Cambridge Elderflower Spritz

Elegant, floral and citrussy - the drink that summer has been waiting for.

There is a particular kind of evening in an English summer, when the light stays longer than it has any right to, the garden smells of something you can't quite name, and everything slows to a pace that feels almost earned after the long months before it. This is the drink for that evening.

The Cambridge Gin Elderflower Spritz sits somewhere between a classic French 75 and an English summer meadow. Elegant enough to feel considered, effortless enough to make again and again throughout the season. It is floral without being sweet, citrussy without being sharp, and long and bubbling in the glass in a way that makes the evening feel like it might never quite end.

At its heart is Cambridge Distillery's Curator's Gin, a gin of remarkable botanical precision, built around the fresh, foraged character that has defined the distillery since William Lowe first began crafting gins in Grantchester. Paired with Cambridge Distillery's Elderflower Gin Liqueur, the result is a drink that feels entirely of the moment: the hedgerows in bloom, the first warmth of real summer, something cold and beautiful in your hand.

What You'll Need

Serves 1

• 25ml Cambridge Distillery Curator's Gin
• 25ml Cambridge Distillery Elderflower Gin Liqueur
• 15ml fresh lemon juice
• 75ml chilled prosecco
• 25–50ml premium tonic water
• To garnish: A twist of lemon peel and fresh elderflower or a thin lemon wheel

How to Make It

1. Build over ice. Fill a large wine glass or balloon glass generously with ice. The colder the glass, the better the drink. If you have time, chill the glass in the freezer for ten minutes before you begin.
2. Add the spirits and citrus. Pour in the Curator's Gin, elderflower gin liqueur and fresh lemon juice. Stir briefly, just enough to chill and marry the flavours without losing any of the cold.
3. Top with prosecco and tonic. Pour the chilled prosecco over the back of a spoon to preserve the bubbles, then finish with a splash of tonic water. The tonic adds a gentle bitterness and lift. Start with 25ml and add more to your taste.
4. Stir once, lightly. A single, slow stir is all it needs. You want the bubbles to stay lively throughout the drink.
5. Garnish and serve immediately. Finish with a twist of lemon peel, squeezed gently over the glass first to release the oils, and a sprig of fresh elderflower if you have it to hand. A thin lemon wheel works beautifully too.

Why the Curator's Gin

Cambridge Distillery's approach to botanicals has always been rooted in place and season. The Curator's Gin is built around a botanical selection that shifts with the landscape around the Grantchester distillery, fresh, foraged and distilled individually using the vacuum distillation process that William Lowe pioneered to preserve the delicate flavour compounds that heat would otherwise destroy.

It is, in short, a gin that tastes like somewhere. And paired with elderflower, the most English of summer flavours, it becomes a drink that tastes like a very specific, very beautiful time of year.

Why Cambridge Distillery's Elderflower Gin Liqueur

Not all elderflower liqueurs are created equal. Many lean heavily on sweetness, masking the delicate botanical character that makes elderflower worth using in the first place. Cambridge Distillery's Elderflower Gin Liqueur takes a different approach entirely, one rooted in the same obsessive attention to botanical precision that has defined the distillery since its founding in Grantchester.

Where others use flavouring or concentrate, Cambridge Distillery works with the flower itself, treating it with the same care and respect afforded to every botanical in their range. The result is a liqueur that smells like walking through a hedgerow in late May, bright, green and unmistakably alive, rather than the synthetic sweetness that can so easily pass for elderflower in lesser expressions.

The liqueur is built on a gin base, which matters. When it sits alongside the Curator's Gin in this spritz, the two don't fight for space in the glass. They speak the same language. The botanicals complement rather than compete, the alcohol levels remain balanced, and the whole drink holds together with a coherence that is difficult to achieve when mixing spirits from different traditions.

There is also the question of sweetness. Cambridge Distillery's Elderflower Gin Liqueur is measured, present enough to round the citrus and lift the floral notes, restrained enough to let the gin lead. It is, in the truest sense, a liqueur made by distillers rather than confectioners. And in a spritz built for long summer evenings, that distinction makes all the difference.

Serve It For

Long lunches in the garden. An aperitif before something good. The kind of afternoon that turns into an evening before you've quite noticed. A celebration that doesn't need a reason beyond the fact that summer, finally, is here.

The Cambridge Gin Elderflower Spritz is available to make at home using Curator's Gin and our Elderflower Gin Liqueur, both available at cambridgedistillery.co.uk.