Cocktails: The Scorpio and the Eighth Sign

By Brooklyn Bill

The other day, while going through some old magazines, I found an intriguing cocktail recipe in the November issue of Martha Stewart Living that I was eager to try. The drink is called the Scorpio and consists of sloe gin and ginger ale shaken up with some grated fresh ginger and lemon juice. Since I never have soda in the fridge, I figured I'd pump up the amount of fresh ginger and add simple syrup and seltzer water to approximate the taste and fizz of the ginger ale.

Then I got a better idea. Sloe gin tastes like cherry, and I love the combination of cherry and pomegranate, so I ditched the ginger ale in favor of pomegranate juice. And it was delicious.

I was going to name the drink the Virgo, after my astrological sign, but then I saw that MSL has been doing this Zodiac cocktail thing every month since November and so is bound to create a Virgo for the September issue. So I hereby christen my Scorpio variation the Eighth Sign, after Scorpio's position within the Zodiac.

I made my first Eighth Sign last night; tonight, I played around with the amounts of ingredients some more and I think I've got it right. And I just tried the Scorpio itself, using a can of ginger ale I got from the cafeteria at work, and I liked it, too.

The Eighth Sign

1 1/2 ounces sloe gin

1 1/2 ounces pomegranate juice

1 ounce simple syrup*

1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Shake ingredients together with ice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice.

*Per Dale DeGroff, simple syrup consists of equal parts sugar and water shaken together vigorously in a cocktail shaker. Superfine sugar dissolves faster than regular white sugar.