I posted a recipe a while back for lemonade syrup that used over 80 lemons that my friend Elaine gave me.  Well, a few weeks later she dropped off another 100 lemons through our mutual friend Rose.  Here’s the thing, I already made over 10 bottles of lemonade syrup from my previous batch, and a few more bottles from the new batch, but no matter how much we love lemonade, it was time for me to get creative with these lemons. I thought let me experiment with making a couple of flavored lemonade syrups.

There is a local Mexican restaurant here in Los Gatos called Zona Rosa and they serve the most amazing seasonal lemonades.  One of the flavors I have had at the restaurant is blackberry lemonade, and it is outstanding. As far as berries go, I love blackberries, they are my favorite berries, so I thought let me try making blackberry lemonade syrup with a few of the lemons I have.

To jazz up this lemonade and make it more of an adult cocktail I added a splash of port. Port is my favorite sweet wine. I love the fragrance of port and that deep dark burgundy color which is so decadent, it’s beautiful.  I thought port would really amp up the flavor in this blackberry lemonade- and it did!  This blackberry port lemonade tastes amazing.

Twins were not happy about the addition of port by the way – they couldn’t try this blackberry port lemonade because of it, so I did make another batch of blackberry lemonade syrup without port (heck I had enough lemons to play around with a bunch of flavors). To turn this blackberry lemonade syrup into a virgin blackberry lemonade syrup, just leave out the port in the recipe.

Blackberry Port Lemonade:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cup blackberries crushed
• 1/2 cup port

Directions:

In a saucepan add the water, sugar, and blackberries and bring to a slow simmer on low heat until all the sugar is dissolved.  Let the sugar syrup cool to room temperature.

Once the blackberry sugar water is cooled, add the lemon juice and port and stir-in.  Blackberry Port Lemonade is ready.  Transfer to a bottle to use later.

When you are ready to serve blackberry port lemonade, the proportions are 1/3 syrup to 2/3 sparkling mineral water (in whichever glass you use).  Add ice cubes and garnish with mint leaves for a deliciously refreshing blackberry port lemonade cocktail.

Cook’s Notes: Depending on how sweet you like your cocktail feel free to adjust the proportions of syrup to mineral water. Hitesh thought my proportions were a little too sweet – but I like my lemonade on the sweeter side 😋

Mother’s Day Idea 💝

I’m sure any Mom would enjoy a refreshing blackberry lemonade, be it with port or without.