Recipes
A’peel Cosmopolitan
A’peel Vodka is made from citrus peel, so a Cosmopolitan is a natural fit: the peel in the spirit meets the orange liqueur and lime in the glass, and the cranberry keeps it pink and dry.
Ingredients
- 45 mL A’peel Vodka
- 15 mL Cointreau or another orange liqueur
- 15 mL fresh lime juice
- 30 mL cranberry juice
- A strip of orange peel
Method
- Shake everything with ice.
- Double strain into a chilled coupe.
- Express the orange peel over the top and drop it in. If you want the show, warm the peel with a lighter and squeeze it over the drink for a flash of flame.
Where it comes from
The Cosmopolitan as it is made today is usually credited to Toby Cecchini at the Odeon in New York in 1988, who rebuilt an earlier cranberry drink with Absolut Citron, Cointreau and fresh lime. Dale DeGroff put it on the list at the Rainbow Room and a television series did the rest. It has spent twenty years as a joke and is quietly a good drink: a sour, properly balanced, in a pretty colour.
The original used a citrus-flavoured vodka. A’peel Vodka gets its citrus from the fruit itself: peel and off-cuts from juicing, fermented, distilled and carbon filtered through recycled coconut husk. Nothing is added back, so the drink stays dry. Use a cranberry juice that is not too sweet, or cut the liqueur to 10 mL.