EVERYTHING IS DARK as the bartender glides over a peach-colored cocktail that balances on a slender glass stem – a Lauren Bacall of drink. There’s something called a buzz button, a little coiled-up blossom on it. I sip and taste notes of lemon and honey. Then, as instructed, I eat the little button, and a strange thing happens: my mouth feels shivering, almost numb. It’s disturbing. Acmella oleracea, also called buzz buttons or electric daisies, is known for their powerful tingling effect. Not sure if I like it. I’m not sure if that’s the point. When I take the next sip, the cocktail seems altered, almost grainy — like I’m switching from animation to high-definition. I taste the drink clearer and purer. Lemon. Honey. All this melted into an almost buttery solution.
“That’s a functional garnish,” says Chevy Farrell, 36, the beverage director at No Man’s Land in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Long before the first swim-up bar popped an orchid on a frozen daiquiri, there were petals around glasses for visual appeal. But blossoms can add so much more: they can be sweet, earthy, umami, funky — “a flavor,” Farrell says, “you can’t put your finger on. It’s the mystery that takes it higher.”
TRANSPORT FLOWERS: magical agents who guide our great transitions, from weddings to funerals; symbols of purity and new beginnings. We collect them, wear them, crush their scent against our wrists and necks. They elevate our rituals and communicate love and sorrow. They are the bridge between body and mind, heaven and earth.
And there’s something transcendent about drinking it: it’s extravagant and outrageous—an echo of Nero’s peeled grapes. Maybe it’s a bit insulting in a world where there is so much hardship. It is too much. But a world like ours craves too much, because one response to suffering is to suffocate oneself in beautifully forgetting, becoming a lotus eater, a drinker of nepenthe – the magic drug of forgetfulness referenced in Homer’s “Odyssey” – which the first-century Roman writer Pliny the Elder believed to be made of borage. In this sense, blossoms mean not only pleasure, but also healing. No wonder they have long been used as ancient remedies.
Take hibiscus, which is now found in everything from ginger beers to CBD-infused water. My Jordanian aunts added sugar, lime and toasted pine nuts to their karkade tea (hibiscus), which aids digestion. The jewel-toned petals have always been particularly popular in Mexico, in preparations from agua de Jamaica to aromatic mole. Ruby Hibiscus Water, a bottled beverage made in New York, transfers the plant’s signature tartness into a richer, berryier brew. Noah Wunsch, the company’s 32-year-old founder, was looking for something to help him curb sugar cravings when he learned about the benefits of hibiscus tea. It seems counterintuitive to think that something sour would counteract the desire for sweetness, but that’s one of the shape-shifting properties of flowers.
On TikTok, young people freeze nasturtiums, violets and geraniums in ice cubes, which colorfully melt into spritzes; others relive the ancient Chinese tradition of rolling green tea leaves in jasmine-scented pearls, which bloom in hot water. For centuries, rose water and orange blossom water have infused syrups, candies and pastries from England to Iran. A recipe with borage in Alyson Brown’s “The Flower-Infused Cocktail” (2021) mentions John Gerard’s 1597 book, “The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes,” which claims that syrup made from the plant “comforts the heart, melancholy purifies, the phrenticke or lunaticke person.” Violets were popular with the ancient Romans, who, Brown says, weaved them into wreaths to ward off hangovers.
Flowers may never become as common in drinks as fruits or herbs, but their exotic nature is part of their appeal. Teri Gelber, 59, owner of T Project, an organic tea studio in Portland, Oregon, often uses lavender, linden, and Oregon cherry blossoms in her blends, but advises a judicious balance, so as not to “overwhelm the other flavors.” It’s true, some recent experiments of this kind from other suppliers aren’t all chardonnay and rose: a wine infused with marigold tastes thin and light vomit; a cornflower tea is reminiscent of peat moss. Using flowers in this way requires care and luck. Chefs must respect their ‘surprise element’, as Gelber puts it.
But when life on Earth feels too heavy, the moon and stars beckon. We want lightness and escape. Enchanting and wild, flowers take us out of ourselves: they are familiar yet unearthly, and to drink them is touching the ground and being lifted, body and soul.
Digital technology: Guillermo Cano. Photo assistant: Karl Leitz. Prop stylist assistant: Ryan Chassee
