HUCKLEBERRY MARTINI

HUCKLEBERRY MARTINI
1 measure Koenig Huckleberry vodka
¾ measure candied orange syrup
Huckleberries

Montana is beautiful and Big Sky delivers. It delivers spring skiing full of big challenges, big views and big fun. I’ve also noticed a plethora of huckleberries. There are huckleberry products sold everywhere. I’ve learned that’s because Montana is the best location in the nation for huckleberry picking. By July, the picturesque mountain ranges are crawling with them and the bears like it that way.

To start off my trip, I had to go with two Big Sky traditions. First was going to Bucks T-4, a restaurant and Big Sky legend for over 50 years. It started as a hunting camp in 1946, and is now a lodge and restaurant/bar with a friendly staff. One such friendly staff member made me the other Big Sky tradition — a HUCKLEBERRY MARTINI. To make it, she put huckleberry vodka and candied orange syrup into a shaker and added ice. She then gave it some shakes and strained it into a chilled martini glass. She finished it off by floating about five huckleberries in the bottom.

The HUCKLEBERRY MARTINI was a pretty, purple-colored cocktail with a pretty strong wallop. It was mostly vodka, yet the huckleberry flavor was unique enough to distract me and it went down nicely. Huckleberries taste similar to blueberries, but their flavor is more subtle and less “blue” They are deliciously distinctive and are probably good even when they aren’t swimming in vodka. Just probably.

Drink Up^
Cocktail Connie