One of Anniken’s friends is getting married in a month and for her bachelorette party Anniken promised that I’d make them a special drink. Not a terribly bad idea - if I actually knew anything at all about mixing a drink. Summer Surprise is a tasty and refreshing drink, but it was a lucky fluke and at least half the credit has to go to Hans Olav. My second drink, Awesome Autumn was a half-assed attempt by the pool in Spain and it’s basically a Screwdriver with a bit of lime.

But any challenge is a good challenge and for this one I decided to go all in. Any true artist has a vision and my vision was a purple cocktail in a sugar rimmed glass, garnished with a couple of maraschino cherries. So I set off searching the interwebs for stuff that could make a drink purple. BOLS Parfait Amour, with a soft and gentle taste of rose petals and orange with a subtle hint of vanilla, looked like it could do the job. I wasn’t too sure about the rose petals - I can’t really imagine that they taste very well - but I like both orange and vanilla. So I ordered a bottle. Licorice is also a nice flavor and I ordered a bottle of white Sambuca as well. It helped, of course, that my sources told me the happy couple enjoyed both purple and licorice, too.

When all the ingredients arrived, I sat down with Anniken and tried to put together a drink worthy a bachelorette party. It got interesting - I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk while there are still kids playing outside.

After a lot of experimentation, we decided to let the Parfait Amour liquor go. I couldn’t really taste the vanilla and the orange came mostly from a bitter orange peel aftertaste. The Sambuca also turned out to be a disaster, since no matter how little we put in, the licorice more or less drowned everything else - except for the rather unappealing orange peel aftertaste from the Parfait Amour. Since I had been unable to find any maraschino cherries and my sugar rim looked like it had been done by a fairly drunk five-year-old, my vision was starting to fade fast. The same was the access to possible ingredients. I had brought a few things with me from the store, but it quickly became clear that I hadn’t brought enough.

So Anniken and I set off towards the closest grocery store to stock pile. Since I had been sampling hard liquors for about one and a half hour at this point (what do you mean “see, smell, taste, spit”?) I was getting rather tipsy. Thankfully, Anniken was working the following morning and had stayed clear of the sampling, so she came with me to make sure I made it both to the store and back again. The funniest thing about being drunk in the afternoon? Trying not to look drunk in the afternoon. I think I did good, my lovely girlfriend begs to differ.

With the fresh supplies the drink vision changed many times and the end result was nothing like the original plan. With the exception of the use of a cocktail glass, everything changed. The drink had turned dark red, the sugar rim was gone, the two original liquors had been replaced with white rum and the garnish had vanished. But I stole the name of the drink, Parfait Amour, from the BOLS liquor so there’s a little bit of the original plan left there as well. According to Google Translate, it’s French and means “Perfect Love”.

If this gets any more cuter, I’m getting diabetes.

Here’s the recipe:

• 2 cl white rum
• 2 cl blueberry syrup or squash
• 4 cl orange juice
• 1 tea spoon of sugar
• juice from 1/4 fresh lime

Mix the ingredients and ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake, shake, shake. Serve, without the ice, in a cocktail glass. Add two maraschino cherries if available. Enjoy.

Keep in mind, though, that this is what we came up with when my taste buds were pretty much paralyzed from all the liquor. Anniken had a little sip, though, and gave it a thumb up. More people will taste it this evening as well, and we’ll see what direction their thumbs turn.