RECIPE: Low Country Kitchen’s Tennessee Three

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Known for its Southern cooking and atmosphere, Low’s cocktail curator Rena Day shares an inside look at how to make one of their most popular (and delicious) cocktails. 

Known as the Tennessee Three, Day said what makes this cocktail unique is the ingredient of local honey from Outlaw Apiaries.

“It’s a drink that tastes like a honey-lavender lemonade,” said Day, who has been a bartender for 16 years and lived in Denver before moving to Steamboat a few years ago.

“My main love is digging up old recipes,” she said. “I’m one of those people who is in to nostalgia and how our cocktails came to be.”

Simple, fresh and unique, this cocktail encompasses the sips at Low.

“Cocktails should be creative and should involve cookbooks from the kictchen with various juices, sauces or infused oils — thinking outside the box,” Day said.

To name a few examples, she said Low has an infused red bell pepper juice and will soon have a carrot juice drink for the summer menu.

“I want people to read things on the menu, be wowed when it arrives, yet, still know what they’re getting,” Day said.

Low’s Tennessee Three recipe

Ingredients

• 2 oz of spirit of choice (i.e. vodka, gin, rum, tequila, etc.)
• 1.5 oz of fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 oz honey water
• 1 oz lavender simple syrup
• Splash of soda water
• Slice of lemon (for garnish)

Directions

Start by adding spirit of choice, for this recipe she used Old Forester Bourbon.

Then, add the fresh lemon juice. Next, add the honey water (made with half honey and half hot water) and the lavender simple syrup.

The lavender simple syrup can be made like tea by adding three tablespoons of lavender to hot water and sugar, letting it sit over night and then straining the next day.

Next, add ice and pour the mix into shaker, and give it a good shake. Strain the concoction over ice, then add a little bit of soda water and lemon for garnish.