Wednesday at Canard, 4721 North Main, is Wu-Tang Clan night. There’s even a warning posted on the door. It may as well say, "Abandon all pretension, all ye who enter here, and get ready to groove."
The bass lines keep the crowd's energy up and the conversations flow as easily as the cocktails. There may or may not have been some chair dancing.
The lady to our left at the bar isn’t into it. In fact, she’s definitely out of it. Despite the fact that we’re trying to take a photo of America’s drink of the moment — the frosé, or frozen rosé infused with strawberries — in a dark bar with an enormous camera, she can’t leave our drink alone. She keeps trying to take a picture of it with her phone, flash on. It keeps ruining our photos.
The woman never looks at us. She never talks to us. We don’t exist. Only frosé exists. We pick up the drink and move to a table in the back. We half expect her to follow our drink, which clearly has hypnotic powers. She doesn’t. We’re grateful.
There’s a shot of black port floating on top of the frozen, pink drink. When the glass is tilted, it’s the first thing to hit, sweetly rolling over the tongue like a good rhyme. Then comes the thick, frozen, strawberry-infused wine. On a sultry Houston night, it’s utterly perfect and could be sipped forever — at least until they turn the lights up and the backbeat off.
Canard’s Frosé
Treadsack Group bar director Leslie Ross offers several different floats for this frozen drink, and says her favorites are the Giffard Lychee and the Quinta do Noval Black Port. We went for the port, which Ross says adds “rich, deep black and red fruit while still maintaining a fairly dry but creamy finish,” and it was luscious. Canard makes its version in a frozen margarita machine, but this can mostly be replicated at home with ice and a blender.
Proportions shown below can be scaled as needed. Truly, this is a perfect frozen drink for Houston’s humid summers. We recommend a sidecar of Wu-Tang Clan to help balance this drink’s overwhelming notes of trendiness.
- Your choice of rosé wine (don’t use the expensive stuff for this)
- Dolin Chamberyzette Strawberry Aperitif (a blend of blanc and dry vermouth flavored with wild strawberry juice)
- Quinta do Noval Black Port (or any liqueur of choice)