A blood orange cocktail lives or dies on what you put behind the juice. Blood oranges are sweet and low in acid, so left on their own with a spirit they make something pretty and slightly flat.
The fix in this blood orange cocktail is two-part: a squeeze of lime to bring the acid up, and a real ginger beer rather than ginger ale to give the drink some heat at the back. Tequila carries both better than vodka does. It takes ten minutes, most of which is zesting an orange into sugar for the rim.
- Ten minutes from cold oranges to a finished drink, with no syrup to make and cool
- The zested sugar rim uses the peel you would otherwise throw away
- Ginger beer supplies the length, so one and a half ounces of tequila is enough
- It scales cleanly: batch the shaken part ahead and top each glass to order
- Blood orange season runs December to April, which is exactly when nobody wants a cold drink and everybody wants this one
- It works with ordinary navel oranges if the blood oranges have gone
The recipe is four liquids and a rim, so each one has to earn its place.
- What Goes Into a Blood Orange Cocktail
- Ingredient Notes
- Blood Oranges, and What To Do When You Cannot Find Them
- How To Make a Blood Orange Cocktail
- Getting the Sugar Rim Right
- Shaking Versus Stirring
- Make It Ahead for a Crowd
- Storing a Blood Orange Cocktail
- Variations and Substitutions
- What to Serve with a Blood Orange Cocktail
- Blood Orange Cocktail FAQ
What Goes Into a Blood Orange Cocktail
A blood orange cocktail is four things, in a fixed order of importance.
Blood orange juice, two ounces. That is roughly one and a half oranges. It is the body of the drink and it is doing all the color.
Tequila, an ounce and a half. Blanco is cleaner and lets the fruit lead; reposado adds a little oak and vanilla and makes the whole thing rounder. Both work. Tequila’s vegetal edge suits blood orange in a way that gin’s juniper does not.
Lime, half an ounce. This is the part people leave out and it is the reason their blood orange cocktail tastes like juice. Blood oranges run around one percent acid against a lime’s six, so half an ounce roughly doubles the drink’s total acidity for very little flavor cost.
Ginger beer, three ounces, cold. It lengthens the drink, adds carbonation and supplies the heat that stops the whole thing being sweet.
The rim is optional but it is where the aroma is. Zest holds oils that the juice does not, so you smell orange before you taste anything.
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Ingredient Notes
A blood orange cocktail runs to six items and two of them are worth being particular about. Exact amounts are in the recipe card below.
- Blood oranges: two, one for juice and one for the zest and garnish. Moro is the deepest colored and the most common in American markets, and it is also the sharpest of the three main varieties. The Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection at UC Riverside keeps a proper record of Moro, Tarocco and Sanguinello if you want to know what you are buying.
- Ginger beer: three ounces, and the brand matters more than anything else here. Fever-Tree, Bundaberg and Q all carry genuine heat. Ginger ale is sugar water with flavoring and turns a blood orange cocktail into a soft drink.
- Tequila: an ounce and a half of one hundred percent agave. Anything labeled mixto carries added sugars and tastes of them.
- Lime: half an ounce, which is about one generous wedge. Bottled lime juice is a false economy in a drink with four ingredients.
- Sugar: a quarter cup of plain granulated for the rim. Superfine dissolves too readily against the wet glass and slides off; coarse sanding sugar looks better but tastes of nothing.
- Ice: a cup in the shaker and a full glass of it to strain onto. Two separate lots, which matters more than it sounds.
Blood Oranges, and What To Do When You Cannot Find Them
Blood orange season is short, roughly December through April in the northern hemisphere, and the fruit varies enormously within it.
The red comes from anthocyanins, the same pigments that color raspberries, and they only develop when the fruit gets cold nights. An early-season blood orange can be barely blushed inside while a March one is almost purple. Neither is a fault.
Judge by weight, not by skin. The outside tells you very little. A heavy fruit for its size has more juice.
Moro is the safe buy for a drink: darkest flesh, most berry-like, sharpest. Tarocco is sweeter and paler. Sanguinello sits between them.
Out of season, use navel oranges and a splash of something red. Half an ounce of cranberry juice or a bar spoon of pomegranate molasses restores both the color and some of the tartness. It is not a blood orange cocktail any more, but it is a good drink.
Bottled blood orange juice is worth keeping in the door of the refrigerator in summer. It is pasteurized and flatter, so add an extra squeeze of lime.
How To Make a Blood Orange Cocktail
Do the rim first. Once a blood orange cocktail is shaken you want it in the glass immediately.
- First, grate the zest of one blood orange onto a plate and rub it into the 1/4 cup of sugar with your fingers until the sugar is damp and smells strongly of citrus.
- Next, dip the rim of a rocks glass in a shallow puddle of blood orange juice, press it into the sugar, turn it once, then fill the glass with fresh ice and leave it while you work.
- Then combine a cup of ice, 2 ounces blood orange juice, 1 1/2 ounces tequila and 1/2 ounce lime juice in a shaker and shake hard for 15 seconds, until the tin frosts.
- After that, strain it into the prepared glass over the fresh ice. Do not tip the shaker ice in with it.
- Finally, top with 3 ounces of cold ginger beer, stir once from the bottom with a long spoon and add a wheel of blood orange.
Getting the Sugar Rim Right
The rim takes a minute and it is the difference between a homemade blood orange cocktail and one that looks deliberate.
Rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers rather than stirring it. The friction breaks the oil cells open and you can smell when it has worked. Stirred with a spoon, the zest just sits in the sugar.
Wet the rim with juice, not water. The sugars in the juice make it tacky and it grips better.
Only the outside of the rim. Roll the glass at an angle in the sugar rather than pushing it straight down. Sugar on the inner lip falls into the drink and sweetens it unevenly.
Do it before you fill the glass and give it a minute to set. A rim applied to a cold wet glass slides.
Leave a gap if you can manage it, so anyone who does not want a sweet rim has somewhere to drink from.
Shaking Versus Stirring
A blood orange cocktail gets shaken, and the reason is the juice.
Shaking aerates and chills fast. Fifteen seconds of hard shaking drops the liquid to around minus five Celsius and folds in tiny air bubbles, which lightens the texture of anything with fruit juice in it.
Stirring is for drinks that are all spirit. A martini or an old fashioned is stirred because clarity and weight are the point, and there is nothing in them that benefits from aeration.
Shake before the ginger beer, never after. Carbonation in a sealed tin is how people redecorate their kitchens. The ginger beer goes into the glass at the end and gets one gentle stir.
Fifteen seconds is enough. Longer does not chill it further; it just adds water. The tin frosting on the outside is the signal.
Double strain if you minded the pulp. A fine mesh strainer held under the shaker catches the fibers and citrus shards, which some people like and some do not.
Make It Ahead for a Crowd
A blood orange cocktail batches better than most shaken drinks because there is no egg white and no syrup to split.
Mix the juice, tequila and lime in a jug up to a day ahead, in the same proportions, and keep it cold. Eight servings is two cups blood orange juice, one and a half cups tequila and half a cup lime juice.
Add a little water to the batch. About four ounces per eight servings stands in for the dilution the shaker would have given you. Without it the drinks taste harsh.
Zest the sugar the day before and keep it in a sealed jar. It stays fragrant for two or three days and then fades.
Rim the glasses an hour ahead and leave them on a tray.
Top each glass to order. Ginger beer poured into a jug is flat within twenty minutes, so open bottles as you go.
Storing a Blood Orange Cocktail
- The mixed base, refrigerated: a blood orange cocktail base without the ginger beer keeps 24 hours in a sealed bottle.
- Fresh juice on its own: 2 days, though it loses aroma from the first hour. Freeze it in ice cube trays if you have a glut.
- The zested sugar: 3 days in a sealed jar before it dries out and stops smelling of anything.
- Never store it topped. Once the ginger beer is in, the drink is finished within the hour.
- Open ginger beer keeps its fizz about a day in the refrigerator with a proper stopper, and not at all with a loose cap.
Variations and Substitutions
The ratio of a blood orange cocktail holds whatever you put in the spirit slot.
- Mezcal instead of tequila: half and half is plenty. The smoke against blood orange is very good and takes over completely if you use all mezcal.
- Bourbon makes a rounder, more autumnal drink, and ginger beer suits it just as well.
- Add half an ounce of Aperol for something closer to a spritz, and cut the tequila to an ounce.
- A rosemary sprig slapped once and dropped in, which reads herbal against the citrus.
- Chili salt rim instead of sugar, made with flaky salt, a pinch of chili powder and the same zest. Tarter and better with food.
- Alcohol-free: three ounces of blood orange juice, the lime, four ounces of ginger beer and a dash of orange bitters if you keep them.
What to Serve with a Blood Orange Cocktail
A blood orange cocktail is sweet, sharp and gently hot, so salt is what it wants next to it.
- A bowl of spiced mixed nuts, which is the single best thing to put beside this drink.
- Salted almonds, castelvetrano olives or anything else you would eat standing up.
- Shrimp cocktail, or ceviche, both of which like the tequila.
- Manchego with quince paste, since the sweetness is already established.
- Tacos of almost any kind, at which point the drink stops being an aperitif and becomes dinner.
For the rest of a winter drinks table there is a mulled pineapple cocktail for anyone who wants theirs warm, and a jug of blackberry sangria for the wine drinkers. When the weather turns, the same shape becomes a pitcher of gin lemonade.
Here is what readers ask most often.
Blood Orange Cocktail FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use regular oranges?
Yes, with one adjustment. Navel or Valencia juice is sweeter and paler, so add an extra quarter ounce of lime to compensate and a splash of cranberry juice or a bar spoon of pomegranate molasses for the color. It stops being a blood orange cocktail in the strict sense and it is still a good drink. Out of season this is what most bars are quietly doing anyway.
Ginger beer or ginger ale?
Beer, and it is not a close call. Ale is carbonated sugar water with flavoring, and it leaves a blood orange cocktail sweet and one-dimensional. Real ginger beer is brewed and carries actual heat, which is what pushes back against fruit juice that is already sweet. Fever-Tree, Bundaberg and Q all work. If all you have is ginger ale, add a few thin slices of fresh ginger to the shaker.
How strong is it?
An ounce and a half of tequila in a drink of about seven ounces, so roughly eight percent alcohol once the ice has done its work. That is a little stronger than a beer and considerably weaker than a martini. A blood orange cocktail drinks very easily, which is worth remembering when you are pouring the third one.
More Questions About Batching, Ice and Garnish
Frequently Asked Questions
How many oranges do I need per drink?
About one and a half for the juice, plus a share of one more for the zest and the garnish wheel. Two medium blood oranges will make one drink comfortably with the garnish left over. For eight drinks, buy a dozen and expect two cups of juice, which is roughly what you need.
Why strain rather than pour everything in?
The ice in the shaker has already given up most of its cold and taken on a lot of water. Poured into the glass it keeps melting into a drink that has had all the dilution it needs, and the bottom third tastes watery. Fresh ice in the glass melts slowly and keeps the last mouthful as good as the first.
What is the best glass?
A short rocks glass of about eight ounces. It holds a full cube of ice with room for the ginger beer, and the wide mouth puts the sugared rim and the citrus oil right under your nose. A tall highball works but stretches the drink and mutes it.
Can I make a large batch in a punch bowl?
Only up to a point. Mix the juice, tequila, lime and the compensating water ahead, then ladle four and a half ounces into each iced glass and top individually with ginger beer. Carbonation added to a bowl is gone before the second round.
A blood orange cocktail is really an exercise in propping up a sweet, low-acid juice, and once the lime and the ginger beer are doing that job the drink almost makes itself. For something warm from the same shelf, try my mulled pineapple cocktail.
Blood Orange Cocktail with Tequila and Ginger Beer
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Ingredients
For the Sugared Rim
- 1 tablespoon blood orange zest finely grated, from 1 blood orange
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar plain, not superfine
- 1 tablespoon blood orange juice in a shallow bowl, for wetting the rim
For the Cocktail
- 1 cup ice cubes for the shaker
- 2 ounces fresh blood orange juice from about 1 1/2 blood oranges
- 1 1/2 ounces blanco tequila or reposado, 100 percent agave
- 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice about 1 generous wedge
- 3 ounces ginger beer cold and properly hot, never ginger ale
- 1 glassful ice cubes fresh, for the glass
- 1 wheel blood orange for garnish
Instructions
Sugar the Rim
- Grate the zest of one blood orange onto a small plate, add the sugar and rub the two together with your fingers until the sugar is damp and smells strongly of citrus. Rubbing rather than stirring is what breaks the oil cells open. Put the tablespoon of blood orange juice in a second shallow bowl.
- Dip the rim of a short rocks glass into the juice, then roll it at an angle through the sugar so only the outside is coated. Fill the glass with fresh ice and set it aside for a minute while the rim sets.
Shake and Serve
- Combine the cup of ice, the blood orange juice, the tequila and the lime juice in a cocktail shaker. Shake hard for 15 seconds, until the outside of the tin frosts. Never shake anything carbonated.
- Strain into the prepared glass over the fresh ice, leaving the shaker ice behind. It is half melted by now and would keep watering the drink down.
- Top with the cold ginger beer, stir once from the bottom with a long spoon so the fizz survives, and garnish with a wheel of blood orange.