Spiced Plum Spritz

Name: Spiced Plum Spritz
Yield: 1 drink
Ingredients: 1½ oz (45 ml) NA amaro; ½ oz (15 ml) spiced plum syrup; ½ oz (15 ml) fresh lemon juice; 3 oz (90 ml) soda water, chilled

A bitter, wintry aperitivo: alcohol-free amaro and a clove-and-cinnamon plum syrup, with lemon and soda, over ice.

Alcohol-free. Made with alcohol-free bottles that may carry up to 0.5% ABV.

Make it

You’ll need

1½ oz (45 ml) NA amaro
½ oz (15 ml) spiced plum syrup
½ oz (15 ml) fresh lemon juice
3 oz (90 ml) soda water, chilled

Garnish: A thin plum slice, or an orange slice, and a cinnamon stick.

Method

Fill a large wine glass with ice.
Pour in the amaro, plum syrup and lemon juice, then top with the soda water and lift once with a spoon.

Make ahead. The syrup keeps two weeks, so make it at the start of December and build each spritz in a minute.

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Order something like it

Drinks in the same style, or with the same flavours, on menus we’ve checked:

Passionfruit Spritz at Bar Volpe, South Boston ($15)
Spritz (N/A) at Capri Italian Steakhouse, South End
Bramble Spritz at Deck 12, Seaport ($12)
Bramble Spritz N/A at Flight Club Boston, Seaport ($17)

Allergens and caffeine

No major allergens, and no caffeine.

Get everything for it

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The tools

The pantry

Cinnamon sticksAmazon
Whole clovesAmazon

Make ahead

Spiced plum syrup. Simmer 1 cup of chopped plums (frozen is fine in December), 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water, 4 whole cloves and a cinnamon stick for 10 minutes, mashing the plums once they soften. Leave it off the heat for 20 minutes, then strain, pressing lightly. Keeps about 2 weeks in the fridge (our estimate).

From the store

NA amaro, Fresh lemon juice, Soda water.

Buying in person? See where to shop zero-proof around Boston.

How we checked it

Dry Rabbit originals are developed and checked with AI, against the 42 tested recipes in The Dry Rabbit Cocktail Guide: sweetness and acidity per ounce, sweet to sour, dilution and the drink’s size against drinks made the same way, every ingredient’s alcohol, and whether you can buy it. One that falls outside the book’s range is reworked before it’s published.

The check’s notes on Spiced Plum Spritz

Built and topped, like the book's Esplanade Spritz, but bitter and spiced instead of bright. Sweetness 0.17 and acidity 0.10 a finished ounce, sweet to sour 1.68, inside the book's built drinks (0.05 to 0.20, 0.01 to 0.17, and 0.32 to 2.62), and 5.8 oz over ice. The amaro brings the bitterness an aperitivo needs; the plum syrup brings fruit, clove and cinnamon, and ½ oz of lemon keeps it from tasting like jam. The syrup's numbers are our estimate (1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water, with the plums' own sugar and acid close to a wash). Plums are out of season in December, so the syrup uses frozen. It shares two ingredients with any one book recipe at most. The NA amaro is on the Bottle Shelf. Under 0.5%.

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