Home › Cold Drinks › Grape Juice Cocktail
Grape Juice Cocktail
To the juice of one large orange add a cup of grape juice, a quarter of a cupful of Italian vermouth, half a cup of water in which two tablespoonfuls of sugar have been dissolved, mix but do not shake. Set on ice until very cold and serve in cocktail glasses garnished with thin slices of orange, quartered, or a sprig of mint.
A low-proof aperitif built on bottled grape juice, sweetened well past what most palates now want. The proportions are sound; the sugar is the one thing worth reconsidering.
- Italian vermouthThis means sweet red vermouth, the Torino style, as opposed to "French" which meant dry white. A quarter cup is 2 oz, so the finished drink is only lightly alcoholic.
- The sugarTwo tablespoons dissolved in half a cup of water is a light syrup, and it is added on top of grape juice and vermouth that are both already sweet. Start with half the sugar and taste.
- Grape juiceThe juice meant was most likely unfermented Concord, dark purple and musky rather than the pale white-grape blends now common. Concord would give the drink its colour and a slight grip.
- Mix but do not shakeShaking aerates and clouds grape juice and can throw a foam that is slow to settle. Stir with a long spoon until combined and leave it alone.
- Set on iceChill the mixed pitcher rather than pouring over ice cubes, which is what the instruction means. Ice in the glass dilutes a drink that is already half water and juice.
- YieldAbout 2 cups, which fills four of the small stemmed cocktail glasses of the period, roughly 3 to 4 oz each. Two modern coupes.
- GarnishQuartered orange slices, or a mint sprig slapped once between the palms to release its oil before it goes in.
Bottled grape juice was a product of the temperance movement before it was a cocktail ingredient — unfermented "grape wine" pasteurised so that it could not turn, promoted in the late nineteenth century as a respectable substitute for the real thing. By the 1920s and 1930s it was simply a pantry staple, well suited to the cold-drinks recipe, where the aim was a long, chilled, faintly fancy glass that could be built in advance and kept on ice. The small measure of vermouth here is characteristic of the genre: enough to make the drink read as a cocktail, not enough to make it one. It is also a summer-cookbook drink in the literal sense — the whole premise of a title like Cook and Be Cool was food and drink that asked nothing of a hot kitchen.