The Drink You’ll Crave All Summer: Strawberry, Rhubarb & Vanilla Collins

The classic Vodka Collins has infinite opportunity for variation, but none so delicious as a pairing of two Simple Goodness Sisters’ Syrups: Rhubarb Vanilla and Berry Sage.

Freshly picked and washed whole strawberries join raspberries and fresh sage leaves to make the Berry Sage syrup

Paired together in this vodka Collins with a little bit of fresh lemon juice, the result is part fresh squeezed lemonade stand at a country fair, and part your great Aunt’s strawberry rhubarb pie. A vodka collins is made with fresh citrus juice, vodka, club soda, and the sweetener of your choosing. Obviously, we choose Simple Goodness Sisters’ syrups, for tasty, unique flavors reflective of the Northwest where we grow and craft cocktails. The Sumner’s Summer Solstice drink is sweet without becoming cloying, refreshing, and utterly summery. It can be made alcoholic or leave the alcohol for a sober friendly version.

We made this drink initially in an effort to celebrate the fact that our farm is just up the hill from the cute little town of Sumner, WA. The town is seriously Norman Rockwell, and if not for its proximity to the traffic beast that is highway 167, I’d probably live there today, but Enumclaw stole our hearts and provided a better commute. The town is also the “Rhubarb Pie Capitol of the World” and proudly has a Rhubarb Days festival down mainstreet each summer. Whether you attend or not (and I recommend you do) I DOUBLY recommend you try this drink.

Local or not, you’ll be transported to a small town that grows Northwest strawberries and rhubarb, and has for so long it created a festival to celebrate them. One drink and there you’ll be: dusty fields bursting with short, green, extremely camouflaging leaf growth and, hidden within, the vibrant, fat strawberries so bursting with juice that your red stained shoes as you leave show where you’ve been. When the Simple Goodness Farm grown sage hints through in that end of taste, last on your palette herbaceous finish, you’ll be in the green of Northwest summers, trees towering around you, grass at your feet. You’ll be transported to bygone days where popsicles and sprinklers marked the time between lazy sunshine soaked book reading on a towel as you dried off. This cocktail has that power. It tastes like summer in our little upper left corner of the world, and it tastes like summer might have tasted in your little corner of the world in your own childhood: sweet, colorful, festive.

The cocktail was made on air recently for King 5’s Evening Magazine with Kim Holcomb, a segment you can re-watch here.

Sumner’s Summer Solstice

Why to make it: a sweeter cocktail with more variation of flavor and freshness than sugar, this cocktail was made for parties, for hot days and lots of ice.

Makes 1 cocktail

• 1 1/2 ounces Heritage Distilling Batch 12 Vodka
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 ounce Simple Goodness Sisters Rhubarb Vanilla Syrup
• 1/2 ounce Simple Goodness Sisters Berry Sage Syrup
• 3 ounces club soda
• Garnish: fresh berries, large sage leaf, rhubarb cut thin as a stir stick

Combine the vodka, lemon juice and syrup in a shaker of ice, shake for 20 seconds or until the outside of the shaker is chilled. Strain into a Collins glass and top with the club soda. Garnish.

Sumner’s Summer Solstice
Makes 1 Mocktail

• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 ounce Simple Goodness Sisters Rhubarb Vanilla Syrup
• 3/4 ounce Simple Goodness Sisters Berry Sage Syrup
• 3 ounces club soda
• Garnish: fresh berries, large sage leaf, rhubarb cut thin as a stir stick

Combine the lemon juice and syrup in a shaker of ice, shake for 20 seconds or until the outside of the shaker is chilled. Strain into a Collins glass and top with the club soda. Garnish.

Shop all syrups here to harness that fresh harvested summer taste in delicious cocktails all year long!

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