Cocktails with Grenadine syrup
Grenadine is a sweet, deep-red bar syrup traditionally made from pomegranate juice and sugar, used to sweeten, color, and add fruit character to mixed drinks.
Substitutes for Grenadine syrup
Stir equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar until it dissolves and you have the real thing; bottled grenadine pours at the same measure and reads sweeter and flatter. The bottled kind and the real thing are different products, so the first question is which one the recipe assumed. Made properly it is fruit and sugar and keeps a fortnight. Off the shelf it is usually color and sweetness with the fruit optional, and a drink built on one tastes thin made with the other.
Often confused with
Industrial grenadine
Corn syrup, acid and dye, with pomegranate optional. What it cannot bring is the tannic fruit under the sugar, so a drink built on the real thing tastes flat and one-note with it.
Pomegranate molasses
Cooked down without sugar to a sharply sour paste, and it is a cooking ingredient, far more concentrated; a teaspoon changes a drink.
Storage
Homemade keeps a couple of weeks refrigerated. The industrial kind keeps for months on preservatives and is nearly immortal. Neither improves with age, and homemade darkens as it goes.
