Cocktails with Crème de Cassis
Crème de cassis is a sweet, dark red liqueur made from blackcurrants (Ribes nigrum).
ABV15–20%
Taste profile
Intense blackcurrant aroma over a deeply sweet, jammy body, with the tartness of the berry kept in check by heavy sugar.
How it's used
A small pour sweetens and colours a drink while carrying its blackcurrant flavour; the high sugar makes it markedly viscous, so little is needed, and higher-sugar 'double' versions are dosed in still smaller proportion. It integrates by building or stirring.
Substitutes for Crème de Cassis
Where it merely sweetens or tints, its sugar and syrupy body can be rebuilt with a sugar syrup and its colour matched with another dark-red fruit liqueur; but the blackcurrant aroma cannot be manufactured from an unrelated fruit, so wherever the drink is built around that character only another blackcurrant preparation will serve.
Description
Blackcurrants are crushed and macerated in alcohol, with sugar added afterward; the liqueur is infused rather than distilled, and the fruit is its sole defining flavour source.
Origin
The modern liqueur first appeared in 1841 in the Burgundy region of France (Dijon), displacing the earlier 'ratafia de cassis'; a protected geographical indication, 'Crème de Cassis de Bourgogne', was approved in 2015, guaranteeing Burgundian origin and use chiefly of the Noir de Bourgogne blackcurrant variety.
