Jasmine

Jasmine liqueur recipes date back to at least the mid-1700s, but surely someone thought to pour alcohol over jasmine flowers long before that. The species to get is Jasminum officinale, sometimes called poet’s jasmine. You could also try the tropical Jasminum sambac, called pikake in Hawaii, if you thought you could protect it from temperatures below sixty degrees year-round. In fact, both of these jasmine require a mild winter, so plan on bringing them indoors if you get heavy frost or snow. Otherwise, all they need is a moderate amount of water and a structure to climb on.

The procedure for extracting jasmine flavor from the flowers is similar to that of elderflowers—soak them in water or simple syrup, not alcohol, because many of the flavor molecules in these flowers are water-soluble, not alcohol-soluble. Use alcohol sparingly as a preservative after you’ve extracted the flavor and filtered it. And if you want to skip the flowers and go straight to the booze, you’ve actually got two jasmine liqueurs to choose from:  Koval’s Organic Jasmine Liqueur, and Fruitlab’s Organic Jasmine Liqueur.