Syrups

These are mixing ingredients rather than drinks, and the page is dominated by one producer. Vedrenne, a French house better known on this site for its liqueurs and its cassis, makes almost everything here, in one litre bottles at zero per cent.

The flavours split into three useful groups. The classics a bar cannot work without: orgeat, the almond cordial that a mai tai and a japanese cocktail depend on, grenadine, elderflower, vanilla, rose, mint and cinnamon. The fruit syrups: strawberry, cherry, blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, peach, mango, passionfruit, pineapple, banana, watermelon, lychee, pomegranate, grapefruit and green apple. And the odd ones that turn out to be more useful than they look: salted caramel, coconut, amaretto, lavender and curacao.

Two bottles on the page are not syrups in the strict sense. St James sugar cane syrup comes from Martinique and is the traditional sweetener for a ti punch, made from cane rather than refined sugar. Fee Brothers grenadine is an American bar staple. The Vedrenne super cassis is a liqueur rather than a cordial and carries alcohol, which the label makes clear.

Syrups are how a home bar gets consistent. A measured half ounce of orgeat is the same every time in a way that a spoon of sugar and a guess is not.

Falernum sits on the line between a syrup and a liqueur, and our falernum guide explains which version does what in a drink.

History

Syrup is one of the oldest ways of keeping fruit. Boiling juice with sugar removes the water that spoilage needs, and the result keeps for months where the fruit keeps for days. The word itself comes through Latin and Old French from the Arabic sharab, a drink, and the technique reached Europe with the sugar trade.

For centuries syrups were made in pharmacies and kitchens rather than bought. Orgeat began as an almond and barley drink, which is where its name comes from, and it was a cooling drink long before it was a cocktail ingredient. Grenadine was pomegranate syrup, plainly named after the fruit. Elderflower and rose cordials belonged to the same domestic tradition.

The cocktail trade turned them into bar stock. American bartending manuals from the middle of the nineteenth century already assume gum syrup, orgeat and raspberry syrup behind the bar, and the drinks built on them, from the sours to the punches, are still the standard repertoire.

France kept a commercial cordial industry through the twentieth century in a way that the English speaking world largely did not, partly because sirop diluted with water is an ordinary household drink there rather than a bar ingredient. Vedrenne's range, which runs to dozens of flavours, comes out of that tradition.

The tiki revival and the cocktail revival of the 2000s brought orgeat, falernum and cane syrup back into general use, and the bottles here follow from that.

How to drink it

Syrups are measured, not poured by eye. Most cocktail recipes that call for one want about 15 to 20ml against 60ml of spirit, and the difference between a good sour and a cloying one is usually a few millilitres.

Start with the standard builds. A sour is spirit, citrus and syrup, shaken hard with ice; swap the plain sugar syrup for orgeat and you have the backbone of a mai tai. A ti punch is cane syrup, lime and rum, stirred without ice. A spritz or a highball takes a smaller measure, because soda dilutes but does not balance.

Fruit syrups work with soda and ice on their own, which is how they are drunk in France, and that is the easiest way to taste one before you build a drink with it.

Cassis with white wine makes a kir and with sparkling wine a kir royale, though the super cassis on this page is the liqueur version rather than the cordial.

Storage matters more than people expect. An unopened bottle is stable in a cupboard; once opened, syrup belongs in the fridge and should be used within a few weeks. Cloudiness or a change in smell means it is finished.

A one litre bottle is a lot of syrup for a home bar, so pick two or three you will actually use rather than a shelf of flavours you will not.