When perusing the beverage aisle at your local grocery store, you’ll notice that not all cranberry juices are created equal — and we don’t just mean the radical remixes like cran-grape or cran-raspberry. In fact, the fine print of fruit juices can be fairly confusing. What qualifies one half-gallon of bright, cranberry-colored liquid as cranberry juice versus cranberry cocktail? And more importantly, if you buy the wrong one for your favorite “Sex and the City”-inspired cocktail, will you be making a fatal recipe mistake? In short, you’ll be just fine.
First, it’s important to establish a breakdown of the types of cranberry juice that are most readily available. There’s pure, unsweetened cranberry juice, which is exactly that (100% cranberry juice from concentrate). Then there’s what most of us would consider “regular” cranberry juice, which is a slightly sweeter, though still pleasantly tart, blend of cranberry juice with other juices. Finally, there’s cranberry juice cocktail, which meets the tart taste of cranberries with a much stronger dose of sweetness. The variety of cranberry juice you prefer to sip on its own is a matter of preference, but when cooking or cocktail mixing, it’s important to know which version of the juice you’re dealing with to help balance out the flavors in your recipe.
What is cranberry juice, and when should you use it?
Pure cranberry juice is the juice from pressed cranberries with no sweeteners or other juices added to it. The taste is quite bold and very acidic — think super tart cranberry sauce without any added sugar. Regular cranberry juice, or what most brands market and what many consumers are interested in, is actually a blend of cranberry juice with a few others juices. While tart cranberry is still the predominant flavor, the natural sugars from these other fruit juices lessen the super-tart pucker factor from the cranberries.
Ocean Spray’s 100% Juice Cranberry Juice Blend, for instance, balances out the tartness of cranberries from cranberry juice concentrate with grape juice, apple juice, and pear juice. These other juices make this type of drink the go-to cranberry juice option for everyday sipping or cocktail mixing. Perfect for a Cosmo, a pink-hued margarita, or a holiday punch, regular cranberry juice will add tart flavor without too much extra sweetness.
What is cranberry cocktail, and when should you use it?
If you’re the type of cranberry consumer who prefers to well and truly balance out a cranberry’s natural tartness with an equal amount of sweetness, you’ll probably prefer cranberry juice cocktail. Instead of lightly sweetening cranberry juice concentrate with natural sugars from other juices, cranberry juice cocktail relies on other added sweetening agents like cane sugar, beet sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (a label red flag for some shoppers), or a combination thereof. You’ll still taste that acidic cranberry flavor, but with a noticeable sweetness as you sip.
Since this is a very sweet beverage, as an ingredient in cooking and cocktails, you shouldn’t use cranberry juice cocktail in recipes where you don’t want to add any extra sweetness. Serve cranberry cocktail over ice with your liquor of choice for a refreshing aperitif, much like the original vodka cranberry cocktail. Or, if you’re going to freeze either cranberry juice or cranberry cocktail into popsicle form, we’d say cran cocktail all day.
