Nole and I recently celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary (woohoo!) at one of our favorite New York restaurants, Perilla. Nole – a picky drinker – loved a version of the classic Greyhound highball the bartender made for her, so I decided to play around with the recipe once we got home, so as to continue to ply her with drinks she enjoys. We ended up with a great cocktail on our hands, which we decided to call the Persian Greyhound: a light and breezy sour that’s perfect for the heat wave rolling over DC this week.  – Andrew

Illustration by Caitlin Keegan for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The Persian Greyhound

2 oz Dry Gin
1 oz Grapefruit Juice
1 oz Pomegranate Liqueur
1 Dash Ginger Liqueur
1 Dash Simple Syrup

Combine everything with ice, shake well, strain into a chilled cocktail glass and enjoy!

 

The Greyhound is properly a highball – a two-ingredient drink usually served in a tall glass that shares a name with this family of drinks – made from gin and grapefruit juice. (And never vodka, no matter what you hear, because who wants to drink that?) But I’m rarely content with simple highballs and usually end up adding all sorts of things to them; I’m sure there’s a time and place for a gin and tonic, for example, but why not have the superior Gin Rickey instead? So we balanced the bitter tartness of the grapefruit juice with the sweetly tart pomegranate liqueur, threw in some a bit of spicy ginger liqueur to pair with the gin’s botanicals, and added a bit of simple syrup to round out all that tartness. The results? Nole loved it – which is good enough for me.

With all that pomegranate liqueur, we thought it only proper to name this drink the Persian Greyhound. Only it turns out there really is a breed of dog called the Persian Greyhound, also known as the Saluqi (in Arabic) or Tazi (in Persian). Pretty neat.

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper