The Saga of Salted Honey Peach Mezcal Lemonade

One man's roundabout quest to make a July 4th-ready boozy lemonade.

Sometimes a cocktail idea just pops into your head — not as a fully-formed recipe, but as a set of words that you somehow must convert into liquid form. That’s what happened earlier this year: I was out for one of my many long walks around the city, thinking about cocktails I might want to make over the summer, and the following set of words descended upon my brain: Salted. Honey. Peach. Mezcal. Lemonade. 

Salted honey peach mezcal lemonade! 

Who wouldn’t want to drink that? I knew I wanted to try it. I knew I wanted to make it, in great big batches to serve at summer parties where I didn’t want to make individual drinks all night. 

I ran the words by a few other people, and they seemed enthusiastic as well. 

The problem, of course, was that it didn’t exist yet. The world contained salt and honey and peaches and mezcal and the concept of lemonade. But no one had combined them into drinkable, delicious liquid form.

Thus, I had a challenge. 

The good news was that I already make a lemonade I’m pretty happy with. And, as I wrote last year, it’s not just a single-recipe lemonade — it’s a modular structure for boozy and/or elaborately flavored lemonades. I’m a big booster of lemonade, both the basic kind and various modified alternatives. I think it’s an underrated drink form, and that the world needs more unusual lemonades. 

So I figured I could just adapt the initial idea into something that did the relevant set of words justice. 

I also had an idea of what it would, or perhaps what it should, taste like. This is something else that happens to your brain if you make enough cocktails — you have an imagined flavor profile, something that doesn’t exist but (hopefully) could. You can almost taste it in your head. And then you then have to find a way to mix and pour and combine that imaginary flavor into existence. 

Eventually this all worked out. But it turned out to be a somewhat more arduous process than I expected. The final drink, however, is delicious, and while it does require some advance prep and time, it takes relatively little sustained effort and only a handful of easy-to-find ingredients.

So for this week’s pre-July 4th newsletter, we’ll look at the story of a cocktail that is, in its own way, a little bit like America: It had to be described before it could exist, and early on, the going was admittedly somewhat rough. But eventually — well, here we are.

We’ll also review: 

• some basic principles for building lemonades

• different methods for incorporating novel flavors using syrups

• how to solve problems and find inspiration in other cocktails that may not seem obviously related to the thing you’re trying to make

And then at the end we’ll make a batchable, scalable, Salted Honey Peach Mezcal Lemonade.

Seven Part Lemonade Theory 

As I wrote last year, I think people — hardcore cocktail nerds, mixed dabblers, normies who like wine coolers and hard seltzer — should drink more lemonade. 

I mean basic lemonade. I mean boozy lemonade. I mean cleverly embellished non-boozy lemonade. Just lemonade. If you make lemonade well, with fresh ingredients and maybe a bit of seltzer or soda water, it’s incredibly satisfying. 

It’s also pretty easy to make — and, importantly, to modify. 

I find it is easiest to understand lemonade as a seven-part structure, with one part lemon juice, one part sugar, and five parts water. If you want a sparkling lemonade, you can replace all or part of the five parts with club soda or seltzer or some other form of fizzy water. If you want a boozy lemonade, you can replace one or more parts of the water with whiskey. And you can combine and stack these techniques to create various riffs and iterations. 

The point is that it’s a consistent, modular structure that you can adapt to a variety of flavor profiles and concepts. 

So I figured a Salted Honey Peach Mezcal Lemonade would be pretty easy to design and make. 

The Honey Peach Syrup Problem 

The first thing I had to think about was how to incorporate the modifying ingredients — salt, honey, peach, and mezcal. 

Salt and mezcal were pretty obvious. And the honey seemed clear enough too — it would replace usual sugar as the sweetener. 

The peaches were the more difficult ingredient.

I initially considered using a booze infusion, but in general I prefer to avoid alcohol infusions, which can be expensive and tricky to time. I also considered using a high-quality peach liqueur, like Crème de Pêche de vigne, but I was creating this drink for the newsletter, and I wanted it to be as accessible as possible. 

So ordinary peaches it was. And the easiest way to get a peach flavor into the drink, I figured, was to make a honey-peach syrup. After all, I already make a 3:1 honey syrup (just 3 parts honey and 1 part water, measured by volume, whisked together) as a standard ingredient. Adding peaches to the mix seemed like a straightforward approach for this drink. 

And as I’ve said before, syrups are the easiest and lowest cost way to incorporate novel flavors into cocktails. 

The honey-peach syrup eventually worked. But it took several attempts to figure out how to make it. 

For the first attempt, I tried infusing peaches into 3:1 honey syrup by leaving frozen peach slices in a bowl of honey syrup on the counter for about six hours. This wasn’t bad, exactly, but it didn’t taste quite peachy enough, especially once I made a quick test lemonade with it. The peach flavor just seemed

So I made a second attempt, this time with a blender and grocery store peaches. I removed the pit of a single peach, then blended the rest (the edible parts) of a peach into 16 ounces of 3:1 syrup — no straining or anything. The soft, edible part of the peach was now simply blended directly into the syrup. 

Not surprisingly, this turned out very peachy.

So the next step was to make a lemonade. My first attempt was based on a seven-part structure, and it looked like this: 

• 1 tsp salt

• 4 ounces lemon juice

• 4 ounces blended honey-peach syrup

• 4 ounces mezcal (Del Maguey Vida)

• 16 ounces soda water

This was a 1:1:1:4 structure (lemon:sweetener:booze:soda water) that I’d used before, and I was expecting it to lock in instantly. 

But while it wasn’t undrinkable, it was…just…off. Not quite right somehow. This was going to need some work. 

The problems I identified were: 

• It was way, way too salty. This would be the easiest problem to fix. 

• There was an odd flavor or flavor combo. Not something that made the drink gross, but something that clashed a bit, something that made me squinch my face a little every time I tried it. 

• After a while, I realized the balance was also wrong, though initially I thought that was related to the squinchy-face flavor issue.¹ 

So I made another attempt using the same syrup and the same ratio, but with half as much salt, and lime juice instead of lemon juice, hoping this would somehow fix the flavor and balance issues. After all, I thought, mezcal goes quite well with lime juice; one of the most common uses for mezcal is in a Margarita variation. 

Surprisingly, this solved almost none of the problems. The over-salting wasn’t as acute, but it was still too aggressive. And the odd flavor remained, only slightly mitigated by the lime juice. I was honestly worried that the idea simply wouldn’t work. 

Peaches Come From a Can. They Were Put There By a Man.

At this point, I realized I needed to try a different approach. So I gave myself a day to think about it. 

As often happens when experimenting with a new ingredient, my mind wandered around the possibilities for making totally different drinks with the honey-peach syrup I’d made.

And since I was already thinking about Margaritas, and since honey-based syrups have a similar consistency as the agave syrup I typically add to Margarita variations, I tried making a Margarita. Specifically, I made a Honey-Peach Tommy’s Margarita — the Tommy’s part meaning it didn’t use Cointreau at all. 

That was a shaken drink, served on the rocks, that looked like this:

• 3 drops of 20 percent saline solution (salt)

• ½ ounce honey-peach syrup

• ½ ounce fresh lime juice

• 2 ounces tequila

And you know what? This was much better than the lemonades I’d been making. In particular, it seemed to manage the balance — the ratio of boozy strong to sweet and sour — much better. 

In this formulation, the tequila base is much more prominent in the mix than the lime and sweetener. So I figured I should probably try increasing the proportion of mezcal in my lemonade, making the booze more prominent in the mix. 

I also had another realization: Although the balance issues had improved dramatically, the flavor issue was still there, if not quite as prominent. 

The flavor problem must have something to do with the syrup. 

Nature’s Candy in My Hand or a Can or a Pie

So I needed to restructure the lemonade. I also needed to make a different syrup that didn’t taste weird. 

If you’re capturing an odd flavor in an infused syrup, sometimes you can eliminate that flavor by making the syrup using an immersion circulator and a sous vide method, sometimes known as a water bath.

In this method, you

• combine syrup plus infusing ingredients in a sealed bag

• then dip the bag in a warm water bath

• let it heat for a few hours

• then strain out the solids. 

Sous vide syrups heat all the ingredients to a consistent temperature inside a water bath, rapidly extracting a lot of flavor in the process, but retaining the delicacy of the infused ingredient. This is why, for example, some bars prefer to use a sous vide method for making cinnamon syrup — it pulls a ton of cinnamon spice flavor into the syrup without burning or overpowering the mix.² 

Honey Peach Syrup (Sous Vide Method)

• 2 whole fresh peaches, pits removed

• 4 ounces water

• 12 ounces honey 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine water and honey in a bowl, then whisk until fully integrated. 

2. Transfer honey syrup to a large Ziploc-style bag. 

3. Remove the pits from the two peaches, then discard the pits. Then cut the remaining fruit into slices. Put the peach slices into the bag of honey syrup. 

4. Using a sous vide or an immersion circulator in a large basin of water, heat a water bath to 145 degrees F. 

5. Once the bath is fully heated, slowly dip the bag into the bath, using the water displacement method to push any air out of the top of the bag in the process, sealing the top of the bag in the process. All of the contents of the bag (the honey syrup and peaches) should be underwater, but the top of the bag should be above the water. 

6. Let the syrup heat in the bath for 2 hours, 30 minutes. 

7. Remove syrup bag. Using a fine mesh strainer, strain out the peach solids. (Discard the solids.)

8. Bottle the remaining syrup, then store in the fridge. Should keep for at least a week. 

When I finished the syrup, I could tell even before tasting it that it was far superior to the blended version. An intense honey-peach aroma emanated from the mix. 

Once I had this syrup, I could make what would become the final drink.

Salted Honey Peach Mezcal Lemonade (Final Version)

• 14 drops 20 percent saline solution* or a small pinch of salt (don’t overdo it)

• 4 ounces honey-peach syrup (sous vide version, see above; or stovetop version, see below)

• 4 ounces lemon juice

• 8 ounces mezcal

• 12 ounces soda water

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl with a pour spout. Whisk briefly to integrate. 

2. Transfer mix to bottle, then store in the fridge. 

3. Pour over ice to serve. Garnish with peach slices (optional, but fun and decorative).

*20 percent saline solution: Combine four parts water and one part salt, measured by volume, in a small saucepan. Heat on medium or medium low, stirring to combine. Do not let boil. Heat until mix is thoroughly combined, no salt sludge at the bottom. Bottle in an eye dropper.

This was much, much better — lightly but precisely salty thanks to the use of saline solution from a dropper bottle, with a strong honey sweetness and a delicate peachy undertone, all grounded by earthy, smoky mezcal and lifted into bubbly effervescence with soda water on top.

The ratio had changed — this was a 2:1:1:3 drink (mezcal:lemon:syrup:soda), making for a stronger, less bubbly drink — but the seven-part structure had held. This was the drink as I’d imagined it, the cocktail idea as I’d tasted it in my mind. 

The consistent ratio means this drink scales quite easily. The recipe above makes a 28 ounce batch, but you can easily make a 14-ounce half-size batch — or you can double it for serving a bigger, thirstier group of friends. 

Because it involves carbonated water, this drink is better when fresh. Ideally, you should consume it within a few hours of mixing up a batch. However, if you store it in a bottle with a sealable lid, it will keep reasonably well in the fridge for several days — it will just be somewhat less fizzy.

Another Way to Make Honey-Peach Syrup

There was still one final problem to solve: I wanted this recipe to be as accessible as possible. But not everyone has access to a sous vide or immersion circulator. So I wanted to make a stovetop version of the honey-peach syrup. 

Like the sous vide method, this is a heated infusion: The idea is to extract peach flavor into a 3:1 honey syrup.

It’s not terribly difficult to execute, and requires minimal tools — you need a bowl, a whisk, a covered saucepan, and a stovetop burner. But it does take some time. 

It’s also somewhat less precise and less flavorful than the sous vide method — my first batch was slightly but noticeably thicker than its sou vide counterpart, likely due to some minor evaporation. 

But if you don’t have a sous vide, it still works pretty well, and it doesn’t have the odd flavor issues the blender syrup had. 

Honey-Peach Syrup (Stovetop Version)

• 2 whole peaches

• 4 ounces water

• 12 ounces honey 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine water and honey in a bowl. Whisk to combine, until fully integrated. 

2. Cut pits out of the peaches, discard pits. Cut the remainder (all the edible parts of the peach) into slices.

3. Combine peach slices with honey syrup in a small saucepan on a stovetop. 

4. Heat at medium to medium low for about 15 minutes. Do not let boil. 

5. Remove from heat, then cover container and let sit at room temperature for about 5-6 hours. 

6. Use a fine mesh strainer to strain out the peach solids, then bottle the remaining syrup and store in the fridge. Should keep for at least a week. 

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1. This is the technical term.

2. Specifically, Death and Company relies on a sous vide method for cinnamon syrup, in contrast to the more traditional stovetop method called for in the Smuggler’s Cove book.