1 to 2 teaspoons sugar *see notes
½ oz lemon juice
2 oz Brandy (preferably Cognac)
2 oz Catawba wine OR dry rosé wine **see notes
1 teaspoon raspberry syrup (recipe below)
¼ oz Jamaican rum (optional)
Garnish: orange, pineapple, fresh berries
Stir sugar and lemon juice together in a bar glass or rocks glass.
Add brandy, wine, and raspberry syrup and fill the glass with ice (shaved or crushed preferable)
Shake well and pour back into glass.
Top with dark rum and garnish with fruit. Serve with a straw.
NOTES:
* The original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons, but we found the cocktail far too sweet and much preferred it with only 1 teaspoon after some testing
** The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will be very similar, or you could use any sweet white or rosé wine you like. However, we found this punch was far too sweet and much preferred it made with a dry rosé instead.
2 cups of demerara sugar
1 cup of water
1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)
Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Add raspberries stirring until the berries form a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate. Over time, the pectin will rise to the surface and can be skimmed off.
The “National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch” was probably around before the 1860s but we don’t know the actual origins. We just know that the recipe was published by Jerry Thomas in 1862.
This drink is named after NYC’s seventh regiment, which used to be the only regiment that made up the national guard at one point in history. They were known as a “silk stocking” regiment, meaning they were mostly made up of fancy fifth avenue blue blood types.
During the civil war they were on their way to go fight at Gettysburg, but NYC’s draft riots broke out and they were called back. Fighting draft rioters in NYC was actually the only combat they ever saw during the entire civil war.
This is one of the more unique cocktails we’ve ever had. The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will have a very similar flavor, but you could use any sweet white or rosé wine that you like. However, we found this punch to be far too sweet for modern tastes, and much preferred it when we tried a version made with a dry rosé instead. A later reprint of Thomas’ book called for Sherry.
Catawba grapes are a hybrid of wild grapes native to the East Coast crossed with European wine grapes. Catawba wine can be a bit hard to find today, but 200 years ago it was everywhere in the US. In fact, Jerry Thomas’ book actually has several recipes that feature it. The flavor of Catawba wine is sweet and distinctly grape-y, tasting more like Concord grape juice than wine. Posh wine snobs refer to this flavor as “foxy” and say that it also has a wild, musky, animal smell, but we just tasted juice box.