Latest Experiences

Curing Beaujolais Nouveau at Marikita cocktail bar


           Thursday night was the annual launch of the Beaujolais nouveau. Alright, it's good fun to be drinking a bottle as cheap as a bus ticket with a label that looks like a painting made by your 5 years old nephew. But by the next day it's very likely that the beverage will have killed 50% of all your taste buds and brain cells (No offence to Beaujolais lovers, there are some very nice bottles and crus, but too many Beaujolais nouveau taste like lightly flavoured water).


            Anyway, the next day, we decided to explore what else our delicious fermented grapes could offer us and we headed to the Marikita cocktail bar near Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux for a well-deserved “hair of the dog” cocktail. And we were nicely surprised by the selection of cocktails, well decorated room and friendliness of the bartender. By wine cocktails we include everything that comes from fermented grapes: red (not an easy one), white, rosé, sparkling and distilled grapes.


Marikita Cocktail Bar


After long discussions with our bartender about wine cocktails, a good review of the cocktail list, 5 cigarettes and 3 return tickets to the bathrooms we finally ordered a round of cocktails. Here are two that really caught our attention:



Plaisir charnel (we also loved the name):
3 layers in this cocktail (from bottom to top):
§  2 teaspoons of freshly crushed raspberries marinated in Cachaça
§  5cl of mango purée mixed with Cachaça
§  Top up your glass with champagne (7cl)
Serve with a bit of crushed ice and enjoy!
The sweetness of the raspberries and mango is nicely balanced with the dry bubbly champagne. The result is an exotic refreshing sparkly cocktail!



Plaisir Charnel (on the left)

Destruction
A special cocktail created this year for the harvest as a tribute to local products:
Presented in 3 glasses:
§  The first looks more like a bowl filled up with white grapes and a star anise.
§  The second is shooter glass 2/3 filled with a home-made mix of spices and orange liqueur and   1/3 of Cointreau.
§  In the third tall glass is 3 cl of Cognac, 3 cl Lillet Blanc, topped up with passion fruit  and mandarin zest
To serve, light the shooter glass, leave it a minute and poor the flambée mixture over the grapes. Eat the soaked grapes with a fork while drinking your Cognac cocktail!


Destruction


            Both cocktails were very good, the second has a more interesting presentation and is more entertaining to consume and prepare. Premium ingredients were used in these cocktails but you can easily replace the champagne by a Crémant or the fruit purée by juices to lower the costs.



            Be careful, those cocktails might seem gentle and exotic but the sweetness covers a very generous amount of alcohol! And in no time you could find yourself living another Beaujolais nouveau experience (with more flavours this time). Keep up with more posts on wine cocktails next week!

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