Testing the waters: the alcoholic kind incorporating strawberries. A new Italian liquor is youthful, bright, pretty and fun. Very much like the people who will be drinking it.
Varietals: Wilder Strawberries
I enjoy sweet wines and will sometimes have a glass of port or icewine or a late harvest riesling along with, or more likely in place of, dessert. I look for depth and complexity and a savory edge that balances the sweetness. Liqueurs, spirit-based, are another story. I usually find them overly sweet and one dimensional, although I realize they are prized by some people and have an honored place on tables around the world.
Fragoli, which I just came across, is, as the name indicates, a strawberry liqueur imported from Italy. Simply because it is being heavily promoted in the Hamptons this summer I decided to test it. The color is bright and attractive, and each bottle contains about three quarters of a cup or so of tiny wild strawberries. I don’t how they manage to keep the strawberries individual and whole and delicately suspended so they jiggle in the bottle. When you taste them they are not the least bit mushy.
The tag around the neck of the bottle gave a number of drinking suggestions. I tried it cold, as they recommend, and also on ice, but I found both versions too sweet for my palate. There is a generation out there that drinks Pepsi Cola with dinner—you know who you are—and they might enjoy straight Fragoli more than I did.
It was far more successful as an ingredient in mixed drinks. I tried using it the same way I would crème de cassis in a Kir. One part Fragoli to five parts white wine seems about right—and that happens to be my preference in a Kir also. The wine took on a tantalizing pale pink color and the few wild strawberries in the glass gave it visual interest. Any dry white wine would work, but I would not use an expensive one since the mixture masks some the fresh fruit flavors of the wine.
I also tried it with a cremant, in this case a sparkling wine from Burgundy that I drink quite often. The one to five proportions worked best here also, and the berries in the flutes were quite festive. It is a friendly, cheerful drink, one I would enjoy again. But as with the white wine, don’t use a sparkler that is important or costly.
A friend who is a much better and more imaginative cocktail maker than I am tried a few different martinis incorporating Fragoli. All were vodka based and had such other added ingredients as triple sec. He judged them a success and so did a few other tasters. I enjoyed them to some extent. It was not the Fragoli that was the problem for me. I just find all these trendy fruit-driven martinis not quite on the mark. I know they are popular in the bars and clubs of New York and here on the East End. Maybe it is generational, that Pepsi generation again. They are certainly easy to drink, almost like fruit juice, whereas the martinis I like—with vermouth and an olive—have no sweetness to mask the vodka or gin. The traditional versions must be more of an acquired taste.
The Fragoli producer’s tag has a recipe for a drink with gin and a few other ingredients that does not sound like a good idea to me. Juniper berries with strawberries? I think not. I did not try the full fledged margarita they recommend, but Fragoli with a sip of tequila was very good indeed. Best of all was a daiquiri. I did not use their recipe—the sugar syrup and lime syrup seemed too cloying. But lime juice, Fragoli, and a shot of rum was a superb combination.
I expect Fragoli will be well received here. It seems made for summer in the Hamptons, or for that matter Capri or the Cote d’Azur. It is youthful, bright, pretty and fun—probably very much like the people who will be drinking it.
