Recipes

English Garden

The English Garden cocktail is a quintessentially British drink, and with good reason.

The English Garden is a wonderful example of the English countryside, with elderflower liqueur and fresh pressed apple juice evoking images of endless orchards and languid summer days.

It makes us think of the innocence of yesteryear – of conker matches, cress boxes in windowsills and Easter egg hunts. It’s slightly boozier than such activities, though…

1 serving
  • 50 ml Gin
  • 25 ml Elderflower Liqueur
  • 25 ml Fresh lemon Juice
  • 100 ml Fresh apple Juice
  1. Half fill a shaker with ice. Add the gin, elderflower, lemon and apple juice and shake until combined.
  2. Strain into tall glass filled with glass and garnish with an apple wheel.

Cooling and refreshing, sweet and subtle, this is a cocktail that tastes exactly how you want the sound of clinking glass to taste on a long, hot day. A hint of lemon juice prevents the elderflower liqueur from making it overly sweet, whilst the apple juice brings a huge, lip-smacking freshness that’ll perk you right up.

Top Tips:

There’s every chance you’ll consider lemon juice a controversial addition here. If you want to use lime, have at it as the caustic nature of the fruit carries well in this drink, but we’re team yellow on this one.

The drink works irrespective of how much apple juice you use. If you want a boozier mix, use less. If you want to make it into more of a punch style serve, or even a Pitcher for the garden, just add more. It's a resilient little recipe that has a lot of flexibility in what you can do with it.

english garden cocktail drink elderflower
english garden cocktail drink elderflower

A Brief, Inebriated History.

Brevity is the soul of wit, they say, which is a bit of luck, because this is as brief as it gets. Try as we might, we can’t find where, when, why or how the English Garden emerged. It’s one of those things, seemingly, that was adopted at such a rapid pace that the true origins got blurred. 

We did promise wit, though, so here’s a joke about garden parties: how do you make sure your soiree goes off without a hitch? Turnip the beet. (Sorry.)

elderflower english garden cocktail drink
elderflower english garden cocktail drink
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Spirits Kiosk
Chase Elderflower Liqueur
Chase Elderflower Liqueur
70cl20%GB
£23.45
Warner's Elderflower Gin
Warner's Elderflower Gin
70cl40%GB
£30.95
St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
70cl20%FR
£27.45