Top line: Make it, don’t buy it. But stick with me for the ‘why’ and more about the ‘make it’ part.

For almost all the years I’ve been making cocktails at home, I’ve had an aversion to recipes using grenadine syrup because the stuff available in stores is—cover the children’s ears—really, really shitty. It comes in larger bottles than any consumer needs in a lifetime, and it’s so cloyingly sweet and pukey tasting that even a teaspoon of it can ruin the taste of an otherwise excellent cocktail (in my opinion). 

What grenadine is supposed to be

Grenadine is used in dozens of cocktail recipes (hundreds, actually) primarily to provide sweetening and color. It should provide some flavor as well, as it was originally a pomegranate syrup, first formulated by French pharmacists to help the medicine go down. Fun fact: The word ‘grenadine’ is derived from the word ‘grenade,’ which is the French word for ‘pomegranate’—and, of course, for a small bomb that can be thrown by hand. For that matter, a well-thrown pomegranate can do some serious damage, too.

The apothecary version of grenadine was tasty enough, as made in France during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, that it became a popular cordial without the medicine. Those early formulations added some sugar and often some lemon or other naturally occurring juices to sweeten and enhance the flavors of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. Sounds delicious, right?

By the late 1800s, druggists in the United States caught on, and—as was the case for whiskey before Prohibition—most grenadine syrup not used in bars was sold by pharmacies. (Yes, Virginia, liquor science was well ahead of medical science.)

After Prohibition ended, as America’s taste for cocktails resumed growth and as pharmaceutical science produced more palatable medicines (i.e., tablets and capsules), commercial producers of grenadine and other syrups crowded pharmacies out of the market.

The bad news 

Commercially produced grenadine is anything but natural pomegranate juice. With exceptions so rare that I’ve tasted none, commercial grenadine is artificially flavored, sweetened, and colored. It is thickly syrupy and so dense that, without shaking, it will sink to the bottom of most cocktail mixes and just lay there. That’s useful for a layered cocktail here and there, but that last sip won’t be pleasant. The most popular bottled brand of grenadine in the United States (per Wikipedia, but it shall remain nameless here) consists of, “high fructose corn syrup, water, citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, FD&C Red #40, natural and artificial flavors, and FD&C Blue #1.”

No wonder I couldn’t stand the stuff.

How to make a better grenadine in your own kitchen

You can Google-search “how to make grenadine syrup” to find dozens of recipes for homemade grenadine syrup. They range from the credible-but-slightly-complicated to the simple-and-satisfactory. 

Please consider the simple-but-satisfactory approach: Simply buy some POM Wonderful juice and make some simple syrup (or buy some). Mix equal parts of pomegranate juice and simple syrup, and you’ll have a good-enough grenadine—certainly far better than the packaged, fake grenadine syrups. Feel free to adjust the proportions to taste; I like it a little less sweet, at 60 percent POM and 40 percent simple syrup. If you like, touch it up with a little freshly squeezed lemon juice; make it your own!

You won’t need large batches at a time unless your home is Party Central, and although it’s affordable, the POM Wonderful juice does have an expiration date, even unopened, so look for the eight-ounce bottles of POM (I’ve had to buy those online). I make four ounces of the mix at a time and refrigerate it in a glass jar, which is easy enough to come by. Keep track of the dates when you make it; I note the made-it and toss-it dates on a piece of tape right on the bottle. The homemade grenadine is inexpensive, so you shouldn’t feel bad about tossing remnants before it goes over the edge.

Also, just drink any of the POM that doesn’t go into your grenadine. It’s full of anti-oxidants! (How do you think I stay so young?)

Since I started making my own grenadine, I’ve been making more cocktails that include it, and I am loving them more.