A Fresh & Bright Twist on A Bloody Mary Cocktail

I wanted to share a cocktail that I recently came up with inspired by the carrot ginger juice from Natalie's Orchid Island Juice Company. It's also inspired by perhaps on the most contentious cocktails out there, the Bloody Mary. The Bloody Mary is the drink that has a million recipes, of course, each and every one of yours is the best and most perfect one. But truly, at the end of the day, the drink that you make for yourself and the one that you enjoy the flavors of, is the ideal recipe. In this case, I am going to make it a little bit lighter in more refreshing. I love a Bloody Mary but sometimes it can be a little bit heavy and it can bog you down a bit. By using Natalie’s carrot ginger juice it's going to lighten it up while still being fresh. You will still get those kind of vegetal notes in there, but it will just a little bit brighter a little bit more crisp.

To build this cocktail you're going to start off with 3 ounces of the carrot ginger juice. You always want to measure our ingredients, this way you know when you go back to make your second cocktail if you want to tweak something a little bit -- a little bit more citrus, a little bit more sweet, a little bit more booze — you’ll know how much to add or subtract. If you want a little bit of acidity, you can use lemon or lime juice, add about an ounce like in a typical Bloody Mary.

I don't know how you take yours, but I like mine with a bit of kick to it, so I made a cayenne simple syrup. It’s very very easy to do. Just one part water, one part sugar; I used a raw sugar in this case. I used 4 ounces of sugar, 4 ounces of hot water and stirred it together until the sugar was dissolved. Then add 1/4 teaspoon of powdered cayenne. Stir it up, let it infuse and just get all of that kick to it. Spice is super personal so whatever your vibe is on that you can make it to your liking.

Next, add about an ounce and a half of vodka -- I used Ketel One but any high-quality vodka will do. Ketel One is available everywhere; it's clean and crisp, it's pure and it's not going to get in the way of all of these wonderful flavors that we're adding to our cocktail. I then threw in a pinch of salt -- you can really add any spices that you want. I also added some cracked fresh pepper into my cocktail to tie it all together.

And then you're going to ice up your shaker -- you're not going to shake this cocktail -- you are going to do a technique known as rolling or throwing the cocktail. I actually prepared some special ice with the orange and beet juice from Natalie's -- again just going back to those vegetal flavors. To make the ice cubes all I did was pour the juice straight into some ice trays tossed him into my freezer overnight and then you get intensely beautiful colored and flavored ice. Of course you can use regular ice and it's going to be just fine as well.

Alright, now you pour it into the shaker with your cubes and just roll it back and forth. So what it's going to do is a little bit of chilling it and also combining the flavors together in a really nice way. It ties everything together and gets all those flavors working harmoniously.

When you pour it into your glass, it just looks like a beautiful garden style Bloody Mary. If you drink Bloody Mary’s, you know they are all about the garnish. So what direction are you going to go with this? I took some celery hearts with wonderful small leaves and used some carrot tops and put that in as well. Then I added some fresh basil straight from the plant, to get some wonderful aromatics. And since I like spice as well, I threw in some pickled jalapeno to top it off. You should definitely have some fun with this drink. There a million variations with other spices, you do whatever garnish you want to do. This recipe is really a fun, light and refreshing take on the bloody Mary, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers!

Charles Joly

Ingredient Recap:

3oz carrot ginger juice

1oz lemon juice

3/4 oz cayenne simple syrup

pinch of salt & pepper

1 1/2 oz Vodka

Garnish