Pisco Plum

Plum Shrub Cocktail Love

Despite the joy stone fruit trees bring—apricots, nectarines, plums, oh my!—they hide a secret burden. When the crop comes in, every single fruit is ripe at exactly the same time. It’s like having to answer a question that’s never asked: What can one do when everyone you’ve ever been attracted to loves you at once?

That’s why you need to turn that tree into a shrub. The idea goes back to pre-Revolution America, when all that fruit didn’t even have the chance to get refrigerated. So people developed shrubs—most simply a combo of fruit, sugar and vinegar—to preserve that fruit in a fantastic drinkable form. And as with most things tasty and liquid, shrubs have made a huge renaissance with the advent of the craft cocktail. (Shrubs also allow non-drinkers to enjoy some of the craft care of drinks without the alcohol punch—just use them in some soda water or tonic.)

Turns out we’ve got Santa Rosa plum trees in our yard, so I made sure to harvest enough for some cocktail exploration. You’ll find the shrub recipe at right, and note that it’s a cold shrub; some people suggest cooking the fruit and sugar, but I wanted a less worked-over product. Feel free to experiment on your own—just keep the fruit to sugar to vinegar ratio relatively even and it should end up delicious. You can even throw in other aromatics like herbs or ginger if you want.

The Pisco Plum, then, already has a myriad of flavors at work just from the shrub, which flips and flops sweet and sour in tantalizing ways. The other two main ingredients also keep adding to the depth of this fascinating drink. It’s as if you can still smell plum blossoms on the nose, but then the smoky chili sneaks in, too, and the lime elevates the citrus characteristics of the pisco.

Alas, that liquor—Peru’s national spirit, as it’s known north of the border—tends to be relegated merely, and I use that term advisedly as it’s a lovely cocktail, to the Pisco Sour (lime juice, simple syrup, egg white, bitters). But Peru is distilling piscos (they’re made from grapes, actually, so are a kind of white brandy) for export, now, that aren’t as bruising as some of the product we used to get. Check out Pisco Portón, for example (it’s also got a cool bottle). It adds a wide flavor array, from herbs to spice to citrus, and should be a favorite of anyone who is an adventurous tequila drinker.

The drink gets a spectacular kick from the Ancho Reyes Chile Liqueur, a hot (in several ways) new product that finally solved the “can chiles work in a liquor without tasting like a fake infusion?” dilemma. Supposedly inspired by a 1920s Mexican recipe—can we ever read such a claim without assuming it’s marketing bluster?—it nonetheless brings both heat, mostly on the finish, that throat-warming moment, and smoke, as ancho chiles are a grill’s best spicy friend. Add up all the flavors and the plum fruit gets more and more complicated; it’s a drink to dive into and spend some time with, especially if you’re eating something barbecued for summer as you sip.

And don’t skip the lime. Both the Ancho Reyes (kind of surprisingly, but that’s part of its charm) and the shrub bring a surprising amount of sweet, so the drink needs some more acid. And the lime plays off the pisco in lovely ways, complicating the citrus notes of the drink.