So one of my favorite cocktails ever is a French 75 – gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and champagne. I always thought it would make an awesome flavored tea, so when I saw Ovation had free shipping I knew I had to make my own.
I thought maybe honeybush would be good to get the sweetness down but I decided that wasn’t important and went with green tea for a base. So it’s green tea, juniper berries, lemon verbena, lemon and orange peel, and champagne flavoring.
It of course doesn’t smell a thing like the drink because obviously I had to pick and choose parts of gin to have, and the lemon and orange peel come off strongly. Maybe I would leave out orange peel in the future but I didn’t feel like just juniper berries was enough for conveying “gin.”
It doesn’t quite taste like the drink, of course, but I love the idea of these flavor components working together in another way. The juniper berries give it a bite, but the citrus flavors reign it back in. It’s probably far too early to really get a good taste of the champagne flavoring working with everything else, but I think with a bit of time to meld, this is going to be really good. I just couldn’t help myself and had to give it a try now.
