Cocktails with Cranberry juice
Cranberry juice is the juice pressed from tart red cranberries, sold either pure or as a sweetened "juice cocktail" cut with water and sugar.
Substitutes for Cranberry juice
Pomegranate juice gives color and tartness with more tannin and more body. Redcurrant syrup covers the color and the sourness with sugar attached. Hibiscus infusion does color and acidity from a different plant and costs almost nothing.
Often confused with
Cranberry juice cocktail
The sweetened blend that most recipes actually mean, usually around a quarter juice: it is the standard bar ingredient despite the name.
Pure unsweetened cranberry
Sharp, tannic and hard to drink neat. It needs sugar building back in, and a recipe written for the blend will come out sour and thin.
Storage
Bottled keeps to its date and belongs in the fridge once open, where its own acidity buys a few days more than most juices. It stains cloth permanently, so wipe spills before they dry.
