Petal pushers: How St-Germain turned a tiny wildflower into the darling of the cocktail world

Summertime in Europe means certain things. One of these is the Aperol Spritz – it’s no exaggeration to say you can’t take two steps in Paris or Rome in June without encountering the nuclear-orange aperitivo that shouts “European Summer” as much as sunshine and sweaty tourists.

But I’m here to make the case for Aperol Spritz’s chic cousin, the Hugo Spritz. Let’s put it this way: If the Aperol Spritz were a sundress, then Hugo Spritz is a silk T-shirt, equally breezy but with a touch of glossy refinement about it. Said to have been invented in northern Italy by bartender Roland Gruber, the Hugo Spritz features St-Germain elderflower liqueur as well as prosecco, soda and fresh mint leaves. Typically served in a large ice-filled wine glass, it’s fizzy and refreshing, has a beguilingly delicate floral and herbaceous flavour and makes for very easy sipping.

FROM COUNTRY LANES TO CITY BARS

While St-Germain is the world’s first elderflower liqueur, people have long known about the elder tree, which grows wild throughout Europe and greets spring with huge but fleeting clusters of tiny white blooms from late May to early June. Elderflower cordial (a mixture of sugar, elderflowers and water) dates back to Roman times and there’s been a recent surge in interest, thanks to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding cake (which used 10 bottles of Sandringham elderflower cordial) and the Harry Potter universe (its most powerful wand being crafted from elder wood). But it’s fair to say the elderflower truly entered its Renaissance period with St-Germain’s debut in 2007.

Created by third-generation American distiller Robert J Cooper (who eventually sold it to drinks giant Bacardi), St-Germain launched when cocktail culture (and its thirst for new, novel flavours) was on the rise. With its fresh yet delicate natural sweetness and winsome pear and honeysuckle notes, St-Germain possessed an uncanny knack for enhancing every drink, making it so popular that it became known as “bartender’s ketchup”.

AN ODE TO FRENCH JOIE DE VIVRE

There’s no better place to start delving into this versatile elixir than its Parisian namesake, Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Part of the city’s 6th arrondissement, the quarter’s main claim to fame is as a creative epicentre for the French existentialist movement, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and numerous renowned bookstores and cafes, one of which is the small but atmospheric Les Deux Magots, the former rendezvous of the city’s cultural elite like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre. It was also our first stop where Franck Dedieu, St-Germain’s energetic global brand ambassador, regaled us over petite salvers of French olives and effervescent Hugo Spritzes with colourful anecdotes about the “rule breakers, perpetual creativity and the crazy years” that once ruled here.

Representing a wider ode to Paris is St-Germain’s bottle, a stately glass flacon that’s as long as your arm and stands out on any bar top with its elegantly tapered form, faceted arches and cross-shaped labels. According to Dedieu, it was inspired by Paris’ Gothic architecture and the Art Deco movement, while the floral illustrations behind the labels reference the 1,000 elderflowers that go into making each bottle of St-Germain. It’s a beautiful design by any standard, and one that the brand is still tinkering with. Last year, Bacardi produced its first hydrogen-powered glass St-Germain bottles, an innovation which produces significantly less greenhouse gases than conventional methods.

Our last stop in Paris was a patisserie class where we learned to make chouquettes – airy little spheres of choux pastry adorned with craquelin (a decorative, crackly topping) as well as indulgent strawberry and Chantilly cream tarts adorned with slivers of gold leaf. Punctuating the afternoon’s activity was a parade of refreshing Hugo Spritzes, which we were beginning to learn paired as winningly with sweets as they did savoury dishes.

EXPERIENCING THE HARVEST

After all that imbibing, it was time to get to work, so the next morning we took the train and headed south, swapping Paris’ rain-swept cobblestones for the Ardeche’s rolling green plains and cloud-swaddled mountain ranges. Our home for the next two nights was Chateau Clement, a gracious 19th-century hotel in Vals-les-Bains, an idyllic spa town renowned for its thermal springs. Chateau Clement becomes the ‘seasonal home’ of St-Germain during each year’s harvest in late spring, hosting the brand’s industry friends over signature serves at its elegant bar, which opens onto a sunlit veranda and swimming pool.

The chateau, which is being carefully restored in stages by owner Marie-Antoinette Rojon, has several well-appointed rooms, each in a different colour scheme and styled with antique or modern furniture. While we could have easily spent all our days just lolling about, the morning after our arrival we found ourselves armed with rubber boots and St-Germain-branded Opinel shears, tramping through the Ardeche countryside with Eric Tourain, St-Germain’s genial master blender. The previous night’s rain (and touch of hail) had unexpectedly yielded to a textbook-perfect day. Wildflowers swayed underfoot and horses grazed in a nearby field under dazzlingly blue skies. The air was filled with the honeysuckle perfume of elder trees festooned with cream-coloured flowers, their tiny petals still freighted with glistening pearls of rainwater.

Just like these trees before us, none of the elder trees St-Germain harvests from (in France, Hungary and Croatia) are cultivated, said Tourain. Instead, it only harvests in wild spaces, working with experts who know where the flowers are and how best to gather them, so they continue to thrive, he added.

“Flowers must always be picked by hand – we never use machines,” said Tourain, whose team is trained to harvest elderflowers the moment their tiny buds have just bloomed, when they’re at peak juiciness and fragrance. “If your hands turn yellow during harvesting, it means the flowers are at the right stage of blooming and they’ve been receiving sun, so they have maximum flavour,” he added. Some of the flowers are left on the trees to turn into sooty-dark berries, ensuring successful future harvests. Blooms are placed in special tissue bags as placing them in buckets would lead them becoming crushed and oxidising, which would mar their flavour.

Once picked, it’s a race against time to get the fragile blooms processed the same day. Dedieu explains that this is typically done close to where they are picked using a process called dynamic maceration, which involves soaking the flowers in moving water at a temperature of about 50 degrees Celsius to gently extract their aroma and flavour. This gentle method is necessary, says Dedieu, because “infusing them straight in alcohol would ‘burn’ them.”

Forty minutes after its first maceration, the liquid was noticeably sour, with prominent green apple notes. “You cannot push the maceration for too long because eventually too many green notes will come out and you’re not getting any more flavour,” said Tourain.

A PERFECT SERVE

Back at the St-Germain bar in Chateau Clement, we enjoy six variations of St-Germain cocktails including the St-Germain margarita, Floral Gin & Tonic and Elderfashioned (a twist on the Old-Fashioned with Angel’s Envy bourbon, St-Germain, simple syrup and Angostura bitters).

Dedieu was endlessly inventive with the liqueur, also using it to make his version of a Jacuzzi (a fruity champagne cocktail) and what he called ‘St-Germain At 10%’, featuring the liqueur “mixed with mineral water and something fresh, like cucumber or mint”. His own personal favourite way to drink it? “With crushed ice and loads of angostura bitters,” he quipped. Ultimately though, the star serve remains the St-Germain Hugo Spritz, which Dedieu taught us how to mix.

First, you start with a chilled highball glass (“You want it cold,” emphasised Dedieu, who recommended freezing your glass if possible.) Pack your glass with ice almost up to the brim, then pour in 40ml of St-Germain elderflower liqueur and add about eight mint leaves (“never slap or rub them,” said Dedieu, as this will bring out bitterness). Next, top with 60ml of sparkling wine (like prosecco) and 60ml of sparkling water. Finally, stir the drink to combine, then garnish with a mint sprig and lime wedge.

“It’s the best introduction to St-Germain, especially if you’ve not had it before,” said Dedieu, who suggested more inventive ways to riff off a Hugo Spritz, such as by adding sparkling rose wine, or produce like passion fruit or cucumber.

“There’s so much room for creativity,” said Dedieu. “You can never make a bad St-Germain Hugo Spritz.”