Summer cocktails — fruit, cool, delicious and spicy. Wait. Spicy? You bet spice. Seriously, as we’ve discussed (like with the Spiced Watermelon Cooler), a little bit of heat cools you off when it can be darn right unpleasantly warm in the outside world. Sometimes, though, you don’t need a hearty kick of chili to cool you down, sometimes you just need a little bit of ginger spice (no, not Ginger Spice). With that in mind, onto the King’s Summer Cup!

The King’s Summer Cup is another in the long line of fine English traditional summer libations (much like the Pimm’s Cup).

Which, come to think of it, strikes me as a little peculiar. Of the two times that I visited England (both in summer), neither of them were what I’d call particularly toasty. In fact, being a big fan of the EPL as I am, I quite often see via satellite how the weather looks there.

I guess we can chalk it up to the English positivity? Wishful thinking and dreaming of warmer temps so they need to have cool drinks at the ready?

Don’t mind my wanderings, back on track!

King’s Ginger (the booze itself) is (hold the shock) a ginger alcohol. Apparently, in the 1900s (way back last millennium) King Edward VII’s doctors wanted him to drink something to warm him up — and ta da, a curative for the cools that ail ya! This is what we called on to cool us off this fine summer day.

If it’s good enough for Edward VII, it’s good enough for us. (Side note, if you want to drink it straight, knock yourself out, it’s quite tasty. Oh, and that 80 proof it’s at, it’ll sneak up on you and you’ll think you’re the King (or Queen) of England in short order.)

So what we have in this lovely summer sipper is ginger, lemonade (go ahead, do what we did and make your own) and cranberry juice.

Promise it’s as easy as that. Oh, you can fancy it up and top it off with some club soda (which is nice) or go super royal and pop some champagne to top it.

Either way, let’s get our ginger flowing!

 

June 2nd, 2015 | by morgan