Double Berry Coconut Rum Mojito

Double Berry Coconut Rum Mojito

I wouldn’t say that I am terribly competitive but when you read what I went through to enter Double Berry Coconut Rum Mojito into the Food Wine Conference’s contest with Wish Farms, you may disagree.

A requirement for the Wish Farms contest is to use their berries in a cocktail or mocktail. Should be easy, right? Well…..we are at the very beginning of berry season in Florida and I was having trouble finding Wish Farms berries in South Florida stores. After going to several and calling others, I decided it was time to go directly to the source; Wish Farms. 

I am a huge fan of customer service and the fabulous folks at Wish Farms were terrific. I was given the name of a grocery store in my area that carried Wish Farms blueberries. I tried calling to confirm that they were in the store but this particular store does not accept phone calls in any of their stores. 

Well, being on a mission, I called that grocery store’s corporate office and the very nice lady told me that they had 88 packages of blueberries in the store closest to me but she couldn’t find out the brand because…wait for it….the stores don’t answer phones. 

I drove over only to find out that they did not have any Wish Farms berries in the store. You know where this is going, right? I called back to Wish Farms and they were fantastic, even telling me how many cases were just shipped to the closest distributor for that grocery store.

The next day, I didn’t find Wish Farms blueberries but I felt like I hit the motherload because the grocery store had both Wish Farms strawberries and blackberries.

Now that the berries were set, I could really focus on my drink. I knew I wanted a cocktail (hello, have we met?) and loved the idea of using coconut rum with the berries. Rather than go with a run-of-the-mill simple syrup, I boiled a package of Wish Farms blackberries into the sugar and water. The blackberries were strained and used in the mojitos and the deep pink/purple of the syrup really made Double Berry Coconut Rum Mojito pop with color.

On my mojito journey, I learned a great tip from Brandon, a fabulous bartender at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami. Instead of muddling the mint into the glass, place it in the palm of one hand and smack it with your other hand. The flavors are released without itty bitty pieces of mint, something that can be distasteful.

Will Double Berry Coconut Rum Mojito win the contest? I don’t know but I sure hope you love it as much as I. AND….there’s still time to get your ticket to attend the Food Wine Conference in Orlando, May 19-21. I am super duper excited because this year in addition to being a sponsor with Happylicious by Betsy, I will also be speaking about Starting a Startup. This conference is da bomb for food and travel bloggers as well as photographers/videographers. Be sure to use discount code BetsyC2017 to save $50 off the registration price. Click here for more information.