Greenleaf Cocktails – Fresh Fruit plus Strong Wine

Greenleaf delivers delicious wine based cocktails

Greenleaf is well known for the their fresh salads, and wholesome sandwiches; although, they also have a unique cocktail program based on wine and distilled wine. I recently attended a sampling reception to taste this wine based cocktails made with fruit and herbs. Why wine cocktails?  For restaurants with a beer and wine permits, you have to serve cocktails under 24%. At the same time, you have deliver a tasty adult beverage your customers will like. 

 Making the cocktails was Greenleaf SOCO manager, Laurie Koss who showed us how you can blend fruit and herbs with distilled wines to make fresh cocktails. I admit that I was skeptical of wine cocktails; although after trying them, I would pleasantly surprised by their quality.   Below are the cocktails we tried:

 

Strawberry Fresca 

The Strawberry Fresca is made with Petrov Reserve wine vodka with an alcohol percentage of 20%, but the same flavor of triple distilled vodka.  In addition the cocktail has triple sec, fresh muddled strawberry,  lemon juice, pomegranate juice, cubed sugar, sparkling soda and a float of Prosecco to add some subtle bubbles in the glass. The glass is rubbed and topped with a basil leaf.

 

This cocktail was paired with kale chips that had a nice citrus finish and parmesan crisps that are studded with crispy kale crisps. The cocktail was also paired with  a micro arugula, grilled pear, crispy prosciutto and burrata cheese. It was dressed with a balsamic reduction.   I liked how the tangy and sweet layers of the sides matched the cocktails.

Ginger Sparkler

The ginger sparkler is made with Petrov Reserve Wine Vodka, lemon juice, cub sugar, freshly peeled and zested ginger and a float of Proseco. This cocktail was refreshing and perfect for a bug meal, as the ginger clears the palate.

The ginger sparkler was paired with their Wild Mushroom & Truffle Oil Pizza This pizza is made on a whole wheat tortilla, three cheeses, wild mushrooms, nutty arugula, truffle oil and shavings of pecorino romano.  The second pizza was served with a slightly spicy house made Turkey Sausage Pizza ,mozzarella cheese, spicy romesco sauce, arugula, fennel, and shaved Pecorino Romano. The Ginger Sparkler did a great job cutting through the strong flavors in these dishes.

Cranberry Noir

The Cranberry Noir has a festive fall flavor, made with Leese Fitch Pinot Noir, cranberry juice, vanilla extract, lemon zest, sea salt, and sparkling soda. What I like about this cocktail is that the cranberry juice added a hard tang nose to the Pinot Noir. The vanilla extract acted to round out the flavors and gave it a clean and aromatic finish.

 

The Cranberry Noir was paired with turkey sliders on a sesame seed bun, caramelized onions, roasted tomato, butter lettuce and a pomegranate cranberry aioli. In addition we tried their turkey meatball sliders with spicy tomato sauce, fresh baby mozzarella, basil and served on whole wheat chiabatta.

 

My Final Thoughts

If you are considering visiting Greenleaf, it is worth trying out one of their wine based cocktails; they go along with their lighter cleaner dishes.  I liked the fact that the cocktails were made with fresh ingredients and got around their beer and wine license by the creative use of fortified wines. My personal favorite was the Cranberry Noir.

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