Happy Friday, everyone!

We made it to the last Friday in June, we are about to pass the half-way mark for 2014, and we think that is a reason to celebrate.

So today, we will celebrate with a delicious liqueur whose manufacture involves French men going into the Alps, gathering flowers, and riding a bicycle down the mountain in order to deliver the blossoms to be made into alcohol.

How old timey and fabulous, right? Don’t you just feel like you have been transported into the French version of Heidi?

Back to business — St. Germain is actually a very new liqueur on the scene, painstakingly made from Elderflower blossoms.

Why painstakingly, you ask? Well, as it turns out, Elderflowers only bloom for a few weeks every spring in the Alps, and they lose their flavor if they are processed, so using them in a liqueur requires macerating extremely fresh blossoms. The people behind St. Germain have perfected the process, which they keep as a closely guarded secret.

As we mentioned above, although Elderflowers have been used in European cooking for centuries, St. Germain liqueur was only launched in 2007. Since then it has become extremely popular, and cocktails using the stuff have popped up around the world (we even used it in this week’s quickie cocktail!).

St. Germain has a bright, warm floral flavor with hints of pear and lychee, and the sweet aromatic flavors instantly liven up a variety of cocktails. The most simple, and common, use of St. Germain is to add a touch to a glass of dry champagne–a drink that is perfect for anything from brunch to a celebratory toast.

Due to the rather artisanal manner in which the liqueur is created (each bottle is numbered to indicate the year in which the flowers were harvested), a bottle will run you slightly more than your average liqueur, about $34-37. Luckily the stuff is delicious, will last you a very long while (unless you decide to just chug it, which we do not support), and the bottle itself is very pretty and can be proudly displayed to prove that you are very fancy. It’s a win-win-win!

So go out and get yourself some this weekend, and every time you drink it imagine the villagers from Beauty and the Beast  peddling a bike with a wicker basket down from the Alps, full of flowers, while singing this:

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!