I love seltzer water, especially when the weather is turning warm and my porch is cleared of the winter’s detritus.  There’s something so refreshing about sipping a lightly sparkling drink that is enhanced by a squeeze of fresh citrus juice and some ginger that I find sinful on Spring days when the sunset is lingering and the trees are bursting into life again.  This is a mocktail that I created for those evenings that linger when the kitchen is warm and you just want to sit on the porch and read.

A friend was recently up for a blogger challenge over on the Marx foods website, so I went to give him my support by clicking a button and then I was caught in a website FULL of fabulous gourmet goods that I hadn’t heard of.  I checked out the Marx blog and wandered over everything until I stumbled across a blogger offer – for juices.  Three of them – Yuzu Juice, Kabosu Juice, and Sudachi Juice.  They were all foreign to me and looked decadent in their squat brown bottles.  I emailed the PR guy (Justin) and asked for a sample – at worst I wouldn’t like them right?

I liked them, all three of the juices offered a variation on lime juice – fairly sour but with subtle undertones.  In my naivete I had assumed these juices would be palatable for sipping – they were not, unless you can sip lime juice or have a miracle berry.  But they were delicious, and offered a depth of flavor that plain lime juice lacks.

The Yuzu had a bright lime flavor with undertones of tangerine (oh yeah, i’m about to get all taster snobby here, it’s kinda fun and silly).  I want this juice in vinaigrettes on fruit salads.  The Kabosu juice seemed to be the sweetest of the three.  I like it for it’s lemony flavor with a fantastic aftertaste of cantaloupe – yeah cantaloupe, it had that honey melon flavor.  Totally Decadent.  There’s a reason this was the juice to grace my mocktail.  And then there was the Sudachi.  This was my least favorite of the three juices, it is very tart and I found it hard to separate any other flavors over the tartness.  Maybe in a simple syrup it would be better?  Maybe?  I felt like I was sucking on a lemon with some grapefruit juice thrown in there to taunt me with another flavor.  It lacked the depth of flavor that I found with the other two juices.

I suppose you could add a bit of your favorite vodka to this drink to make it more of an adult soda – but why would you tamper with a good thing?  And with no alcohol you can feel decadent without going overboard when you drink this on a hot saturday afternoon and read from your newest obsession.

Kathy’s Ginger-Kabosu Soda
Note:  I’ve been adding these juices to a lot of things where I would regularly add lime or lemon juice but this soda is my favorite, and garnished with the fine slices of kumquat and a shave of ginger these were dressed up from refreshing to classy enough to serve at a dinner party.

1 Thumb sized nub of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced into coins
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
6 oz Club Soda
2 oz Kabosu Juice (If you can’t use that Lime would work too)
Ice
1 Kumquat cut into rounds, for garnish (optional)

In a small saucepan bring the ginger coins, sugar and water to a boil.  Allow them to simmer gently until the sugar dissolves – 2 minutes, maybe.  Remove the pan from the heat.  Let the ginger steep in the sugar water fro at least 5 minutes – more time will make the ginger flavor stronger.  Strain the ginger out of the syrup when the ginger flavor has saturated the syrup enough.  Reserve this ginger for garnish.  Let the syrup cool.  In a pint glass, combine the ginger syrup, Kabosu juice and club soda.  Stir Gently.  Add ice if you like.  Garnish with slices of kumquat and some of the candied ginger from the syrup.  Enjoy while sitting on a deck in the sunshine, reading, or playing a video game.

I was given these juices to try and review for free by Marxfoods.com, but all opinions and comments are my own.