Jackie Zykan

With over 20 years of experience in beverage alcohol, and a love affair with the natural world, I am delighted to share some of Kentucky’s finest distilled spirits alongside fresh, local, and seasonal botanicals.
Enjoying the wild bounty Kentucky has to offer can be a challenging feat in the heart of winter if you’re looking for freshly foraged ingredients. Luckily, there are various techniques to ensure our supply of local delicacies sustains us all winter long. Herbaceous elements can be dried and stored, and fresh fruits and vegetables can be harvested at the peak of ripeness and canned, turned into preserves, or frozen for later use. While I don’t recommend tossing a dollop of jelly into your shaker tin due to the clumpy texture you’ll end up with in your glass, I am a huge proponent of transforming fruit preserves into syrup to increase their versatility in the kitchen. Doing so gives you more ways to enjoy the delicious fruits of summer during these cold winter months, outside of just cocktail crafting. The method of rehydrating and heating preserves to create a syrup can be used on any fruit you’ve stored away. This month our focus is on the strawberry, for the health benefits, the symbolism, and of course the crimson color which adorns our Valentine’s day decor. A touch of jasmine in the featured recipe celebrates this month of love by leaning in to its natural aphrodisiac properties.

Featured Kentucky Flora: Fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry)
For the majority of the year, these darling little fruits pop up throughout the bluegrass state. They are noticeably smaller and with a denser covering of seeds than the common garden strawberry (available for purchase year round). They are nonetheless very much edible, albeit exceptionally more tart than their store bought counterparts. The strawberry we encounter at the grocery is Fragaria ananassa, or the garden strawberry, and is a hybrid of the wild strawberry and a chilean variety, Fragaria chiloensis. Despite the variances in sweetness and size, these members of the rose family punch above their weight as far as nutritional value. Loaded with antioxidants, fiber, and vitamin C, these little beauties are a lovely resource for maintaining a healthy immune system. Symbolically, strawberries are associated with Venus, the goddess of love, and have been used in many traditions as a means of expressing affection. It is even suggested in some folklore that sharing one of the delightful berries with someone will make them fall in love with you.

Venutian Tea
2 oz Jasmine Tea, unsweetened 1.5 oz Old Forester 86 proof bourbon 1 oz Strawberry Preserve Syrup 2 Dashes Peychaud’s Bitters 3-4 Fresh Strawberry Slices
Directions for all variations: Combine ingredients in shaker tin with ice. Shake, pour entire contents into glass.

Strawberry Preserve Syrup
Yields approximately ⅓ cup ½ cup Strawberry Preserves ¼ cup Jasmine Tea, unsweetened 2 TBSP sugar
Directions: Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Allow the mixture to simmer for 5 minutes and remove from heat. Cool, then pour through a fine mesh strainer into a heat safe vessel. Store syrup in the refrigerator.

When Dry January turns into Dry February.
Every day, more and more folks are choosing to abstain from consuming alcohol for a multitude of reasons. The aforementioned cocktail recipe can easily be crafted into a non-alcoholic version by substituting the bourbon component with a non-alcoholic spirit. There are many available in the market but if you’d like to save the trial and error process, my recommendation is the Free Spirits brand (www.drinkfreespirits.com).
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