Grapefruit Liqueur Drink Recipes

All you need are 3 ingredients and about 30 seconds to whip up this classic “Frenchie” cocktail with grapefruit, elderflower and gin. It’s so simple, yet so refreshing and delicious.

After selling all of our furniture,  giving away most all of our books, packing up all my kitchen supplies, and majorly minimizing our wardrobes, we’ve reached the point where it’s time to tackle one final area of our little apartment here in Kansas City before moving to Spain:

Ok, well actually, we gave away the bar cart when we got rid of all of our furniture in June. So we’re really talkin’ about a collection of random bottles hanging out awkwardly on the floor of our dining room right now. ? And when I say a collection, I do mean a legit collection. Between combining two household bars when we got married, receiving a handful of awesome gins and tequilas and mezcals as wedding presents,  

Old Fashioned Paloma

Hosting a bunch of parties and happy hours here this summer (which somehow always leave leftover bottles behind), Barclay and I realized this month there are lots of cocktails here waiting to be made and shared.

So during our final month in KC, we’ve decided to host as many dinners, happy hours, and tastings here as possible to help spread the cocktail love amongst our friends. (<– Which, of course, is totally just an excuse to hang out with friends as much as humanly possible before we go.)  In the past week, we’ve had two mezcal tastings and a wine night, which were all delightful. But one of my favorites so far was last Friday night when we had a few dozen people over for a new occasion — “gin night!”

I feel like gin is one of those alcohols that I really enjoy in cocktails, but rarely order when mezcal or whiskey is also available on a menu. And as such, we realized that we had a few nearly-full bottles of gin in our stash that needed to be used up. So we invited everyone over for a gin-only party, and I mixed up big batches of 5 different cocktails for everyone to sample — an earl grey tea cocktail, negronis, gin margaritas (margatinis), G & Ts, and the crowd favorite of the evening, this simple grapefruit elderflower cocktail.

The Best Grapefruit Margarita

It was actually the easiest of all to make, with just 3 quick ingredients. But everyone absolutely adored it, and many of you asked about it on Instagram, so I wanted to share it with you. (And P.S. — if you’re not into gin, it can also be made with vodka.)  So grab a bottle, and let’s mix up a round!

Our little “gin party” cocktail bar. Since most of our furniture is now moved out of the house, we served it up on the plastic little folding tables I use to shoot food photos for the blog. You know, fancy. ;)

This cocktail was actually inspired by a recent happy hour visit to Bluestem in Kansas City, with my friend Kathryne. They had a drink called the “Bohemian” on the menu — featuring gin, elderflower and grapefruit — which sounded refreshing on a warm day. (Although when we googled it, turns out the combination is classically known as the “Frenchie” cocktail.)  Whatever you call it, though, it totally hit the spot. And I, of course, immediately wanted to try recreating a version of my own at home.

Elderflower, Gin And Grapefruit Cocktail

So I did some fiddling around with the proportions, and ended up landing on just a simple 2:2:1 ratio of gin,  grapefruit juice and St. Germain. And it was perfection. Also, when you use store-bought 100% grapefruit juice (I was too lazy to juice the actual fresh fruit), it literally only takes a few seconds to whip one up!

We invited our guests at the party to garnish theirs with a sprig of fresh rosemary, lavender, or sage (courtesy of my friend, Beth’s, garden). And I loved the extra subtle flavor that the fresh herbs gave to the drinks.I first tried this grapefruit crush cocktail at a pool party at my neighbor Tracy’s house, and I’ve seen it pop up on restaurant menus all summer long. It’s ultra-refreshing and easy to drink. Made with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, vodka, triple sec, and lemon-lime soda, the cocktail is a riff on the popular orange crush drink that originated on Maryland’s Eastern shore at Harborside Bar & Grill, where the bartenders squeeze the juice to order using an old-fashioned citrus press. The name of the cocktail comes from “crushing” the fruit.

For best results, I recommend using fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice with a bit of pulp — you’ll need two large grapefruits to make two cocktails — but if you’d rather use store-bought, look for 100% fresh-squeezed bottled juice with no sweeteners or preservatives.

Drink Recipe || New Year's Grapefruit Elder Flower Spritz

Pour the grapefruit juice, vodka, and triple sec into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously, and strain into a cocktail glass filled with ice. Top with the lemon-lime soda and garnish with a grapefruit slice.

Alternatively, if you’d like to prepare a pitcher instead of making individual cocktails, adjust the quantities for the number of drinks you need. Mix the juice, vodka, triple sec and lemon-lime soda in a pitcher, keep cool, then pour into prepared glasses over ice when ready to serve.

I'd love to know how it turned out! Please let me know by leaving a review below. Or snap a photo and share it on Instagram; be sure to tag me @.

Ginger & Grapefruit Gin Fizz Recipe

This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.As I’m writing this, it is snowing hard here in the Philadelphia suburbs. With the snow whirling outside one’s window it might be difficult to conjure up images of Spring. Kyle was pondering about his European trip last Spring, specifically his first night in London. He had dinner at NOPI, which has been gushed about a bunch of times on this blog (like here, here, and here).

Liqueur stood out the most. It was described as a grapefruit version of Lemoncello. The liqueur was sweet (but not too sweet!) and it had the citrus, slightly bitter flavor of grapefruit. It was a tad dangerous – it was refreshing and sippable – quite a delectable combination.

After instantly falling for the Pompelmo Liqueur, Kyle made it his mission to find a bottle to bring home. Alas, he was out of the time and resources needed to track it down. It is LONDON, sightseeing was on the agenda for the precious few days they had there. In the stores he did search for it, it was not available.

The French Tart

It has been about 10 months since that trip. He has kept tabs on the status of Stellacello to see if they were beginning to export their Pomplemo Liqueur to the United States. Well, sadly, they have not. It appears the liqueur isn’t sold outside of the United Kingdom. Here come the tears….

So it was time for Kyle to be proactive and attempt a homemade version of the grapefruit liqueur. This was a blind attempt, cobbled together using a few Lemoncello recipes, but substituting the grapefruit for the lemon.

The biggest issue to deal with through this process was the waiting time. Most recipes instructed you to infuse the mixture for at least 30 days before straining and enjoying. 30 DAYS!  10-plus months was already an eternity to be reunited with this grapefruit liqueur. It was time to speed up this process!!

Grapefruit Liqueur And Cola, Cocktail Recipe ➦ Inshaker

The first thing to do was to steep the grapefruit peels in a bit of sugar. This process is similar to maceration in which you draw the liquid out the fruit by coating it in sugar. The sugar draws out the oils from the citrus peels, creating

This may sound like a spell you would learn at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but, in fact, it just translates to “oil sugar”.

Kyle felt drawing out the oils of the citrus before starting the infusion process would drastically cut down on the total required steeping time. Instead of making simple syrup with sugar and water, he eliminated the water and replaced it with fresh grapefruit juice. This really amped up the grapefruit flavor in a speedy manner.

Rosemary Brown Derby (bourbon And Grapefruit Cocktail)

The oleo saccharum and the grapefruit syrup were combined in a bottle of vodka