As winter drags on, a hot boozy drink can be a balm, mentally and physically. And winter classics, such as a hot toddy or mulled wine, can get a Caribbean boost from Sorel liqueur, a shelf-stable version of the traditional Caribbean sorrel drink.
Micro distiller Jackie Summers, said to have been the first Black person in the U.S. to get a license to make liquor after Prohibition, began bottling the spirit in 2012.
“Caribbean grandmas, like most grandmas, won’t give you their exact recipe,” Summers said of sorrell, which dates back hundreds of years. “They want you to make it your own.”
His recipe is, in part, a reconstructed version of what he remembers from childhood. His grandparents wouldn’t drink it hot in their native Barbados but serving it warmed is a natural evolution for Summers, who lives in Brooklyn, New York.
There are many versions of sorrel, known in Black culture as “the red drink,” and these variations reflect the melding of cultures in the African diaspora. Sorrel gets its sultry red color from hibiscus. The fleshy part of the bright red flower bud, called the calyx, is the base of sorrel recipes. Indigenous to Africa, the plant flourishes in the Caribbean.
“Each island has a different version that was influenced not just by enslaved Africans, but the indentured servants who worked alongside them,” Summers said.
In Jamaica, he said, sorrel has lots of ginger, thanks to the influx of Chinese immigrants, while “Trinidad and Tobago has less ginger and more cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, because of East Indian indentured servants.”
Credit: Deborah Lopez)
Credit: Deborah Lopez)
Most sorrel recipes are “buried in sugar,” Summers said. He uses nutmeg and other botanicals to neutralize the acidity in African hibiscus — Brazilian clove, Indonesian cassia and Nigerian ginger. In Summers’ Sorel liqueur, he allows the spices to pull the sugar level back and lets the hibiscus truly sing. At room temperature, it is floral and fruity. Heated, it is almost nutty, with baking spices prevalent.
“Every ingredient incorporated in a bottle of Sorel is native to West and Central Africa,” mixologist and spirits expert Tiffanie Barriere said. “They also added some purification, emulsion and balance to things that didn’t taste so good naturally.”
Certain ingredients, such as clove, cinnamon, anise, flowers and other winter spices, tend to expand once warm. “The expansion,” Barriere said, “allows the ingredients to flourish and extract, bringing on layers while sending a vibrant jolt through the body.”
Summers said there’s a reason why most of the African diaspora “has an almost epigenetic memory of what we think of as the red drink. We all know what it is, but we don’t know where it comes from — the tradition of hibiscus flowers for medicinal purposes.”
When it made its way to the Caribbean in the 1600s, he said, “the enslaved have this one thing that reminds them of who they are, because the flowers that grow in Africa will also grow in the Caribbean.”
It became a cultural identifier that colonialism couldn’t destroy.
One of Summers’ main changes to the traditional drink was using much less sugar, but persistence also was a key ingredient — his version came about after 623 failures. However, No. 624 was worth the wait, especially warmed up for winter.
Sorel, which is 15% alcohol by volume, is widely available at $35 per 750-milliliter bottle.
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