Buy This One Thing, Be a Cocktail Master

A bird's eye view of a cocktail being prepared.

(Image credit: Courtesy St. Germain)

published 6 January 2016

Like many people, I love a good cocktail. Like many other people, I tend to never make them at home, instead opting to pour some wine or pop open a beer because 1) ease 2) please refer to #1. But while some cocktails seem to take 3,340 ingredients and require things like cocktail shakers (why) and ice shaped in figures like unicorns and trapezoids (because you wouldn't want to dilute your liquor, you amateur), they don't have to. I have finally found the holy grail—the one thing that you can add to your bar cart to make it resemble a thing of purpose as opposed to housing just the afterthoughts of a frat party. Enter: St-Germain, an elderflower liqueur that is both super pretty and super useful.

A bottle of St. Germain on a bar counter next to a cocktail.

St-Germain is a French liqueur made from 100% fresh elderflowers that are handpicked once a year in Europe. And while you may be like, um, flowers in my drink, hard pass—its tasty, slightly sweet tropical fruit and honeysuckle finish is just the thing to add a little somethin' somethin' to your concoctions. Plus, you can add it to pretty much anything. Gin, vodka, tequila, bourbon, rum, whisky—gang's all here and totally mixable. (Pssst—you can find recipes here).

The best thing is that you can just combine with champagne and you've got yourself a version of a Kir Royale. Topped off with sparkling wine and soda in a tall glass, and you've got the St. Germain cocktail, which you can also make in big batches for a punch—because that's the beauty of this one bottle. It makes you just slightly grown-up, but without any of the work. (The fairy godmother of liquor?)

A cocktail sitting on a table in a house.

You can also pretty much keep it around forever—either in a cabinet, on your bar cart, or in your fridge, it never really goes bad, even if it does start to change color. "The natural aspect of the product and the fact that there are no preservatives or artificial coloring lead to a possible change of color of the liquid after a few months," says Camille Vidal, the St-Germain Global Brand Ambassador. "But don't worry! The change in color does not mean it's gone off—the flavor will only grow richer with time and will provide additional notes of cooked fruit."

Essentially, we just found the one thing that you can mix with one other ingredient and call it a cocktail—because you're classy. Cheers.

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Samantha Leal is the Deputy Editor at Well+Good, where she spends most of her day thinking of new ideas across platforms, bringing on new writers, overseeing the day-to-day of the website, and working with the awesome team to produce the best stories and packages. Before W+G, she was the Senior Web Editor for Marie Claire and the Deputy Editor for Latina.com, with bylines all over the internet. Graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University with a minor in African history, she’s written everything from travel guides to political op-eds to wine explainers (currently enrolled in the WSET program) to celebrity profiles. Find her online pretty much everywhere @samanthajoleal.