Rosemary-Blueberry Citrus Mocktails {Holiday Mocktail Recipes}

Rosemary-Blueberry Citrus Mocktails are refreshing and festive, and may become your new favorite holiday beverage. Perfect for “lightweight” drinkers, non-drinkers, and designated drivers, they’re a great way to celebrate on New Year’s Eve. 

*I’ve partnered with Natural Choice Beverages to bring you this sponsored post. Although I was provided with free product, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Sadly, my days of drinking copious amounts of alcohol have come to a slow end. Sure, I can sip on a glass of wine or champagne during dinner, but hard liquor has been a tough one to swallow – literally. My body just can’t keep up with the booze, so I prefer to enjoy carefully crafted mocktail recipes – those drinks that are composed with fruit, herbs, sodas, and syrups that tend to taste even better than the regular boozy counterparts.

That’s why this Rosemary-Blueberry Citrus Mocktail is just the drink you need to celebrate your end of the year.

Rosemary syrup adds just the right amount of herbaceous balance that the lime, lemon, and blueberries need. Plus, with a topper of Perfect by Natural Choice Beverages – it’s bound to bring it all together as THE drink of the night.

The birth of the rosemary-blueberry citrus mocktail recipe:

2015 was a great year – a challenging one, but a great one nonetheless. Looking back at how I started the year, by quitting my restaurant job to try my hand at a social media management job (that just wasn’t for me), I realized that the kitchen is the place I belong.

For a minute, I thought I grew tired of cooking, of the endless hot hours in a restaurant. But the counterpart was to spend 16 hours in front of a laptop, consuming excessive caffeine, and have no time for myself. That’s when a hot restaurant kitchen job sounded like a dream! One of the perks of chef life is the after-shift drink – a cold beer, an icy cocktail, or just a tall glass of water. Whatever it is, after working over a dozen hours in a day, something cold and refreshing just feels right.

When Natural Choice Beverages asked me to create a virgin cocktail using their Perfect line of drinks, I loved the idea. An alcohol-filled cocktail is always easy – booze and a mixer, and it’s done. But a virgin cocktail has to have some thought behind it. It can’t be too sweet, it can’t be too sour, and it can’t be one note. You have to think about balancing ingredients, since you’re not going to have that “saving grace” of a hard liquor.

Rosemary-Blueberry Citrus Mocktail

This is the perfect mocktail that brings together bright citrus fruit, tart blueberries, and an herbaceous rosemary syrup.

Print Recipe

Prep Time:1 hour hr

Total Time:1 hour hr

Ingredients

For rosemary syrup:

• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup water
• 4 springs fresh rosemary

For cocktail:

• 1.5 ounces rosemary syrup
• ½ ounce fresh lime juice
• ½ can Perfect by Natural Choice Beverages
• crushed ice
• rosemary spring & fresh blueberries

Instructions

• To make the syrup, simmer together the sugar, water, and rosemary for 10 minutes until sugar dissolves. Cover pot with a lid and steep for at least one hour.
• To make cocktail: in a shaker, shake rosemary syrup and lime juice. Pour over crushed ice and top off with Perfect. Decorate with rosemary spring, fresh blueberries, and/or lime slices.

Servings: 1 cocktail

Author: Marnely Murray

Perfect is a sparkling, lightly carbonated, functional beverage full of vitamins, herbs, and minerals. And this beverage line is gluten-free, including immunity-boosting and detoxifying herbal supplements. For those with healthy resolutions for the new year, I consider this drink to be a great start!

The giveaway for a case of Natural Choice Beverages that was originally part of this post has ended, and the entry form widget has since been removed.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Natural Choice Beverages. Thank you for supporting brands that help me bring you fun and delicious content!