In Holland we have a lot of red currants and they are perfect as a garnish on top of a cocktail. Because they’re very sour, I thought they might also work good as a syrup. It turned out to be an amazing syrup with a lovely sweet and sour balance, but I needed to do some experimenting before I got there.
At first, I muddled some berries and added an equal part of sugar to the juice. The trouble I soon found myself in was, that once I turned the red currants into a syrup, the liquid would quickly change into a gelatin substance. This wasn’t the texture I was looking for as it wasn’t very mixable in this jelly form.

After struggling with different methods, I’ve asked cocktail-know-all Anistatia Miller for advice. She gave me the following recipe to make a syrup out of black or red currants:
“500 gr blackcurrants or red currants; 250 gr caster sugar; 240 ml water. Cook for 5 minutes on medium heat. Reduce to low and cook another 10 minutes. Cool. Strain through a chinois. Bottle”.
Because I wanted to give this recipe a try, and I’ve used up a lot of red currants in earlier attempts, I’ve downsized these measures to the following and got the result I was looking for! Thank you Anistatia 🙂
Ingredients
- 300g red currants
- 150g sugar
- 145ml water



Method
- Remove the red currants from their stem by using a fork.
- Muddle the currants in a pan to get the juices out.
- Add all the ingredients and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes while stirring occasionally.
- Let simmer for another 10 minutes until all the sugar is dissolved and the juices are released from the berries.
- The recipe I’ve used yields 420 ml of unstrained red currant syrup
- Let the syrup cool and fine strain through a sieve and a second time through a coffee filter. This will take a while and you might want to use multiple coffee filters.
- Once strained, add a shot of vodka and store in a clean, glass bottle in the fridge.
Try it in a Tequila Sunrise 2.0 with reposado tequila, homemade orange soda and this red currant syrup!
Hi Tess!
I wass curious, do you always use a shot of vodka in you’re syrups? And I’ve is it for longer hold or a savor reason?
Greetz from a bartender out of Zwolle,
Martin