Aqua Pearl

The 21st century has truly redefined the way liquor is consumed worldwide and transformed mixology into delicately-balanced culinary expertise and its creations, exquisite pieces of art. From this repository of enchanting concoctions, comes a fragrant, delicious tropical delight that shares the sapphire’s marvellous hue – the Aqua Pearl.

This modern luxurious cocktail is made from an intricately balanced blend of soursop nectar (a Caribbean fruit), gin, blue curacao, lemon juice, sugar syrup and aromatic bitters. What sets the Aqua Pearl apart from other contemporary gin-based cocktails is the addition of the soursop nectar, which not only alleviates the tropical fruity scent, but also adds a creamy texture, a heady undernote, and a perfect milky base for the blue curacao to work its magic. Though pineapple and orange curacao may work as substitutes for the soursop and blue curacao respectively, it is ideal to stick to the authentic recipe for the best looks and taste.

Gin, the key liquor of the Aqua Pearl, enjoys an unmatchable reverence in the British Virgin Islands of the Caribbean archipelago, home to the curacao and the soursop as well. The drink is essentially an ode to the Caribbean and the name, too, is a reference to the blue shade of the Caribbean Sea. Very few modern cocktails can encapsulate the cultural and culinary identity of a land as precisely and beautifully in a glass as the Aqua Pearl does.

The drink is a creation of Audrey Saunders, also called the Libation Goddess – one of the most famous modern mixologists and certainly an idol for women bartenders for generations to come. It is said that when Saunders arrived on the cocktail scene in the early 2000s, when cosmopolitans were the cocktail du jour, vodka dominated the bar shelves, and most bartenders were male. She laid the foundation for the Pegu Club in New York in 2005 and ushered in the age of modern cocktails’ extensive characters. Saunders replaced the vodka with gin, resurrected forgotten ingredients like Amari, Chartreuse and Benedictine, and inculcated unchartered exotics like the Soursop. The Aqua Pearl is believed to be a result of Saunders’ innovation in mixology, hailed today as the Cocktail Revolution of the modern age.