Garden Jubilee: An Adventure with Tomato Vodka

Three Olives Vodka recently released three new and interesting flavors: Root Beer, Triple Shot Espresso and Tomato. It was the latter which caused me to sit back and think about the cocktails possible. Tomato vodka, what could you do with that? Of course we are all familiar with the strong tomato of the Bloody Mary and it's cousins of various spirits and I tried this Three Olives in that mix. The result is what I expected. It added nothing to the drink because the vodka was covered up by the tomato juice.

The result of further experiments led to a delightful cocktail with the taste of a fresh garden, one that I called Garden Jubilee. It required a lot of trial and error to get right but in the end it came out great. I really wanted to play off of the "freshness" of the vodka and I decided to add basil because those two flavors are always great together and when you add the botanicals of a complex gin (I used Martin Miller's initially and later found Damrak to be another great option) the mix was coming together. The only other elements it needed were a bit of citrus and some sweetness and !Voilà! the tomato vodka problem was solved. It has turned into one of my favorite new cocktails and I love to serve it with (what else but!) Fried Green Tomatoes.