HOW TO DRINK ST MAUR
Plunk in some ice, squeeze in some fresh citrus juice, top up with a fizz, drink it on its own, or mix in a sublime cocktail. There are lots of ways to enjoy St Maur.
On this page we explore a few signature drinks: sips and sours, High Balls, English Martinis, champagne cocktails, and the Hugo St Maur, probably the best spritz in the world. In St Maur there is something for every moment.
St Maur
The balance and freshness achieved in St Maur gives it a versatility that makes it ideal for sipping, mixing, and cocktails. On its own, in blind tasting, St Maur is an internationally award winning and acclaimed premium wild elderflower liqueur.
Drink St Maur on its own, but perhaps not on your own…. St Maur’s rich elderflower perfume is evocative of summer, of halcyon days, and memories made with friends. Just open the bottle, take in the unmistakeable aroma, pour glasses to share. Take time to appreciate the beauty and the colour. Enjoy the warm spirit.
A beautiful aperitif any time of the year.
Fire and Ice
“Elder” comes from an Anglo Saxon word meaning fire. Pour the warm spirit of St Maur and drop in some ice.
Fire and ice. Summer is coming.
Royal Mistress
Elegant, rich, intriguing, like its namesake, with this twist on a St Maur sip we honour Isabella Ingram-Seymour-Conway, 2nd Marchioness of Hertford. Isabella was the mistress of the Prince Regent in the early 19th century, the lead role in our family’s own Regency drama.
Cut a small slice in the side of one or two frozen blackcurrants and drop them into a glass of St Maur just before serving.
Hugo St Maur
For mixing St Maur, let’s start with perhaps the best known elderflower cocktail, the Hugo spritz. Whilst we have relatives who rode with William the Conqueror, we haven’t actually come across an ancestor named Hugo St Maur. But our mixologist definitely knows a good contemporary cocktail and St Maur makes probably the best Hugo in the world. This is a personal summer favourite.
One or two measures of St Maur, freshly squeezed juice of half a lime, a few fresh mint leaves bruised to release the flavour, top up with Prosecco, or an English sparkling wine. Dilute the Prosecco to taste with sparkling water if preferred.
St Maur 75
Our St Maur adventure started with a champagne cocktail, created for a wedding day. So St Maur’s 75 cocktail is a return to its roots, and a renewal of perhaps the most classic of champagne cocktails, the French 75. The St Maur 75 is a decidedly English drink though: made with St Maur, dry gin, lemon juice, and sparkling English wine. A new classic? Make it for two. Love it, share it, enjoy it, and let us know!
Recipe (for two): 50ml St Maur, 50ml dry gin, freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon, dry English sparkling wine. Shake the St Maur, gin, and lemon juice with ice in a cocktail shaker, or stir in a jug with ice. Moisten the rim of two flute glasses with creme de cassis and frost with caster sugar. Carefully strain the cocktail mix into the flutes pouring the equally between the two. Top up with a dry English sparkling wine. Garnish to decorate (we have used dry rose petals) and serve to some one you love to be with.
Pink Moon
St Maur works so well with citrus. No more so than in this delicious and delicate champagne cocktail. This is the drink we share and enjoy with Chinese members of our family to celebrate Spring Festival. Translated its name means “Pink Moon”.
St Maur, freshly squeezed red pomelo juice, shaken with ice, topped up with champagne (actually in the picture it is a good English sparkling). Garnish with a pomelo peel twist.
St Maur’s Secret Garden
In our secret garden there is a pear tree. It is the Yuletide perch of St Maur’s partridge mascot, Percy. It’s a Williams Pear, of course, a varietal which is also known as a “Good Christian” pear, and the inspiration for this sublime champagne cocktail, The Secret Garden.
Moisten the rim of a coupe glass with a little Crème de Violette and frost with caster sugar. In a cocktail shaker pour one measure of St Maur, one measure of dry gin, a generous half measure of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and a good teaspoon of pear purée. Shake with ice to mix and cool the ingredients. Strain into the coupe glass and top up with a good English sparkling wine, or champagne if you prefer. Decorate and serve.
St Maur High Balls…
St Maur makes a great variety of lower alcohol “High Ball” drinks. You can add a twist to these drinks by creating a flavour gradient in the glass. So when you stir, don’t stir too hard.
In this example, we have used a Collins glass (a tall narrow glass tumbler) to get maximum effect. Fill the glass with ice, pour in one or two measures of St Maur’s award winning elderflower liqueur, squeeze fresh juice from a little less than half a lemon and add over the St Maur, top up with the fizz. Stir only gently to create a flavour gradient with more fizz at the top, more St Maur at the bottom, and a gentle blending as you go down. Drink from the top or through a straw from the bottom.
Laughing Cavalier
The Laughing Cavalier is a summer garden party drink which can only be made with St Maur. It celebrates our direct family connection with the Wallace Collection in London.
Made to a variation of a Tom Collins, the Laughing Cavalier by St Maur is perhaps the perfect drink to been seen with. St Maur, freshly squeezed lemon juice, ice, soda water. Use a twist of lemon peel and a Maraschino cherry to garnish.
The Can Do Cocktail
Another sublime garden party drink unique to St Maur. Created in association with the good folks at Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA), this is a variation on a Moscow Mule, using St Maur to replace vodka. “Can Do” sums up the spirit of the RDA, and captures our ethos at Drink St Maur so well too.
St Maur shaken with freshly squeezed lime juice, topped up with ginger beer. Garnish with a long horse’s neck lime peel twist.
St Maur and Soda
Recycle your old Gin & Tonic glass with St Maur and Soda.
One or two measures of St Maur, a squeeze of lime, drop in some ice, pour in some soda water, and give it a stir. Then top up with soda water to taste, and pop in a lime wedge to garnish.
St Maur and bitter lemon
Some people say the simplest ideas are the best. As the summer heats up try St Maur and bitter lemon.
One or two measures of St Maur, ice, top up with bitter lemon straight from the fridge.
The English English Martini
No, that’s not a typo. If you are going to make an English Martini, do make sure you make it with a little drop of England’s heart.
Two measures (50ml) of gin, one measure (25ml) St Maur Elderflower Liqueur, a sprig of fresh rosemary. The ratio 2:1 of gin to St Maur can be adjusted to taste depending on how you like your Martini, sweet to dry. You may see recipes for English Martini which suggest other elderflower liqueurs, but if you want your English Martini to be English, you can’t get more English than St Maur, from the Heart of England. The hero in the cocktail is the elderflower, and St Maur has a generous elderflower nose and flavour.
When it comes to Martinis, call us old fashioned if you wish, but we’re definitely with Harry MacElhone – show off your Martini action, shake it. Rosemary has a pungent and strong essence, so use a small pinched sprig of fresh rosemary. Muddle the rosemary at the bottom of the shaker to release its flavour, then fill up the shaker with ice cubes. Add the gin and St Maur, and shake well. We recommend a Parisian shaker (to minimise ice breakage and dilution of the Martini). Strain into an ice cold Martini glass, decorate, and serve. Garnish for appearance and decoration, rather than to add to the mix, so don’t go putting olives in this drink. In the image we have used a rosemary flower.
This cocktail has also been featured by The Cocktail Service
Earls’ Martini
There is something unashamedly and delightfully idiosyncratic about this cocktail. It is also a Martini surely crafted in heaven, in the English style? And if you are going to use the apostrophe correctly in the name, then it can only be mixed with St Maur.
Two measures of gin, infused with Earl Grey tea. Use a good quality loose leaf made with real bergamot oil, and infuse the gin for no more than one minute before straining into a cocktail shaker. One measure of St Maur. Shake with ice, strain and serve ice cold.
Wild Garlic Martini
This is a lovely little drink, to be savoured just after the Spring Equinox when wild garlic flourishes in woodlands throughout the United Kingdom. It is a drink as ethereal as the time of year in which it can be made. We make our Wild Garlic Martinis with leaves foraged in Ladies Wood in Warwickshire, where our wild elders grow. That’s why at home we call this the Ladies Wood Martini.
Two measures of gin, one measure of St Maur, one or two fresh wild garlic leaves depending on strength of flavour and your taste. Tear, muddle, and infuse the garlic leaf in the gin in a Parisian shaker before adding ice cubes and the St Maur. Shake well and strain into an ice cold Martini glass. Garnish with a small garlic leaf.
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Daylight Martini
The Daylight Martini is a cocktail we created uniquely with St Maur to enjoy at Hallowe’en, and as a counterpoint to the Vampire. It’s a drink too for any occasion when perhaps you feel the need to summon the protections of folklore against witches, vampires, werewolves, ghouls and ghosts. The Daylight Martini brings the generous elderflower of St Maur, to invoke the protection of the Elder Mother spirit, along with garlic to ward off the evil eye. You can make this cocktail with a dry gin, but we’ve chosen a Genever from Amsterdam to go with the St Maur, as a tribute to Abraham Van Helsing, who had a stake in Bram Stoker’s story, and who was Dutch and, well, from Amsterdam. It all tastes rather good too…
Place two measures of St Maur, with one measure of Oude Genever (or a dry gin if you prefer) in a Parisian cocktail shaker. Cut half a clove of garlic, peel, remove the tongue, and chop finely. Muddle the garlic in the St Maur and Genever. Add ice and shake gently to mix and cool the ingredients. Fine strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a green olive stuffed with garlic, with a wooden spike driven through its heart! Serve on a mirrored tray, just in case…
Partridge and Pear Sour
On the first day of Christmas no one will sing about the gin and tonic. But they will remember the Partridge and Pear cocktail you made for them with St Maur elderflower liqueur and your favourite gin. Easy to make, a sweet and sour, beautifully balanced, silky stunner. The partridge is provided by Percy, St Maur’s partridge brand mascot. For the pear puree used in this recipe either make your own, purchase an expensive specialised cocktail ingredient, or as we have done here, nip down to the supermarket and buy a pouch of 100% pureed pear baby food!
1½ measures of St Maur, 1½ measures of dry gin, the freshly squeezed juice from half a lemon, 1 egg white, 7.5ml of pear puree. Put all the ingredients in a shaker and give the ingredients a good, vigorous ‘dry’ shake to froth the mixture. Add ice to the shaker and give the mixture a second more gentle shake to cool the drink. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish to decorate, and serve. We have used a small sprig of purple sage as a garnish.
Vampire
A new classic to enjoy as the sun sets…
Our inspiration for this cocktail is actually a jet aircraft, the de Havilland Vampire, not a Count who lives on in the Carpathian mountains… It is our take on an Aviation cocktail, a jazz age classic which is basically a gin sour sweetened with maraschino liqueur. We have replaced the maraschino with St Maur and given the presentation an update.
One measure of St Maur, two measures of gin, and the freshly squeezed juice from half a lemon, shaken with ice. For the “clouds” place the white of one egg in a cocktail shaker and add ½ a measure of crème de violette, and give the mixture a vigorous dry shake until it stiffens. Gently float on the cocktail. Garnish with a vampire’s kiss (a definite nod to Count Orlok!): a few drops of a blood red mixture made by mixing crème de cassis and sirop de grenadine.
Serve and soar!
Sybarite St Maur
The Sybarite by St Maur is a cocktail to share and enjoy in an unashamedly indulgent moment: cool, distinctive, of elegant taste and refined sensuality. A drink created to be worthy of the name, whilst remaining simple and easy to make.
Place a generous one and a half measures of St Maur, similarly one and a half measures of a good Nocino, along with the freshly squeezed juice from half a lemon, and the white of an egg in a cocktail shaker, and give the ingredients a vigorous ‘dry’ shake. Add ice and shake the mixture again, more gently, to cool the drink. That’s enough for two to share. Serve in coffee cups, with slices of green fig.
Dandy Partridge
The Dandy Partridge celebrates Percy, St Maur’s partridge brand icon, our nod to the 5th Marquess of Hertford who introduced the red legged partridge to Great Britain in the 19th century.
Two measures of Bourbon, one measure St Maur, freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon. This cocktail can be shaken, but we also suggest stirring the ingredients together in a jug with ice, fine tuning the balance of bourbon, St Maur, and lemon juice perfectly to your taste. Serve over ice.