Grenadine
Grenadine is a deep red syrup traditionally made from pomegranate juice and sugar, offering a tart-sweet fruitiness alongside its signature colour. Many commercial versions substitute other fruit or artificial flavouring, so quality varies. It is prized as much for the colour gradient it creates as for its flavour.
Common uses
- sweetener and colourant in built cocktails
- creates layered colour effects
Buying & storage
Weeks once opened: Opened, it is on a clock — oxidation flattens it well before the bottle looks empty. Refrigerate it and use it.
Buying: check the label for real pomegranate juice rather than corn syrup and food colouring for a truer flavour
Storage: refrigerate after opening and use within a few weeks
In depth
Understanding grenadine
How it is made, where it comes from, what it pairs with, and how it behaves in an alcohol-free drink.
How it's made
Real grenadine is pomegranate syrup — pomegranate juice and sugar, sometimes with a little orange flower water. Most supermarket grenadine is neither: it is sweetened, coloured corn syrup with no pomegranate in it at all, which is why the ingredient has a worse reputation than it deserves. Homemade takes about ten minutes: equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar, warmed until dissolved.
Origin
Traditionally rooted in French and Middle Eastern pomegranate-syrup traditions.
What it pairs with
Citrus and tropical fruit, where its tartness cuts through. It fights with cream and with anything herbal. Used as a colour component it needs a light hand: 10ml colours a whole drink and 20ml sweetens it past the point of balance.
In alcohol-free drinks
- Carries the Shirley Temple and the Roy Rogers, where it is doing colour, sweetness and fruit all at once
- Its density is what produces the sunrise gradient — that effect is physics, not skill, and works identically without alcohol
Before it goes
Use up grenadine
Ranked by how much of it each drink uses and how little else it needs — the ones at the top will not send you back to the shop.
- Planters Punch
Uses 120ml. Also needs dark rum, fresh lime juice, orange juice, angostura bitters.
- Virgin Sunrise
Uses 15ml. Also needs fresh orange juice.
- Tequila Sunrise
Uses 15ml. Also needs tequila blanco, orange juice.
- Shirley Temple
Uses 15ml. Also needs ginger ale, maraschino cherry.
Recipes
Cocktails containing this ingredient
Shirley Temple
Ginger ale and grenadine with a maraschino cherry — a bright, fizzy classic mocktail.
Bacardí Cocktail
White rum, lime and grenadine, shaken cold — a Daiquiri with a pink, pomegranate-sweetened twist.
Roy Rogers
Cola and grenadine with a maraschino cherry — the cola-based sibling to a Shirley Temple.
Stand-in
Where grenadine is a recommended substitute
Recipes that name it as a swap for something else, with what it replaces.
- Clover Clubin place of raspberry syrup
Swap it
Possible substitutions
Explore