Saffron Spritz Mocktail

A saffron mocktail earns its place by being bitter as well as sweet. This spritz is built over ice in a large wine glass: one ounce of saffron syrup, grapefruit and lime for edge, then cold sparkling water poured last. The syrup takes ten minutes of attention and keeps three weeks.

Why does a saffron mocktail need bitterness?

Take the alcohol out of a spritz and you remove two things at once. Ethanol carries aroma to the nose, and it brings a dry, faintly burning edge that keeps a sweet drink from cloying. What is usually left behind is fruit juice and fizz, which is why so many alcohol-free drinks taste like a soft drink with a garnish.

Saffron replaces the first of those. Its aroma compounds are volatile and readily water-soluble, and once the threads have bloomed properly, the smell comes up off the glass without any help from spirit. Grapefruit and lime replace the second. Grapefruit brings a genuine bitterness rather than just acid, which is the part most people miss without being able to name it.

Nothing traditional is being claimed here. A saffron spritz is a bar invention of the last decade or so, and saffron has no history in it. What saffron gives the drink is a warm, hay-and-honey top note and a colour that reads amber rather than the flat pink of a grapefruit soda.

How much saffron does this take?

Twenty-five threads, about 0.05 g, for a batch of syrup that makes six drinks. That is roughly four threads per glass, which sounds thin until you remember that the syrup concentrates the infusion into a sixth of its volume before it is diluted again.

Bloom the threads in the syrup water, not in the finished drink. Heat the half cup of water to about 150°F (65°C) — steaming, still, no bubbles — pour it over the threads, cover, and leave it 20 minutes. Boiling water is the mistake to avoid; it drives the aroma off as steam and leaves you with a yellow syrup that smells of nothing. Step by step, that is how to bloom saffron properly.

Add the sugar afterwards, off the heat. Sugar dissolved into an already-bloomed infusion tastes distinctly more floral than sugar boiled with threads, because you never take the syrup above the temperature at which the aroma leaves. If you keep saffron syrup on hand for other drinks, saffron simple syrup covers the keeping version, and the threads we bloom for it are the ones we sell.

What goes in the glass?

Quantities below make one spritz, plus about 2/3 cup of saffron syrup that will cover another five. Use a large stemmed wine glass of around 12 oz rather than a tumbler — the bowl holds the aroma where you can smell it.

• About 25 saffron threads (0.05 g), for the syrup
• 1/2 cup (120 ml) water, for the syrup
• 1/2 cup (100 g) caster sugar, for the syrup
• 1 wide strip of orange peel, pith scraped away, for the syrup
• 1 oz (30 ml) saffron syrup, per drink
• 2 oz (60 ml) fresh pink grapefruit juice, strained
• 1/2 oz (15 ml) fresh lime juice
• 4 oz (120 ml) chilled sparkling water
• 2 dashes orange bitters, optional
• Large ice cubes and one orange half-wheel, to serve

How do you build it?

1. Bloom the saffron for the syrup. Heat the 1/2 cup of water to about 150°F (65°C) and pour it over the threads in a heatproof jar. Cover and leave 20 minutes. The water should go the colour of weak marmalade before the sugar goes anywhere near it.
2. Stir in the sugar off the heat. Add the sugar and the orange peel to the warm saffron water and stir until you can no longer feel grit against the side of the jar. Do not put it back on the stove. There is enough residual heat to dissolve caster sugar, and boiling would undo the bloom you just spent twenty minutes on.
3. Rest the syrup, then chill it. Leave it on the counter for an hour with the threads still in, then cap it and refrigerate. It is usable immediately and noticeably better on day two, when the colour has gone from yellow to a proper orange. Yield is about 2/3 cup, enough for six drinks.
4. Get everything cold. Put the wine glass in the freezer for ten minutes and make sure the grapefruit juice and the sparkling water are properly cold from the fridge. Warm soda hitting ice foams straight over the rim and goes flat in the first minute.
5. Juice and strain the grapefruit. Half a large pink grapefruit gives roughly 2 oz. Push it through a tea strainer — unstrained juice leaves pulp suspended in a clear drink and turns the whole thing cloudy within a few minutes.
6. Build it in the glass. Fill the chilled glass to the brim with large cubes. Add the saffron syrup, the grapefruit juice, the lime and the bitters, then stir with a bar spoon for five seconds, no more. The ice should reach the top; a half-filled glass melts twice as fast.
7. Top and garnish. Pour the sparkling water down the back of the bar spoon so it slides in rather than crashes. Give it one slow lift from the bottom of the glass to marry it, then lay an orange half-wheel against the ice. Serve immediately.

What makes a mocktail taste thin?

Sweetness without anything pulling against it. A spirit-free drink has no alcoholic bite to balance sugar, so the sugar has to be answered by acid, bitterness or salt. This one leans on grapefruit for bitterness and lime for acid; if it still reads flat, three grains of flaky salt in the glass will tighten it more than any extra ingredient.

• Temperature beats dilution. Every component cold and the ice will barely melt. One warm component and the drink is watery before you sit down.
• Stir once, gently. Carbonation is the backbone of a spritz. Every extra stir after the soda goes in costs you fizz you cannot get back.
• Express the peel. Squeeze the orange half-wheel skin-side down over the surface before laying it in. The oil that lands on top is most of what you smell.
• Do not shake it. Shaking a carbonated drink is obvious advice, but shaking the still part with ice is also a mistake here: it over-dilutes before the soda arrives.

The other frequent error is syrup made too heavy. A 2:1 sugar syrup at 1 oz per drink turns this into a dessert. Keep it 1:1 by volume, as written.

Frequently asked questions

Is this genuinely alcohol free?

The drink itself is. The two dashes of orange bitters are the exception, since most bitters are around 40% alcohol by volume — two dashes work out to a few hundredths of a millilitre, which is less than you would find in a ripe banana, but it is not nothing. Leave them out if the drink needs to be strictly alcohol free, and add a wider twist of orange peel instead.

Can I batch this for a party?

Batch the still part only. Mix syrup, grapefruit and lime in the ratio 1:2:0.5 in a jug and keep it cold; that holds four hours. Pour 3 1/2 oz of the mix into each iced glass and top with sparkling water to order. A pre-mixed carbonated batch is flat by the time the second guest arrives.

What can I use instead of grapefruit?

Blood orange is the closest, though it is sweeter, so cut the syrup to 3/4 oz. Verjuice works well if you can find it and keeps the drink genuinely dry. Plain orange juice is the one to avoid: it has neither the acidity nor the bitterness, and the result tastes like squash.

How long does the saffron syrup keep?

Three weeks in a sealed bottle in the fridge, threads and all. The colour deepens over the first two days and then holds. If it turns cloudy or smells sharp rather than floral, throw it out — a low-sugar syrup like this one is not shelf stable at room temperature.

Read next

• Saffron simple syrup — the keeping version, and how to scale it
• Saffron lemonade — the same balance without the fizz
• Cooking with saffron — blooming, dosing and the mistakes that waste threads