As you would expect, we love to eat seasonally, varying our ingredients and menus to take advantage of whatever is fresh at the moment. We thought it would be fun to place extra emphasis on one flavor or ingredient each season, highlighting the variety of ways you can use it in your food and home. To kick things off, this season’s ingredient is rosemary!

Today we wanted to share an amazingly simple way to turn your average bloody mary into something extraordinary: rosemary vodka!

Making the vodka is so easy, and when paired with our bloody mary recipe below, you’ll be the star of your next brunch (honestly, the bloody mary will be the star, you’ll be drunk).  We’ve dressed up the bloody mary with some fresh herbs and cheese stuffed olives, nothing too crazy, but just fun enough to make these bloody marys memorable.

First the vodka  ~ I’m going to provide basic instructions, but fom my experience, the process is flexible and can be adjusted based upon how strongly flavored you want your vodka to be.

Vodka Ingredients

• 4 cups vodka
• 4-5 sprigs fresh rosemary (more or less to adjust flavor)

Place the rosemary and vodka in a clean jar to steep. After a few days, give your vodka a taste. You should be able to taste a hint (or more) of the rosemary flavor. I wanted an intense flavor (and I may have forgotten about this project for a moment), so I let my rosemary steep for over a week. After that amount of time, the rosemary flavor was perfectly present in my bloody mary, but not overwhelming.

Whenever you are happy with the rosemary flavor of your vodka, remove the rosemary sprigs. Be prepared for your vodka to turn a greenish-brown color as the rosemary’s tannins are released ~ while slightly unnerving, the color change really makes it seem like you’ve made a potion!

Now, you could take your vodka and make a basic bloody mary, but why not dress it up a bit? The recipe below simplifies things by using bloody mary mix, but then we splurge on the goat cheese-stuffed olives and the fragrance from the additional fresh herbs.

Bloody Mary Ingredients

(makes 1)

• 2 oz vodka
• 4-5 oz bloody mary mix
• 1 tsp horseradish
• 2 dashes worchestershire sauce
• lime wedge
• celery stalk
• goat cheese
• green olives (I purchased olives without the pimentos)
• fresh herbs, particularly dill and cilantro

Stuff your olives with the goat cheese. I used a knife to push the goat cheese into the open end of the olive. It wasn’t pretty, but it was relatively easy.

In a glass filled with ice, add the vodka, bloody mary mix, worchestershire, and horseradish. Stir it well. Arrange the celery stalk and herb sprigs in the glass. Add the lime wedge and skewered olives to the glass’s edge.

Enjoy!

Have you tried your hand at infused vodkas? Have any favorite flavors?

What about your bloody mary, what are your favorite garnishes?