POM Cocktail Party

I had the pleasure of inviting some of my friends over to a POM cocktail party this weekend. We were sent a cocktail kit, complete with cocktail recipe book and my very own muddling stick as well as some vouchers to get some POM juice and also other ingredients. Since the weather was absolutely stunning, we decided to stick the Barbie on at the same time and treat everyone to a cremated sausage, for good measure.

POM Wonderful is a 100% juice made from Californian pomegranates. You can get it straight up or blended with other fruit juices, such as mangoes or blueberries. It has no added flavourings and is a good source of potassium. It is pretty darn tasty as well, with a strong fruity flavour that is full of fruit sugars, but also pleasingly tart at the same time. More of a grown up fruit juice really!

When my guests arrived I greeted them with a glass of POM Pimms as a welcome drink. To the POM juice and Pimms I added some sliced fruit, cucumber and lemon and even a few blackcurrants out of the garden which are just ripening up at the moment. When they arrived I added some of our heart shaped POM icecubes to finish the jug off and gave it a stir.

This created a very refreshing summer drink, with a strong pomegranate flavour. It was very cooking and perfect for the really sunny afternoon. As my guests arrived we talked about the POM cocktail kit and they all seemed to like the design, especially the cute ice cube tray. They also commented on the funky design of the POM Wonderful bottle, which is very characteristic of the brand and unlike anything else out there at the moment. The scene was set for a fun cocktail tasting evening!

After we had finished the POM Pimms, we moved on to sampling a POM and Ginger Martini.

Please note this video is unedited, because Microsoft Movie Maker (understandably) hates Apple’s .MOV file format and I can’t be bothered messing around with codecs. The lack of editing possibly makes it more funny though.

Enjoying a POM & Ginger Martini

This was a fun cocktail to make because it starts off with muddling fresh ginger in a POM syrup. I had made the syrup earlier in the day, as it only takes 2 minutes and then needed to be left to cool. The freshness of the ginger mixed really well with the vodka, apple juice, and pomegranate flavours to provide a deeply flavoured, lightly spiced and quite pleasantly sweet cocktail. It is a slightly unusual taste for me, as someone who doesn’t really like gingery drinks, but I did really enjoy this. So if you hate ginger beer, but you want to try something new, this is the cocktail for you. It would really have been better out of a martini glass, but you can’t have everything.

POM Bramble goes down nicely!

The next cocktail from the book that we tried was the POM Bramble. I love a gin based drink so this was an obvious choice for me. Sadly, the supermarket where I got the POM from only had the original pomegranate and pomegranate and mango flavours in stock, so I couldn’t make the recipe up exactly as per the book.

However, it was still a lovely berry based drink, with a light gin flavour in the background, all of which was well balanced by the fresh lemon juice, meaning it was not too sweet and certainly not sickly.

After we’d tasted these cocktails and I made some more for those guests that wanted them, we opened up the cocktail bar for people to experiment with the POM Wonderful juice for themselves. We got some interesting combinations after a while!

We all really enjoyed this new pomegranate twist on some of our favourite old cocktail recipes. It was great to share something new with friends and I have to say it made for a lot more refinement to our home barbequeing experience than we would normally expect!!

You can follow POM on Facebook by clicking here, and if you buy some POM juice in the next few weeks, then you can enter a code from the bottle online and be in with the chance of winning your own cocktail party so you can replicate our experience for yourself!