At the end of July, we decided to throw a party for my birthday in September. So we sent out a raft of invitations… and then pretty much forgot about it until last weekend when it struck us, “Ay caramba! We’ve got several dozen people turning up next Saturday!”
We had the first requirement for a successful party – lots of people – sorted. Which left the second requirement… a killer cocktail. Get lots of people drinking cocktails at the same time and a great evening is pretty much guaranteed.
Our trip to Japan last spring was a real highlight of my year, and I liked the idea of connecting it with my birthday party. Which led me to the idea of serving a sake-based cocktail…
I did some searching online, but didn’t find anything that appealed, until I came across the “sayonara baby”. I found only one site that mentioned it, so I’m not sure how much of “a thing” it is, but the name alone sold it to me.
A quick trip to the Asian supermarket for supplies, and the experimenting began. The original recipe didn’t do it for me, but eventually we concocted something that nailed it.
One 18-litre box of sake, 12 bottles of plum wine, and 100 limes later, we’d filled six 5-litre water bottles with our signature concoction. Sayonara baby!
Sayonara baby
(makes 1)
- 150ml dry sake
- 75ml plum wine
- juice of a lime
- Mix sake, plum wine and lime juice in a cocktail shaker.
- Serve over ice.
- Repeat…
Ten More Bites 
Intriguing! What a brave concoction. using all that huge amount of booze I would have to be very sure it WAS going to be a killer drink. happy Bday
We did a lot of taste testing to get it just right and also “quality controlled” each batch…