The strawberry: with its distinctive aroma, its bright red color, and its lush juiciness, is there any other fruit that immediately reminds us of summertime? According to a couple of recent studies, the answer is no. More than any other fruit, researchers say, strawberries are correlated with summer and warm weather: most people tend to associate strawberries with fond memories of summer, sunshine, picnics, and childhood in general. Now that we find ourselves well into summer and in the midst of the peak season for strawberries, we here at Bryant’s want to help you make another great summer memory, so we present to you our July Cocktail of the Month: our strawberry hurricane drink, the Forever Amber.
While its sweet strawberry flavor is well suited for the summer months, the Forever Amber is nonetheless a popular cocktail all year round at Bryant’s. Why? Well, as you know, Bryant’s can be quite a romantic place—stories about customers’ first dates and marriage proposals abound here— and for centuries the strawberry has been considered something of an aphrodisiac. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the fruit’s associations with Venus, the Roman goddess of love, desire, beauty, fertility, and sex (among several other things), or its prominence in Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (in which some art historians see their presence as symbolizing temptation and promiscuity), certainly its bright red color and heart shape makes us think of passion and seduction. Lore has it that sharing a double strawberry with someone will cause you to fall in love with that person, and, if that doesn’t do the trick, you can always dip the sumptuous fruit in chocolate or champagne to help your cause.
So where did the name of this drink come from? No doubt from Forever Amber, an immensely popular (not to mention racy and controversial) bodice-ripper written by Kathleen Winsor in 1944. That book, which was the best-selling novel of the 1940s despite being nearly 1000 pages long and banned in 14 states, describes, oftentimes in a rather frank manner, how its titular heroine Amber St. Clare seduces a succession of men to become the king of England’s mistress, all the while surviving the plague and the Great London Fire in Restoration England. It was shocking and salacious stuff at the time, to be sure. But what better moniker for a strawberry-flavored cocktail than that of the seductive, the promiscuous, the notorious Amber? And when better to enjoy it than now, the summertime? Here at Bryant’s we think every summer can be a summer of love.
Stop in between 5pm and 8pm Sunday through Thursday and be seduced by the Forever Amber for just $6 all month long. Or share one and fall in love.*
*Actual results may vary.
