Hello and welcome to Give Me Weird Drinks, a newsletter for exploring the world of beverages! Happy (almost) 4th of July!
Robert Frost got it all wrong. Gold isn’t nature’s hardest hue to hold; it’s blue—at least when it comes to beverages.
The 4th of July is around the corner, so in addition to BBQs, picnics and fireworks, it’s time for red, white and blue-themed drinks. Red and white are easy to come by: just ask any sangria aficionado. But a natural, Smurftastic blue beverage is a little harder to track down.
Bright Blue Citrus
On top of star-spangled tablecloths and faithfully served next to tri-color desserts, blue-colored Curaçao liqueur, commonly known as blue Curaçao, will make its annual electric blue entrance. Layered red, white and blue cocktail recipes almost inevitably feature the saccharine liqueur as the party-pleasing pièce de résistance topping off an Independence Day trifecta.
Blue Curaçao on a beach (courtesy Senior's Liqueur)
For first-time weird drinkers, the flavor of blue Curaçao can come as quite a shock, especially if they’re expecting some sort of blue raspberry Jolly Rancher.
The blue liqueur is actually citrus flavored, which originally comes from an extract of the Laraha orange that still grows on the island of Curaçao.
A descendent of the Valencia orange from Spain, the Laraha citrus had a tough time with the island’s arid climate, shriveling up into an unpalatable, bitter version of the fruit, according to Senior & Co., which distills the liqueur on the island. Not even goats would eat it.
Nevertheless, sometime between the mid-1500s and the end of the 19th century, enterprising weird drinkers decided to combine sugarcane distillate and a few handfuls of the peels.
The citrus-flavored Curaçao was born.
Blue and white, but where’s red? Artificial blue dye is added to Curaçao liqueur (courtesy Senior's Liqueur)
It should go without saying, but Laraha oranges are not even close to blue-colored (they’re actually green). So why is this citrus-flavored liqueur the same color as the blue on the American flag?
Coal tar is the (appetizingly?) short answer. The longer answer still involves coal tar, but comes with a side of chemistry, malaria and Victorian fashion.
The story behind the blue in blue Curaçao begins in 1856, with an eighteen-year-old student on Easter break. William Henry Perkin was attempting to synthesize quinine at London’s Royal College of Chemistry, using coal tar, a byproduct of coke and coal gas production.
Mixing together solutions, he kept getting dirty, dark brown precipitates at the bottom of his test tubes. But when he went to extract the precipitate with alcohol, the solution produced a bright purple, the world’s first synthetic organic dye. He eventually patented the colorfast dye and started selling the artificial coloring, popularly called mauveine, which was wildly popular in Victorian England.
By 1878, German chemist Adolf von Baeyer synthesized indigo pigment. Meanwhile, the artificial coloring called “brilliant blue,” or blue no. 1, also a coal tar derivative like mauveine, was in development, according to the Scientific American. By 1897, blue dye was commercially synthesized, a process that was improved by 1901, chemist Hamish McNab told the publication. By 1906, there were so many color additives on the market that Congress passed the Food and Drugs Act to ensure consumer safety.
Today, artificial blue coloring is still used in blue Curaçao, although not all Curaçao liqueurs are blue. So what’s a weird drinker with the blues supposed to do?
Blue Alternatives
One corner of Europe offers a modern solution. Vintners in Spain are producing Gik, a novelty blue-tinted sweet wine, made with red and white grape varietals and apparently colored with a combination of flavonoids from grape skin, called anthocyanins, and an extract from woad plants.
(To illustrate just how hard it is to find natural blues, anthocyanins are the only class of plant pigments capable of producing blue, according to Science magazine. They have “‘a half-life of about 24 hours,’” scientist Cathie Martin told the publication.)
While it might be flashy, the flavor of Gik has been described as “akin to those blue Equal packets at a coffee shop” and reminiscent “of sugar-free Kool-Aid mixed with a splash of wine,” according to Food & Wine.
Gik blue wine (courtesy Gik Live!)
Weird drinkers in search of celeste might whip up a gin and soda made with Magellan Gin, a French-produced gin that states its slightly blue hue comes from a maceration of iris flowers and roots. Just a shade on the purple side of blue (the company calls it indigo) is Canadian Empress 1908 Gin, which gets its color from butterfly pea flower and tea.
A low tech solution for the less color sensitive might be a blueberry margarita or daiquiri—although, blueberries in a blender usually end up looking more purple than blue.
Botanical Blue
For true blue diehards, however, that delicate butterfly pea flower used by Empress 1908 may be the key to a July 4th showstopper.
Chefs in Asia have been using cerulean contributions from the blossoms of the butterfly pea for years. Widely naturalized in tropical areas, it’s known for tinting rice dishes blue and it’s useful for coloring a range of beverages.
Blue drinks made from butterfly tea flowers have been taking off recently, said chef Salil Mehta, who runs two New York City restaurants: Michelin-starred Laut and Laut Singapura. He serves a blue butterfly lemonade, which can be spiked with booze, and is made from the plant’s petals.
From what he’s seen in New York City, it’s only a matter of time before the plant’s popularity takes off, he said. “It’s like how turmeric lattes took off two years ago,” he said. “It’s definitely getting popular.”
Chef Salil Mehta’s blue butterfly lemonade (courtesy Salil Mehta)
While supermarkets might not carry the raw dry ingredients to make Mehta’s lemonade, he’s been able to find them online. At home, he’ll mix a handful of dried butterfly pea flowers into a gallon of hot water, let it steep with some rock sugar and cool it as a summer drink for his three young kids. The color lasts for at least 48 hours, he said.
Adding acid, like lime juice, will transform the blue into a purple color. “We call it a lie detector,” he joked. “It’s a pretty cool drink to have fun with.”
As expected, a colorful flower like the butterfly pea also has its own colorful botanical history. The plant’s genus name, “Clitoria,” comes from the same Greek root as the word “clitoris.” The European botanists who named the pea apparently thought it looked like female genitalia.
Butterfly pea flower (courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden's PlantFinder database)
The butterfly pea flower responsible for blue drinks is named Clitoria ternatea, after the volcanic Indonesian island, Ternate, thought by Carl Linneaus to be the plant’s native territory, according to the Missouri Botanical Garden. A different species, the only one with native, widespread distribution in North America, may have been named after Linneaus’ girlfriend at the time, according to the U.S. Forest Service. That plant is called Clitoria mariana.
Butterfly pea flower infusions have a neutral flavor, said Mehta, with anti-inflammatory properties. The blossoms are also used in Ayurvedic practices, according to the University of Connecticut.
A handful of these is all it takes to dye water blue (courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden's PlantFinder database)
What’s Red and White, Without Some Blue?
“People drink with their eyes first. Blue Curaçao is for people to ask, ‘What’s that drink?’” said David Roth, head bartender at Covina in New York City. Perhaps that explains why the blue-tinted liqueur was so popular, even before Instagram: it caught weird drinkers’ attention.
A blue Curaçao-inspired “Betsy Rossicle.” “Basically a lemon drop with lipstick,” said David Roth (courtesy David Roth)
In fact, a blue beverage’s unnatural appearance is precisely what makes it so eye-catching. “We tend not to think that blue is a natural food color,” said Steven Rosa, a chef who’s worked in New York City restaurants and catering.
Whether blue’s association with being inedible is because blue food looks fake, or because it’s rare to find it in nature, he’s not sure. But he said even blue foods, like blueberry jam, would stand out if they were the same color as blue Curaçao. In fact, many of the foods we think of as blue, like blueberries or blue potatoes, tend to slide into grey, purple or green as they are cooked or processed—or even examined a little more closely.
With the exception of blue cheese, most food that turns brilliant blue would be thrown away, he said. “It’s reasonable to see how you would associate something blue with mold or bad food.”
Fortunately, that’s not the case for cocktails. There’s nothing wrong with them, said Roth. “They’re bright. They’re shiny. They’re attractive.”
“Drinking is supposed to be fun and drinks are supposed to be delicious,” he said. “That’s what those colors invoke.”