Elderberry shrubs flourish throughout much of North America, including along many of the North Shore’s bike trails and forest preserves. Yet despite their pervasiveness, many, if not most, people have never tasted the shrub’s small gridelin-colored berries.
That’s a shame because the fruit, once cooked, has a unique tangy, slightly sweet flavor vaguely reminiscent of a blueberry, says Sonja Kassebaum, co-founder of Lake Bluff’s North Shore Distillery. “They’re an underutilized gem,” she says. “They have a bright flavor that is a little different, but isn’t crazy.”
Kassebaum and her husband Derek used the berries as their muse for this year’s one-off, single batch offering. Each year the distillery produces around 900 bottles of a spirit they aim to be wholly distinct from everything else on the market (last year’s offering was a bottled Corpse Reviver No. 2 cocktail, the previous year’s was a spirit that aimed to capture the essence of mole poblano).
Taking inspiration from sloe gin, a sweet, ruby-colored gin-based liqueur flavored with blackthorn, or sloe, plums, the Kassebaums cooked 250 pounds of ripe Missouri- and Illinois-grown elderberries in their still. They then pressed that cooked fruit in a wine press to extract the juice, which they combined with their Distiller’s Gin No. 11, the distillery’s take on a juniper berry-centric London dry gin. After allowing the flavors to meld over the course of a few weeks, they finished the spirit with a touch of sugar.
While sloe gins can be saccharine or artificial-tasting, Elderberry Gin Liqueur isn’t cloying. Rather, the gin provides a spicy backbone that balances against the sweet, tart fruit flavors. The liqueur is excellent on its own, with ice and a splash of soda water. It also can be substituted for sloe gin in cocktails such as a sloe gin fizz.
For a list of stores that are carrying North Shore Distillery’s Eldergin, visit
northshoredistillery.com/lreldergin.htm
Try it:
Sloe gin fizz
Note:
Adapted from Shawn Mulligan’s “Mulligan’s Bar Guide: 25th Anniversary Edition”
1 oz. elderberry gin liqueur
2 oz. lemon juice (preferably freshly squeezed)
3 oz. soda water
Pour ingredients over ice into a highball glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge.
