When I was about 21 years old, I traveled to the Caribbean for the first time. It was me and my adventurous girlfriends. We flew into Puerto Rico, and from there we headed to St. Thomas. It was vibrant and beautiful and honestly one of my very favorite vacations. While on that vacation, I tasted mango rum! To this day, I’ve searched high and low for anything that tastes as good as the mango rum I enjoyed in St. Thomas. Ah, those long, lazy days and not a care in the world. I felt like I was really growing up, meeting people from other countries and just figuring out who I was. I stopped caring about covering my face with makeup or washing my hair obsessively every day. Seeing how other people lived gave me this sense of freedom I hadn’t experienced prior.
When I opened my first bottle of mango vodka from Heritage Distilling, I wasn’t planning on being transported back to an 85-degree day, laughing in the back of a rented mini-van, headed to the ferry boats leaving for Yost or St. John with my best pals in the Virgin Islands. Although it’s a completely different spirit, being vodka and not the rum I remembered, it absolutely shares the smell and flavor of that tropical getaway where I first started really getting to know myself. I had just purchased my first home, and I was really on my own. Twenty-one years old: crazy!
When we came home, I brought a bottle back and we would made these citrus cocktails only on special occasions. That mango paired with the citrus we would muddle, and sometimes we’d add a little splash of coconut. This is the ultimate girly-yet-independent cocktail. I hope you will mix up a batch and enjoy them with people you love. This mango vodka and the coconut vodka are absolutely the best I’ve ever tasted. So proud to partner with Heritage Distilling!
1 orange, sliced
2 limes, sliced
8-12 oz. lemonade concentrate (depending on how sweet you’d like it), found in the freezer section of your grocery
16 oz. Coco Lopez or cream of coconut
8 oz. Heritage Distilling Mango Vodka
8 oz. Heritage Distilling Coconut Vodka
24 oz. of mango or lime sparkling water
2-3 cups of ice
In a large serving pitcher, muddle the citrus with the lemonade concentrate. Add the cream of coconut and flavored vodkas. Top with the sparkling water and ice. Stir and serve. If you are making this punch in advance, add everything except ice to the pitcher. When ready to serve, add ice.
