange Bitters

● 2 dashes Saline Solution

● Chilled Water

As always with batching I’m using grams, but if you need to scale the recipe up or down the quickest way to do it is with the Mijenta calculators . So into a bottle add the Tequila, vermouth, bitters, and saline, then place it into the freezer to chill. Whenever you’re in the mood for an ice cold Tequila Martini, just take the bottle out of the freezer, along with your Pickle Brine painted glass. 

So into your glass add 3oz or 90mL of the freezer Tequila Martini, along with 1oz or 30mL of cold water and gently stir the properly diluted and nicely chilled cocktail. Take a lemon peel and express the essential oils over the top, but don’t place it in the glass, because we already have the garnish. To complement that, I’ll serve some cornichons on the side on crushed ice. Let’s give this a try, cheers!

Aroma hints towards a classic Martini but with added herbal and mineral notes of blanco tequila. It's fuller-bodied, making it more interesting, and as our brine paint melts the cocktail gets progressively "dirtier”. Personally, I find that the cucumber complements tequila better than an olive, making this Martini one of the best ones I've had.

With this high-note, you’ve made it to the Bottom of The Glass. Today before wrapping up, a word of appreciation for Mijenta’s Maestra Tequilera, Ana Maria Romero. She became one of the first Official Catadores of Tequila, and in 2007, she published The Aromas of Tequila: The Art of Tasting. She also identified over 600 unique scents in tequila and mapped them onto an aroma wheel, which has since been adopted across the industry. So you’ll know you’re getting top quality in each bottle. 

If you want to make the most out of your next tequila bottle, check out these posts on Super Juice, DIY Fermentation and Batching. Until next time, cheers, Friends of Cocktails.