Citrus Ginger Sake Spritzer Cocktail Recipe

Refreshing Yuzu-Inspired Cocktail of Ginger, Citrus, Sake, and Soda

Sep 24, 2009 Alia Luria

A popular cocktail in Tokyo called the Yuzu Sour is made from yuzu juice, shochu, and sour mix. This recipe is a light and refreshing substitute from common ingredients.

Yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit, which is a popular cooking ingredient in Japan, often used in sauces and fish recipes. Frequently, however, the juice is sweetened and drunk like a lemonade, made into a sweet hot tea with pulp and peel, and turned into delicious yuzu sour cocktails. Yuzu juice can even be purchased in certain cities, such as Honolulu, as a bottled beverage in retail stores such as Don Quijote, a Japanese department store with a large selection of imported Japanese food and beverages.

Yuzu as a Beverage Enhancer

Because yuzu juice is often hard to find outside of cities with a large Asian market or Japanese presence, this recipe imitates the refreshment of a yuzu cocktail without the need to procure actual yuzu juice. If you have access to yuzu juice, however, you can use it in place of the grapefruit and lime juice.

This recipe tries to approximate a yuzu cocktail, although it a lighter, more refreshing version of a sour, made with ginger syrup, sake (rather than the stronger shochu, which is a Japanese grain alcohol that is not as strong as vodka but stronger than sake), grapefruit, lime, and lemon lime soda. This recipe is designed to create an entire pitcher of the beverage, so halve it if you only have a carafe, or double or triple if serving a lot of guests.

With this recipe, it is best to prepare the ginger syrup ahead of time so that it has time to chill. This syrup is extremely tasty and can be used in other drink recipes, such as to create ginger sweet tea, or even a ginger masala tea, or a ginger hot chai.