Desert Sunrise Cocktail

This Desert Sunrise Cocktail is light, sweet and refreshing – a beautiful blend of vodka, orange juice, pineapple juice and a splash of Grenadine. A simple, beautiful, romantic drink when adorned with an orange wedge and topped with a sweet maraschino cherry. Perfect for your  ♥ Valentine!  ♥

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s never to early to plan for a romantic holiday. Dinner, drinks, watching the sunset and the sunrise. Can you imagine it?

This Desert Sunrise Cocktail is perfect for celebrating Valentine’s Day or a romantic evening with your sweetheart. It’s colorful, light, sweet and the taste is an amazing blend of pineapple and orange juice with a shot of Vodka and a float of Grenadine. How can you not love that? 🙂

If you’ve never used Grenadine before, it’s a commonly used, non-alcoholic bar syrup, made from pomegranate juice, sugar and water. It’s flavor profile is both tart and sweet, and it has a deep, rich red color.

Because of it’s flavor and color, it’s popular as an ingredient in many types of cocktails {more recipe ideas below!} – and it’s a great way to get that reddish/pink tint in your mixed drinks.

♥♥♥ Hello Valentine’s Day – here’s your red right here! ♥♥♥

This layered drink is really fast to throw together, and it’s a fun drink to prepare together. The Grenadine, which is added last, naturally floats to the bottom of the glass and makes a gorgeous streaked display on it’s way down – it’s so pretty! And when it finally reaches the bottom – it settles into a gorgeous red and peach ombre effect! ♥ ROMANTIC! ♥

Because this recipe uses Grenadine, I have one word of caution when making this luscious drink – use the Grenadine sparingly! Grenadine is very, very sweet and can overpower this already delectable cocktail. You want just enough Grenadine to add a bit of tartness and sweetness, but you want to maintain the integrity of the orange juice and pineapple juice which gives it it’s mouth-watering pop of bright citrus flavor!

Bam!  ♥♥♥  Pucker up your kisser – for both this drink, and your Valentine. 🙂  ♥♥♥

Tips:

• use chilled highball glasses filled with ice for a super crisp and chilled cocktail
• use Grenadine sparingly, so the sweetness doesn’t overpower the rest of the drink
• layer the drink, by adding the Grenadine last {do not shake or stir ingredients in the glass}

Other Drink Ideas with Grenadine:

1. Shirley Temple Mocktail
2. Pineapple Mocktail
3. Grapefruit Moscow Mule
4. Tequila Sunrise
5. Corona Sunrise

Want a fun read this Valentine’s Day? Read “How 18 Food Blogger’s Spent Valentine’s Day” in this TBT post!

Enjoy!

Print Recipe

Desert Sunrise Cocktail

This Desert Sunrise Cocktail is light, sweet and refreshing topped with an orange wedge and a maraschino cherry.

Course: Drinks

Author: Kristi

Ingredients

• 2 ounces Raspberry flavored vodka
• 2 and 1/2 ounces orange juice
• 2 and 1/2 ounces pineapple juice
• Float a splash of grenadine syrup

Top With

• orange wedge
• maraschino cherry

Instructions

• Fill a highball glass with ice. Layer vodka, then orange juice, then pineapple juice. Slowly pour grenadine over the drink for a sunrise effect. Do not stir. Garnish the drink with an orange wedge and top with a maraschino cherry.

Notes

*I used Raspberry flavored Vodka, but regular Vodka can also be used.

Desert Sunrise Cocktail

Modified recipe from here.