Curaçao

Curaçao is the original orange liqueur, flavoured with the sun-dried peel of the laraha — a bitter, almost inedible orange that grew from the orange trees the Spanish planted on the Caribbean island of Curaçao in the sixteenth century. A neutral spirit is macerated with the aromatic dried peels and a little spice, then sweetened, giving a liqueur that is bittersweet and intensely orange with a faint herbal edge. It comes clear, amber-orange, or — most famously — dyed a vivid electric blue, the colour added only for spectacle and leaving the flavour unchanged. Bottled anywhere from about fifteen to forty percent alcohol by volume, it is drunk chilled or over ice and is the orange backbone of the Mai Tai, the Sidecar and, tinted blue, the Blue Hawaii and Blue Lagoon. It is the ancestor of the whole triple-sec-and-orange-liqueur family.