Ladies and Gents,

welcome to another opinionated mixology monday - this time hosted by Dave at The Barman Cometh.

So what is it all about? Please see following description of Dave:

1. The challenge is to feature a cocktail that highlights a floral flavor profile or includes a floral derived ingredient, whether home-made or off the shelf.  With the ever expanding catalogue of spirits (and the kitchen labs of home enthusiasts), there’s a whole host of directions for you to choose from – elderflower liqueur, creme de violette, chamomile infused gin, hibiscus grenadine, rosewater, lavender syrup – or to create.
   

Flowers? Sounds interesting - brilliant! Thank you very much Dave, for this great topic of this Mixology Monday [LVII - for the ones who are counting].

Now, where to start? Sarah [my better half] started the “flower power” in Vu’s Bar... As much as I would like to post here some of her cocktails [I helped her for some...] it is off limits for me. I am actually waiting, that she is starting her own blog...

We actually bought a lot of flowers at the spice souk here in Dubai. Pomegranate blossoms, white and blue jasmine, white saffron flowers [at least this was the description of the “habibi” of one store], mixed Lebanese flowers, rose buds, hollyhock, rosellem you name it.

However what they didn’t had was osmanthus - one Chinese flower, which has the potential to be the next trendy aroma!
Think  off passion-fruit meets elderflower... yes... exactly... yummy!

Long story short, I still had a small plastic bag, which didn’t ended up in my last assignment at the Shangri-La and was not “robbed” of Sarah.

First idea was, to infuse vodka with it. Yeah - Voda bar refers to Vodka [as voda/woda means water and vodka/wodka is the minimization of water - but well - I was never so keen on over-using vodka.

Gin can be seen as complexly infused vodka and to re-infuse gin with osmanthus was my final call.
I used Beefeater 24 - and despite the character of the original Beefeater [which is quite bold and junipery] Beefeater is carefully composed from a more delicate melange of botanicals - including Japanese and Chinese tea.

I bathed a few minutes the osmanthus flowers in the gin - then decided to give it an excursion to the vacuum food saver to speed up the infusion - this took around 1 min [including walking to the machine] instead of 1 or 2 weeks...

The last step of the infusion is to fine strain it.

What to do with it? Please don’t make a Martini cocktail with it!
A flowery Gin & Tonic would be an idea; but I guess a Osmanthus White Lady, is what we are really after.

Shake it very strong and strain it into a pre-chilled cocktail saucer [I don’t yet have saucers, so I took a cocktail glass]. Garnish with an orange spiral; voilá.

It taste like a White Lady - but is more flowery and subtle [especially because of the egg white] - and: it is a pretty good drink for this MXMO LVII and Dave of The Barman Cometh...