Cocktails with Cranberry juice
Cranberry juice is the juice pressed from cranberries, the tart red fruit of the North American shrub Vaccinium macrocarpon.
Taste profile
Sharply tart and astringent in its pure form, with an edge of dryness; the common bottled cocktail is much sweeter and softer, carrying a light red-fruit aroma.
How it's used
Serving as a bulk lengthening and colouring component, it adds tartness and a red-to-pink hue at volume, built or shaken into a drink; the commonly purchased sweetened "cocktail" form carries far less acidity and far more sugar than pure juice, so the two are not interchangeable by volume in a balanced build.
Substitutes for Cranberry juice
Another red, sharply tart juice from an anthocyanin-bearing fruit can preserve the colour and acid load, with any sweetener used to rebalance the sugar; no unrelated juice reproduces the specific cranberry aroma.
Often confused with
Cranberry juice cocktail
Pure cranberry juice is 100% juice, intensely tart and unsweetened; cranberry juice cocktail is a diluted, sweetened blend containing a minimum of about 27% cranberry juice. Both are shelved as 'cranberry juice', but the sweetened cocktail is far the more common retail product.
