Corazon Escarlata made with new Mexican liqueur
A fantastic Mexican pomegranate liqueur recently landed in U.S. liquor stores, and its origin story is partly a history lesson that ends in a cocktail glass.
It starts in 1864, when the French emperor Napoleon III installed Maximilian of Hapsburg as emperor of Mexico. He held a teetering role in conflict with the rule of President Benito Juarez until he was executed in 1867. During this brief French regime, 50,000 French folks, including Henri Vallet, migrated to Mexico. Vallet, a chemist who settled in Mexico City, created two Old World-style bitter liqueurs — Amargo-vallet (an earthy angostura bitter) and Fernet-vallet (an herbal spirit) — that are still made according to his formulations to this day. Even after the French rule was just a memory, the Fernet-vallet lived on, sitting on a dusty shelf in nearly every taberna in Mexico as a hangover cure, taken in a shot called a piedra, consisting of the fernet plus anisette plus a squirt of limon (lime).
In 2012, riding the fresh wave of amaro interest in the U.S., the maker of these liqueurs, Royal Vallet, began exporting to the north. In 2014, Jacob Lustig, a longtime champion of Mexican spirits, purchased Royal Vallet. Soon, with the help of chemist Roberto Ladron de Guevara, he created Granada-vallet, a pomegranate liqueur in the style of a red Italian bitter aperitivo to complete the trio. Tart pomegranate, native to Nayarit, gets infused in a base of Veracruz rum with citrus, cinnamon and fennel, then bittered with gentian root, and cinchona and wormwood barks. Its natural warm red color comes from Oaxacan cochineal, derived from insects, a daring move in these days of veganism. (A backlash against using the bug in food and beverage manufacturing has led some makers to seek red dye subs.) But Lustig wanted to offer a liqueur sourced from all-natural, all-mexican ingredients, “no tinctures, no extracts, no chemicals.”
Granada-vallet, like its Italian cousins Campari and Aperol, tastes great on ice before dinner, or in simple cocktails like a spritz or Negroni — think of it as a more bitter, pomegranateforward version of Campari. We thought its rich red color would lend both brightness and bitterness to winter cocktails.
Most simply, a big splash in a Champagne flute topped with cava makes a fruity pink sparkler. When combined in a stirred cocktail with rum, orange and hibiscus tea infused from dried Jamaica flowers, Granada-vallet goes tropical but not tiki. Made flirty and dramatic with hibiscus tea ice cubes, the deep red Corazon Escarlata will kick off a dinner for two on a bitter and sweet note.