Passion Fruit Liqueur - "Chinola"

Watch for it - I haven't found it in my area yet, and it's hard to find online. Could be a good new way to introduce passion fruit into cocktails, however from the descriptions it may overwhelm our current recipes. If you find and get to try it, please post reviews here.

https://chinola.com/ - web site says "coming soon," perhaps it is in limited release. Here's an article from Liquor.com. They accept sponsored information, so this may be a fluffy publicity piece paid for by the producer. But - hey - PASSION FRUIT - so we are all interested in it, right? Here's more info with the pretty pictures. And if this stuff really takes off, and we all come to love it, well, you're welcome.

WHAT IS CHINOLA? AND WHY IT’S EVERYWHERE ALL OF A SUDDEN.
Contributed by Alicia Kennedy
Posted on Sep 04, 2018

https://www.liquor.com/articles/chinola/

Americans have a newfound passion for passion fruit. Between 2015 and 2017, the dark, seedy berry saw a 15 percent increase on menus, according to global market research firm Mintel’s 2018 U.S. Flavor Trends report. There have long been liqueurs that deliver the sweet, acidic flavor of passion fruit, such as Giffard and Passoã, but the newest kid on the block, Chinola, has made an immediate and juicy splash.

Produced in the small, agricultural town of Majagual, Dominican Republic, Chinola is a partnership between Michael Krychowecky, Andrew Merinoff and Robert Pallone, along with Bar Lab, the hospitality consultancy behind tropical bar Broken Shaker, which has locations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York City. The tall bottle, with a label illustrated by tropical elements, is filled with the bright, orange liqueur that’s shelf-stable without the use of additives or preservatives. This is somewhat rare in world of fruit liqueurs, which sees its share of hypersweet high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden products.

The large green-skinned variety of passion fruit used in Chinola was modified and crossbred specifically for the liqueur to bring forward its tartness rather than sweetness, says Merinoff, the managing director of the brand who also works as a business development consultant for Proximo Spirits.

“We use the most citrus-forward fruit possible,” he says. Chinola is growing the fruit and producing the product all in the same location, with the hopes of doing for passion fruit what St-Germain did for elderflower.

“We’re planting the vines,” he says, which are grown biodynamically and organically. They’re also picking the fruit, removing the seeds and then bringing the pulp to the distillery, where it’s blended with high-proof cane spirit, which “neutralizes it without adding heat or chemicals.”

Chinola uses a naturally occurring enzyme to break down the pulp before the final blending, with rum. Each bottle contains the juice of about 12 to 18 passion fruits. While it’s rather traditionally produced, the end result is anything but, with a smooth, purely fruity flavor that stands on its own for a spritz or highball and blends nicely with rum and agave spirits.

The distillery works on a closed system, with the local farmers living on the land. “We have their families come in to help us process at certain times of the year,” says Merinoff. “In the next year, we’re growing a minimum of a few hundred-thousand passion fruits a month but will soon get to over a million.”

As for what drew Broken Shaker to the partnership, Bar Lab hospitality consultancy co-founder Gabriel Orta says the team at the bar loved using passion fruit but it didn’t fit in the budget.

“Passion fruit is one of our favorite ingredients, but it’s hard to get and expensive,” says Orta. “When we tried [Chinola], we were hooked on the versatility to make drinks with it.”

Drinking Chinola truly has the feel of drinking fresh passion fruit juice, its 21 percent ABV almost dangerously unapparent, allowing your base spirit to take center stage against a backdrop of precise fruit flavor.

“We use it in one drink called the Liquid Swords,” says Orta. The cocktail features “lemongrass gin, Chinola, citrus and grapefruit beer with a spicy rim.” Others suggest you simply mix it, 50-50, with your favorite mezcal for a balance of tart, acid, floral and smoke.

This summer, the liqueur has expanded beyond the rooftops of Broken Shaker and ended up in cocktails in Montauk and elsewhere in New York City, but for now, it’s easiest to find in Miami or online.

In Austin, where it’s not yet available, the bar Academia features a cocktail called the Waiting for Chinola that uses a different passion fruit flavoring by Liber & Co. But if you can get your hands on it, even when summer’s long gone, you’ll have a bit of the tropics in a bottle.

I'm party trained.

I had tried the Alize Passion liqueur but wasn't impressed, hopefully this will be better. I don't know about that name though, I remember the old phrase "you don't know $hit from chinola" :lol:

On 2018-09-26 14:39, MadDogMike wrote:
I had tried the Alize Passion liqueur but wasn't impressed, hopefully this will be better. I don't know about that name though, I remember the old phrase "you don't know $hit from chinola".

I remember that phrase too MDM, although i just Googled it to find out its origins because technically i never knew what it meant.

As for the new passion fruit liqueur, i doubt it very much i'll ever see that here but we can get Passoa. I don't mind it and it does the job of adding an alcoholic passion fruit flavour to drinks although this new product sounds far more natural tasting. Would love to try it someday.

That was one of my dad's phrases, I always thought Shinola was a shoe polish

On 2018-09-26 14:39, MadDogMike wrote:

"you don't know $hit from chinola"
Ahh Mike :>)

/

I remember the old iteration of Alize back in the day that was made with Cognac and real Passion fruit. It was great stuff, and was essential for the Rum Barrel recipe in the old spiral bound 90s version of the Grog Log. At some point the Alize people cheaped out and switched to vodka and fakey passion fruit flavor, and it has been undrinkable ever since.

I'm excited to try Chinola, mainly to make those old Rum Barrels!

On 2018-09-26 14:39, MadDogMike wrote:
I had tried the Alize Passion liqueur but wasn't impressed, hopefully this will be better. I don't know about that name though, I remember the old phrase "you don't know $hit from chinola" :lol:

My Grog Log isn't with me but you got my curiosity up and I looked at the various recipes shown from the past 80 years for the Rum Barrel in the Total Tiki app. I found this about passion fruit in the drink:

1940s - Don the Beachcomber - no passion fruit yet.
1960 - Ports O' Call - 3/4 oz passion fruit juice or passion fruit puree.
1961 - Steve Crane - 1/2 oz passion fruit syrup.
2007 - Jeff Berry's hybrid - 3/4 oz passion fruit syrup.

I was thinking about "syrup or liqueur" and the answer I derived from the above was that in the small amounts shown it's not a big deal as long as the passion fruit flavor is strong enough to contribute to the flavor of the drink.

Wow, the rum barrel is 80 years old and still kickin'... It's really good stuff!

Something's squirrely about this writeup. On their IG account, all of the passion flower plants they show are p. edulis, the most commonly cultivated species. There's a subspecies, p. edulis var. flavicarpa, that's mostly used for juice because it is significantly tarter than the regular edulis. P. edulis fruit is dark purple when ripe. Flavicarpa is bright yellow. Hybrids between the two run the gamut, with reds and pinks common. All species of passion fruit are green when unripe. None are green when ripe. In fact, the green indicates the fruit still retains the plant's natural cyanide compounds, which are a defense against herbivores.

Their claiming to use special green fruit strikes me as marketing B.S. Bad marketing B.S.

On 2018-10-02 13:48, Prikli Pear wrote:
Their claiming to use special green fruit strikes me as marketing B.S. Bad marketing B.S.

Bad marketing copy from people who don't know Chinola about the product? :lol:

Giffard passion fruit liqeur is pretty nice mixer.

http://www.giffard.com/en/produits/creme-de-fruits-de-la-passion-passion-fruits-liqueur/

I'm guessing it's everywhere because of a dedicated (and probably expensive) ad campaign.

I haven't been able to find it locally yet, and their website still said "coming soon" last I checked.

It's either the next big bomb to hit tiki town, or it's all windy hype.

I guess time will tell.