Have You Never Been Pomelo

A Great Fruit Cocktail

The person who used to own our house left us a botanical wonder in the backyard: a pomelo tree. At first, we thought it was a grapefruit, but then its fruit just kept growing larger. That’s only fitting, as the pomelo’s scientific name is Citrus maxima, and you could have slept through your Latin class and still figure out that translation. True to form, the one plucked from the tree that I used to work on this cocktail weighed in at 3.6 pounds. Be careful when gathering the fruit, as a pomelo’s branches have nasty, inch-long spikes Vlad the Impaler would be proud to call friends.

Turns out that the pomelo is an ancestor citrus; references to them in China go back 4,000 years. Humans, doing what we do, started hybridizing to get to all the citrus we now know and love, but that doesn’t mean Gramp’s pomelo should be forgotten. The pomelo might not be as well-known as its popular descendant, the grapefruit, because its pith is crazy thick. Under its greenturning-to-yellow-skin, you’ll find at least an inch of white pith, so the fruit reward for the size of the globe is surprisingly small. If you score ¾ cup of juice from one fruit, you’ve done well. But that juice is wonderful, with less astringency than grapefruit. Some compare its taste to a happy grapefruit-tangerine marriage.

So, of course, that makes me think, “Cocktail!” The most famous grapefruit concoction is the Greyhound, and as a lover of skinny-headed, speedy dogs and citrusy gin drinks both, I couldn’t resist a variation on one of those. But the Have You Never Been Pomelo Cocktail—in addition to being a homage to Olivia Newton-John and AM 1970s radio (and why not?)— also gets a bit more exotic with another local-ish product, the addition of Ventura Spirits Amaro Angeleno. Amaro, of course, has been a hot topic in mixology circles for the past few years, so every distiller/winery wants to make one. And given that there are easily a hundred Amari just in Italy, there’s lots of room to be expressive in this wonderful world of root- and peel- and herb- and bark-infused bitterness.

Enter Ventura Spirits with this smoother, easier sipping style amaro, as befits laid-back Angelenos. Their website compares it to Aperol, but it’s less sticky and more orange than red in both drinkable color and flavor, if that makes sense. It’s sort of a Pacific sunset in a bottle: There’s a hint of regret as to the day’s loss, but also the pick-me-up promise of the night to come. Very citrus-forward, it brings up the classic herbal bitterness and a hint of fennel in its lingering finish. And in this cocktail, it truly sings alongside the pomelo juice, all the ranges of citrus flavors echoing as if they got played on the organ at Disney Concert Hall.

That said, a little buffering sweetness never hurt anybody, hence the barely more than a splash of simple syrup. Even there, you get to sneak in more flavor by making it a pomelo simple syrup. Be careful peeling the rind from the fruit; I used a vegetable peeler and then cut those wider strips into narrower ones, about a quarter of an inch wide by two inches long. Once sugared, these are sort of addictive and certainly make a bit of a festive addition to your coupe.

In case you can’t find pomelos, as I imagine not every drinkable landscape is blessed with a pomelo tree, a grapefruit will do, but note that pomelos tend to be sweeter, so you might need a bit more simple syrup in your shaker to balance that out. Or decide you like to be pleasingly puckered.

A Have You Never Been Pomelo is particularly refreshing and makes a great brunch drink with its sunshine punch, so consider whipping it up instead of another boring mimosa. The pomelo is also much more popular in Southeast Asia—you’ll find the fruit served up in salads, and some even braise the pith as a meat substitute—to the point it’s often associated with good luck for the Lunar New Year. True enough, for it’s a fruit as big as a full moon.