Wineberry Basil Syrup

This wineberry basil syrup gets its sweet and slightly tart flavor from a wild berry, and is rounded out with the unique herbaceous notes of basil.

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

At my dad’s house upstate, “wineberry” bushes grow in wild abundance, taking up residence on the borders of the yard and in any sunny unmaintained areas of the property (that haven’t already been infiltrated by stinging nettle). As a kid I plucked these sweet and tart little berries right off of their thorny vines all throughout the month of July, staining my fingers red and filling my belly. We never really used them for anything more than letting their juices quench our summertime thirst. But in recent years (mostly due to the influence of my stepmom) we’ve started to see these berry bushes less as an invasive and prickly nuisance (which they most certainly can be) and more of a culinary opportunity. A few years ago I used them to make Maple Wineberry Vodka. And this year I’m using them to make this sweet, tart, and perfect-for-topping-just-about-anything winberry basil syrup. 

For those who’ve never had a wineberry, they taste kind of like a hybrid between a strawberry and a raspberry. If you live in the country, you may have them growing somewhere on your property, as they’re actually a pretty invasive and super quick-spreading plant. But they also happen to taste really really good. They give this wineberry basil syrup its signature sweet-tart flavor, and a gorgeous bright red color. The addition of basil in this syrup rounds out the sweetness with a unique, herbaceous note. It’s perfect for anything from topping ice cream or fresh berries, mixing up a signature cocktail, or drizzling over buttered toast for breakfast. Of course, if you don’t have access to wineberries, you could just as easily craft this syrup with strawberries or raspberries instead. But don’t forget the basil – that might just be my favorite part.

COOKING “SUSTAINABLY”

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability in my cooking. More and more, I’m trying to use ingredients that would otherwise go unused, or repurpose parts of ingredients that I might otherwise discard. “Sustainability” is the word we use for it now. But for someone like my grandfather – who was raised by Italian immigrant parents and was a little boy during the great depression – it was a necessity of life. As I try to channel my grandparent’s through my cooking, I look for ways to use these types of ingredients. My recipes using stinging nettle (usually though of as a weed) – stinging nettle focaccia and stinging nettle and leek pesto – are great examples of this. And using the ingredients that naturally grow in my backyard to make things like mulberry icebox cake or fig bars makes me think of the way my grandfather cooked as well.

And of course this wineberry basil syrup falls into that category too. The wineberries themselves grow wild from plants that would otherwise have no use. Foraged plants like these, that others discard or see as a nuisance, were the ones my grandparents grew up eating. And to incorporate basil into this syrup, I simply use the stems. My dad taught me this. Basil leaves are useful for about a million other things, from making pesto to topping pastas and salads, but most of the time we end up throwing the stems away. Instead, to truly get all the possible use out of the basil, use them to infuse a syrup like this one. And not only is it sustainable, but incredibly delicious.