Daytrip Blueberry Amaro
Blueberry Vino Amaro
Blueberry Vino Amaro
* Wine Made from New Jersey Blueberries
* Housemade Syrup made with Cornflakes and whole Madagascar Vanilla Beans
* Fortified with Organic NY Corn Spirit made in house -- distilled with Yuzu, Mukrut Lime Leaf, Wild Cherry Blossoms, Coconut, Lemon, and Cinnamon
* Macerated Orris Root, Gentian Root, Quassia Bark
16% Alc by Vol // 750mL
Suggested Serve
On picnics, beaches and other outdoor September occasions of imbibing..
Chilled
Blueberry Bramble
2 oz Blueberry Daytrip
1 oz Gin
1 oz Lemon Juice
.5 oz Simple Syrup
Muddle blueberries and basil in glass. Fill glass with pabble ice. Pour liquid ingredients over pebble ice. Garnish with more basil and a tap of powdered sugar.
In The Bottle
Blueberry wine, fortified with yuzu, cherry blossom, makrut lime leaf and coconut distillates and sweetened with syrups we made from Kellogs cornflakes and Rare Tea Cellar Madagascar vanilla beans. Infused with orris root, quassia and gentian to make our blueberry wine amari. It's summer at its crescent, tipping its hat to Fall. You're wearing shorts but packing a sweatshirt. And at 16% and just a touch sweet, we're sipping Daytrip neat as an aperitif / degestif or swapping it out for the campari in a Daytrip Negroni, equal parts Gin + Blueberry Daytrip, option to add a Dry Vermouth. Next drink on deck is a bramble, obviously.
This year’s blueberries come from a family farm in New Jersey that has chosen blueberries as it’s bread and butter crop. Our friend Clark over at Briermere sources them for us, driving down with his refrigerated truck, returning with trays piled high with bursting blues.
We start by getting the berries into a big bin and treading them — stomping them into juice. We pitch a slurry of yeast to ferment the juice quickly. The relatively low sugar and high pH of the fruit make them vulnerable to microbial interlopers - so pitching yeast is an essential step.
The ferment is vigorous, pushing a thick cap of blueberry skins to the surface that we punch down each day. When the blueberry wine peaks, it’s just beaming blueberry. It smells more blueberry, tastes more blueberry - even the color is more blueberry! That’s the moment we want to capture, so with fortify it with botanical distillates, bringing up the alcohol content to arrest the wine in that moment.
We add yuzu, cherry blossom, makrut lime leaf, lemon, cinnamon and coconut distillates using our house made alcohol made from certified organic, NY grown corn. We make our Kellogg’s cornflakes syrup. We take our whole vanilla beans, cover them in our hot, sweet liquid, let them macerate and then blend them together. A whole pound of Madagascar vanilla! Sourced by the masters over at Rare Tea Cellar. We add some orris root, quassia and gentian to the mix to build the bitter elements - lending some musky, woodsy, fruity bitter structure. Finally, we cold settle - a term used to describe how we drop the temperature of our amaro to lower its solubility -- causing heavier elements to settle out, allowing us to pull the liqueur off the heavy sediment and proceed with a gentle finishing filter. This process of pulling the liquid off of the sediment is called racking.
The idea here is nostalgia. A delicious reference to the dog days of summer -- a bottle of this summers fruit with a menagerie of ingredients - some cheeky, some earnest - chosen to call back the summers past and conjure a dreamy anticipation for summers to come.
This is Daytrip Blueberry.
It's our second release of this Blueberry Vino Amaro, slightly different than last years.. but sure to sell out just as quick.
Happy September 1st!
Cheers!
Leslie