Revitalize Your Cosmopolitan With A Simple Cranberry Juice Swap

That the Cosmopolitan is an iconic cocktail is no mystery. There's just something about seeing that vibrant pink drink slide across a bar that instantly makes you crave refreshing fruit flavors with your imbibing experience. Early iterations believed to have contributed to today's Cosmo stretch back as far as the beginning of the 20th century, but it's likely within the last three decades or so that modern bartenders perfected its combination of vodka, cranberry juice, lime juice, and triple sec.

The television show "Sex and the City" made Cosmopolitans trendy in the early aughts, and a retro approach to tipples plus martini mania in the last few years have revived their popularity. But with popularity comes the urge to try new twists, from experimenting bartenders and creative home imbibers alike. One of the better-known and best-tasting updates turns cranberry juice's bitterness sweet, creating something that's still recognizably a Cosmo but fresh and exciting at the same time. And that update is the Concord Cosmopolitan. 

You may gather from the name that this version utilizes Concord grape juice. Of the many different types of grapes, Concord grapes skew significantly sweeter — they're jammy, and can even have a floral quality. So, when you add Concord grape juice to your classic Cosmopolitan cocktail instead of cranberry juice, you're swapping out a more acidic bitter sweetness for more rounded, fruitier notes that still have some balanced brightness. With the citrus-sweet triple sec and tart lime, you get a fruity profile that's even more complex than the original Cosmo.

Making a Concord Cosmopolitan is a snap. Where you'd use a ½ or ¾ ounce of cranberry juice — depending on how much fruit flavor you want tempering your vodka — swap in grape juice. Store-bought juice works just fine, and it may be the only option as Concord grapes are hard to find in grocery stores. But if you spot Concord grapes at a farmer's market, grab them and make your own juice for an especially full, fresh flavor and mouthfeel. Especially if you have whole grapes handy, you can try other forms of cocktail ingredients to play around with your Cosmo's texture. For example, you can DIY homemade, flavored simple syrup. Concord grapes are great to work with for projects like this because their skin is fragile and tears easily, revealing the fruit you want inside. If you make a Concord grape simple syrup, add it to a Cosmo that also employs cranberry juice to work both bitterness and sweetness.

Of all the tips for making next-level Cosmopolitans, this kind of curiosity and experimentation is possibly the most important. Don't be afraid to swap juices in and out, combine fruit flavors, and incorporate syrups. Split the ¾ ounces of juice between Concord grape and strawberry or blackberry juice to get a more layered sweetness, or use lemon instead of lime for a sweet sourness rather than more tartness. A skewer of Concord grapes with a lemon or lime peel is an accordingly updated garnish.