Mixing It Up with Tamworth Distilling | Weekends with Yankee

Which is more beautiful: the full bloom of spring or the peak of fall? If you’re partial to the former, you’re in your element right now—and a tasty cocktail known as the May Flowers Fizz is a terrific way to celebrate blossom season.

This recipe was inspired by a visit to Tamworth Distilling, a small-batch spirits producer located in the idyllic village of Tamworth, at the southern edge of the White Mountains. The Weekends with Yankee crew filmed a segment there in mid-October, and between the mountain views, the beauty of Tamworth’s 19th-century architecture, and the Technicolor glory of peak foliage, that day could’ve converted any spring loyalist to the autumn camp.

Our guides were master distillers Matt Power and Jamie Oakes, both local boys who left town for school and work, only to have the good fortune to find their dream jobs back at home. They were hired by founder Steven Grasse, a marketing guru from Philadelphia who had launched such brands as Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum, which afforded him a vacation property in Tamworth not far from where his family had summered every year of his childhood.

With a supply of fresh water from the Ossipee Aquifer, Grasse created a line of spirits infused with the flavors of New Hampshire. As much as possible, all of Tamworth Distilling’s ingredients come from within a 150-mile radius of the distillery, and grains are milled on-site. Beets for infused vodka are grown in the garden and at a local farm, mushrooms are foraged locally, and balsam buds are picked fresh in the surrounding woods.

Power and Oakes took us on a hike to a beautiful overlook where a stand of balsams offered those very buds for picking. Then we headed back to Power’s test kitchen, where he uses a rotary evaporator to distill the buds into their component flavor compounds and selectively recombine those elements with other flavors to make, say, Tamworth’s line of seasonal gins.

In the tasting room, one of those gins stood out for its unexpected blend of juniper, grapefruit, geranium, and elderflower. Called Flora, it had us thinking of fresh spring mornings—which in turn led to this cocktail, which is fragrant with aromas of ginger, lime, and rose. As is, the recipe serves two, but it can be easily scaled up to serve a crowd.

Get the Recipe:
May Flowers Fizz