Blue curacao is not necessarily a required ingredient in your home bar. At its core, it’s orange liqueur with blue coloring added. That coloring is the core of its charm, giving drinks an electrically colorful charm. Blue Curacao’s troubles stem from low quality producers that make poor quality curacaos, with bitter, chemical flavors. Thankfully, Giffard isn’t a low quality producer. So does Giffard Curacao Bleu do it better?
Giffard Curacao Bleu
Sight: It is undeniably blue. Somewhere between cobalt and azure with a hint of teal.
Smell: A bright smell of freshly zested oranges ranging from clementines to tangerines floats up. There’s a compliment of some vanilla notes and a hint of powder sugar. A slight tang of alcohol exists as well.
Sip: Sweet and thick to start, it brings in a slightly sour, candied orange flavor. The cloying sweetness has a hint of vanilla and other tropical orange zest notes to it.
Savor: The ending is cloyingly sweet, but leaves a light to moderate lingering tropical orange flavor palate.
Why anyone would want to drink Giffard Curacao Bleu straight is not for me to ponder. Suffice it to say that unless you a fan of saccharinely sweet liqueurs that are primarily orange flavored, then you will very little here to enjoy on it’s own.
In Cocktails
Lest we be too hard on Giffard Curacao Bleu, as it works wonderfully in cocktails. The two things you want blue curacao to do well are:
- Be Blue
- Impart a lightly-tropical but ultimately orangey flavor into a cocktail.
The first two things it passes with flying colors. It is, in fact, blue. It also happens to be orange flavored. More importantly, it passes another unspoken rule, it doesn’t impart any strange cheap flavoring or chemical flavors. This last one is the kiss of death of most of the Windex colored liqueurs you see gracing the bottom shelf.
There is a third, semi-unspoken objective that blue curacao also has (which Giffard passes), which is to add sweetness. The third is obviously optional, but something that always needs to be considered when making drinks with any orange liqueur. Overall, even though Giffard’s blue curacao is sweet, it’s not overwhelmingly sweet, and thanks to that, it replaces well with 1:1 simple. As a result of its good behavior and modifier characteristics, we’ve used it in both our original Frankenstein and Slimer cocktails.
Giffard Curacao Bleu Overall
Giffard Curacao Bleu is somewhat more expensive than it’s competitors, ranging from the low to mid $20s. We feel that based on the smooth characteristics, natural flavors, and balanced sweetness that it’s one of the best blue curacao options out there, and highly recommend it for any bar looking to add a blue curacao to their cocktail kit.
Giffard Curacao Bleu Cocktails
