Put all the hottest food trends in a blender — hyperlocal sourcing, natural ingredients and local produce. Give them a quick whirl, and voila: You get a farm-to-table cocktail. The concept has been around for a few years, but drinkers show no sign that they’re tiring of creative produce-based concoctions. Here are a few ideas for innovative, fun and fresh garden cocktails. 
Super Simple Farm-to-Table Cocktails
Farm-to-table sourcing can be an expensive challenge, as many restaurant operators have discovered. They dread spend $400 a week on fresh raspberries and organic dragon fruit for cocktails, just to see it go to waste. Los Angeles cocktail Matthew Biancaniello suggests choosing just a few ingredients for starring roles in farm-to-table cocktails. "Gravitate toward the things that excite you and get other people to be excited about them," Biancaniello says. "If someone is obsessed with basil, do basil seven different ways."
It doesn’t get much simpler than the Booze+Juice from Brooklyn hotspot Diamond Reef, a breezy bar that aims for fast service over laborious drink making. The drink is simply a whole Granny Smith apple juiced fresh and combined with any liquor. The drink is “pleasantly tart and tantalizingly green, and pairs well with mezcal, for a touch of smoke,” the New Yorker’s bar reviewer notes approvingly.
Or, you can offer a drink that changes according to what’s fresh at the farmer’s market. Denver restaurant The Squeaky Bean operates its own 3-acre farm with greenhouses on the site of a local technical high school, using the harvest for a majority of its dishes. On the menu is a Tom Collins with a twist: It combines gin, lemon and soda with seasonal flavors from the garden. Easy, fresh and fun.
Hyperlocal Farm-to-Table Cocktails
What is “hyperlocal”? Essentially, it means anything grown on-site at a restaurant (or very close by). While some chefs opt for tomato towers and hydroponic lettuce, the easiest way to add hyperlocal produce to the menu is to grow containers of fresh herbs — which lend themselves nicely to cocktails. Just keep in mind that a few leaves can go a long way, especially with assertive flavors like rosemary or dill. “Since smell is closely correlated with taste, something as basic as water can be altered with an herb leaf resting on its surface,” Chowhound says.
A Dill Paloma (via Imbibe magazine) mixes tequila, lime juice, grapefruit soda and fresh dill. This cocktail was created by Raul Yrastorza of L.A.’s Las Perlas. Dill practically grows itself; once it gets started, it can reseed itself quite happily. Just look out for the pretty yellow-and-black swallowtail caterpillars, which love to feast on the leaves.
Borage is a medicinal herb with edible blue flowers, and it’s easy to grow from seed in a kitchen garden. If you’re looking for a garden cocktail that will pique guests’ curiosity (and is beautiful, too), try the Garden Gimlet with Basil and Borage, from The Ranger’s Daughter. Borage is included in the basil syrup, and whole flowers are frozen in ice cubes.
Rosemary loves dry conditions. and so it’s a perfect herb to grow in containers. One creative use for fresh rosemary is to burn it — yes, burn it. At Le Grande, the bar in New York City’s Time Hotel, rosemary is singed with a lighter, and then the smoke is captured in a flute to flavor a Champagne cocktail. It’s called the Rosemary Elite.
Blended Farm-to-Table Cocktails
A high-performance blender makes quick work of turning garden bounty into a flavor-packed cocktail. To us, the essence of summer is a Bloody Mary made with fresh veggies. Jimmy Syock of Atchafalaya Restaurant in New Orleans has a Mexican-inflected Tomatillo Bloody Mary made with tomatillos (or green tomatoes), garlic, jalapeños and cilantro. (via Garden and Gun) Chef Andreas Viestad makes a Fiery Bloody Mary with red chile and a generous garnish of minced green heirloom tomato. (via Food & Wine)
On the sweet side, fresh fruit begs to be blended into a cocktail. At least it seems that way — often fresh fruit plus ice results in a watered-down drink, so it works better to freeze it before blending. One unusual combo that works: frozen watermelon, jalapeños and tequila (via Bon Appetit).
Coming off the frosé fad, fruit-and-wine slushies continue to be a hit. The Kitchn has rounded up a few combinations that thrill when chilled, like pineapple + peach + pinot grigio, or blackberry + merlot. It’s hard to go wrong!
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