This Christmas no one will remember the gin and tonic. But they will remember the Partridge and Pear Sour cocktail you made with St Maur elderflower liqueur and your favourite gin.
A sweet and sour, beautifully balanced, silky Christmas classic. Easy to make, this delightful cocktail pairs nicely with savoury canapés and those hot, herby sausage rolls.
The partridge is provided by Percy, St Maur’s partridge brand mascot. For the pear puree used in this recipe either make your own, purchase an expensive specialised cocktail ingredient, or as we have done here, nip down to the supermarket and buy a pouch of 100% pureed pear baby food!
Ingredients: 1½ measures of St Maur, 1½ measures of dry gin, the freshly squeezed juice from half a lemon, 1 egg white, 7.5ml of pear puree.
Recipe: Put all the ingredients in a shaker and dry shake.
Add ice and shake again, then strain into a chilled martini glass. That should be enough for two.
Garnish to decorate and serve. (We have used a small sprig of purple sage as a garnish.)
More cocktail recipes using St Maur can be found here
More about St Maur
St Maur is a hand-crafted premium elderflower liqueur, made from responsibly sourced ingredients and flavours gathered in ancient family-owned woodlands in Warwickshire.
A versatile, internationally award-winning drink, it is perfect for sipping or mixing. A beautiful aperitif on its own and sublime in Christmas brunch and pre-dinner cocktails or for enjoying with some festive snacks later on.
St Maur is the creation of William and Kelsey Seymour, Earl and Countess of Yarmouth, and created uniquely by its producers to offer “a little drop of England’s heart” to share and enjoy wherever you are in the world.
On the bottle you’ll see Percy, the brand’s partridge mascot, a bird successfully introduced to England in the 19th century by an ancestor Francis Seymour, the 5th Marquess, and now the brand’s mascot. He is the ideal house guest for Christmas, even if you don’t have a pear tree to hand.
The co-ordinates on the bottles will take you to Ladies Wood in the bucolic Warwickshire countryside, and to an elder grove where the elderflowers are hand-picked early summer by Lady and Lord Yarmouth themselves.