This Pantry Ingredient Gives Cocktails And Mocktails An Instant Boost

Life is all about balance, and when sweetness sits on the flavor see-saw, its best friend is acidity. Without contrasting sourness, sweetness slumps with its butt flat on the ground. Adding acid to balance sugar in cocktails and mocktails is pretty easy, with citrus fruit essentially being packets of sour, flavorful juice. There are, however, more inventive ways to introduce complex acidity to your drinks — namely, in the form of vinegar. That doesn't mean tipping a shot of plain white vinegar straight into your margarita. With a little know-how and some inspiration from Molly Horn, Chief Mixologist and Spirits Educator at Total Wine & More, you can whip up some truly intriguing tipples with vinegar.

"Using vinegar in mixology actually dates back quite some time, especially in the form of a shrub," Horn says. "[Which is] essentially a 'drinking vinegar' that is traditionally made from fruit and sweetener mixed with vinegar for a sweet-tart-bright flavor that can be enjoyed on its own or to enhance cocktails." This extra step can be as complex or as simple as you like, integrating various fruits, herbs, spices, and, most importantly, different types of vinegar.

Regardless of the ingredients, the aim is to balance sweet and sour in the mixture before you add it into your drink. Just as lemons, limes, and grapefruit are a combination of fruit sugars and citric acid, the aim is to create a vinegar-based infusion that isn't just pure sourness.

Cocktails, by definition, are about combination. While Horn's strong recommendation is to whip up a shrub, explaining that it's "by far the best and easiest way to add vinegar and that bright tartness to a cocktail," selecting your booze isn't the biggest choice you'll make. "When it comes to pairing with the best spirit types," she explains, "I find it's actually more important to consider what type of vinegar and ... what type of fruit you want to use." For example, there are several approaches to using balsamic vinegar in a shrub to pair its deep flavor and richness with dark berries, or even basil and ginger beer in cocktails like mixologist Jerry Slater's Bufala Negra.

Horn recommends pairing cherries with balsamic vinegar, and she suggests this shrub as a great pairing with bourbon. High Plains Spice Company's Bourbon Cherry Balsamic Shrub Cocktail fits this bill to the letter, capitalizing on the combination of balsamic vinegar's richness, berry sweetness and flavor, and refreshing tartness.

Once you get the basic recipe down, with a popular equal parts ratio of vinegar, sugar, and fruit, the fun begins in experimenting with flavor combinations. The key, as Horn outlines, is to identify pairings that work and reverse-engineer the cocktail based on the vinegar and fruit you've matched. "For example, you could do apple cider vinegar and strawberries," she says, "which would go great with gin." Riffing on Beefeater's Pink Lady cocktail using strawberry-flavored gin, you could easily replace the lemon juice with an apple cider vinegar and strawberry shrub, and use a standard gin to approximate the flavor combinations while adding a whisper more complexity to the drink.

Enjoy a touch of heat in your cocktail? You could create a shrub by combining apple cider vinegar with blueberries and jalapeños to make a spicy Jalapeño Shrub Cocktail. Pushing the boat out even further, even savory ingredients can be a feature ingredient in a shrub. If you've got a taste for a touch of smoke, you could whip up a Carrot or the Stick cocktail, created by Tristan Brunel at the now closed George Washington Bar in New York City. This creative concoction combines mescal with a shrub comprising apple cider vinegar, cardamom, white sugar, and — you guessed it — a carrot.