We still have snow. Lots of it. We still had hours. Lots of them. So, we walked, in the snow. We kayaked down the hill, in the snow. We got the mail, in the snow. We built a set of shelves to hold our abundance of cocktail glasses, in the, well, that was in the basement, but we had to trudge through the snow to the barn to get the lumber and then through the snow back to the basement to work. When afternoon came, we cleaned the snow off the car and went to the store, leaving the property for the first time since Sunday, in the snow. To be fair, there was a lot of sun as well, luckily I was wearing shades, pretty sure the dog went snowblind, though. It is what it is, as they say. Might as well have a drink, so in honor of our newly northern existence, won’t you please join me as we stand and make the Spruce Moose.

This is one of those drinks that exists on Pinterest boards and food blogs, but that appears to have sprung into existence without ever passing through the bar world. I can’t find any reference to it other than the social media friendly picture I was forwarded. There a lots of drinks with this name, but none with this composition matching the name. I’d give you the scoop if I could find it, but I failed at detectoring the truth in this case, if you have some knowledge drop it for the rest of us. I only made this one because I am pretty sure I saw a moose in the back pasture who looked like he might have bitten someone’s sister and I wanted an excuse to use some more of that awesome pine liqueur, which we will do now.

This one is built in the glass so grab something suitably suitable and pop in 1 ounce of mezcal, I used Illegal; 1 ounce of Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur and half an ounce of fresh squeezed lime juice. Give that a good stir to the beat of “In the Pines” by the Louvin Brothers. It’s always good to hear some local boys made good singing a murder ballad. When it is well mixed, toss in some artisanal ice cubes and top with ginger beer, I chose Cock & Bull, as most folks will, when given a choice. Garnish with a lime wheel and maybe an ice encrusted cedar branch and some berries foraged from the fencerow. Like I said, we have a lot of snow and ice.

This is surprisingly tasty. Well, not really, it is essentially a mezcal buck with a wonderfully herbal underbelly from that amazing pine liqueur. So when I say it is surprisingly good, I am just doing one of those segue things. Reading the ingredient list, I knew this was going to be a little weird, but probably wonderful. Honestly, the whole thing looked “sus” as the boy would say, too much flash, too much “made to be shared” in its presentation, but I had faith that there might be something special lurking beneath that “ten best drinks made from a tree” veneer.

Sometimes things surprise you, this one did not, but in a surprisingly pleasant way. This was a good drink to cap a good day entirely free from moose bites, allegedly. It was nice to get out of the house, even briefly this afternoon. Great to get to the store and see some neighbors, to resupply and give ourselves some new options for brekkies. They finally plowed our road today, even though there is still a sheet of ice anywhere that is in shadow, at least getting out wasn’t too rough. Tomorrow, they say that we are going to get above freezing for a bit, which should make a nice change. Maybe we will build some more shelves. The kid got a kick out of learning to turn some old boards into something useful, plus he got to do most of the work. He enjoyed drilling pilot holes, using the level and a square, and learning that age old lesson that if you want something to stay you have to “glue it and screw it”. Yeah, we had a good day, in the snow. Stay safe, stay hydrated and stay sane, my friends.