With twelve cocktails on our menu, you might think we’d be satisfied with the range we offer: a heady troupe of the short and strong, the tall and refreshing, and the sweet and punchy.
But we always knew there was something missing, so evening after evening we deliberated – what could improve our collection? The answer was blindingly obvious, but came to us not in an evening, but in the morning…
The Bloody Mary is an undisputed classic. There’s some debate over its first conception, but since the 20s/30s/40s (delete as appropriate depending on who you believe), bartenders have been combining vodka with tomato juice. Safe to say, it took off. But it didn’t start out as the iconic drink we know it for today – over time, the combination has evolved to include spices, Worcester sauce, horseradish, lemon juice and many other variants as well as the iconic celery stick (reputedly, a spontaneous stand-in for a cocktail stirrer that stuck around). With quite a complex make-up, no two Bloody Marys are the same, so we knew we had a challenge on our hands.
Fortunately, we knew just where to start. Based on their family farm in Suffolk, The Pickle House are known for both their award-winning Pickle Juice, and their award-winning Spiced Tomato Mix — who better to collaborate with!
Having first been introduced to the idea of drinking pickle juice whilst in New York, founder Florence spent many months creating a recipe crafted specifically for cocktails and smoothies and subsequently launched the Original Pickle Juice. Whilst working with bartenders using the pickle juice they discovered it was the perfect addition to a Bloody Mary, and so came the Pickle House Spiced Tomato Mix. The Pickle Juice makes for an unforgettable flavour with depth and smoothness — and having tested lots of alternatives we could see why they were winning awards.
And so we had the foundations of a great cocktail. The fact that they’re all produced and hand-bottled a short drive from Edmunds HQ was too good to be true!
The second piece of the puzzle was the vodka, and we turned to our friends at Sapling, who we’ve used in several of our cocktails before. Clean, creamy, and smooth with a touch of sweetness, it works brilliantly for our Bloody Mary, and beyond that they plant a tree for every bottle we buy.
So there you have it, a bloody brilliant cocktail. When you’re planning your next Saturday night with a selection of Edmunds cocktails, grab some Bloody Marys for the morning after. Oh, and don’t forget the celery!
