Curaçao
Orange peel liqueur, and the blue is food colouring
A bitter-orange peel liqueur from the Caribbean island it is named after, bottled anywhere from 20% to 40% alcohol. Blue curaçao is the same drink with dye in it, which is the single most misunderstood fact about it. Strength is what actually varies between bottles, and strength decides how much sugar comes with your drink.
- Typical ABV
- 20–40%
- Base
- Neutral or brandy spirit redistilled with dried bitter orange peel
- Distillation
- Peel maceration and redistillation
- Aging
- None, bottled young
- Congeners
- Low
- Histamines
- Low
- Polyphenols
- Low
- Sulfites
- Low
- Tannins
- Low
- Sugar
- High
- Additives
- Moderate
Curaçao is an orange liqueur made from the dried peel of a bitter citrus, and the island of Curaçao is where both the fruit and the name come from. The Laraha grows there and almost nowhere else: a Valencia orange transplanted by the Spanish in the 1500s that failed in the dry soil and turned bitter and inedible, leaving a peel that dries into something intensely aromatic. That is the whole origin story of the category.
The blue is dye. This is not a criticism, it is just the fact that most of the internet gets wrong: blue curaçao, red curaçao, green curaçao and clear curaçao are the same liqueur, coloured differently for cocktail presentation. Senior & Co, the distillery on the island itself, says so plainly and adds the colour “for visual effect”. Bols is more specific: its blue is Brilliant Blue FCF, E133. If you are avoiding synthetic colours the clear bottling of the same product is sitting next to it on the shelf.
What actually matters here is strength, because sugar tracks it inversely. EU rules require a liqueur to carry at least 100g of sugar per litre, and curaçao carries a good deal more than the minimum. A 40% bottling gets you a given amount of alcohol in a smaller pour, so less sugar comes with it. A 20% bottling needs twice the volume for the same alcohol, and doubles the sugar on the way. That is the difference between the two ends of this category, and it is why the 20% supermarket bottle rates worse here than the 40% one despite sounding lighter.
The frustrating part is that none of them print the number. Not the mass-market bottles, not the island distillery, not the premium French one. Sugar is the whole story in a liqueur and this category leaves it off the label, so what you get below is strength, base material and what went into the colour, which is everything that is actually published.
What changes the chemistry
- ▸Blue, red, green and clear are the same liqueur; only the dye changes
- ▸Strength is the real variable, and it runs from 20% to 40%
- ▸The lower the ABV, the more sugar you drink per unit of alcohol
- ▸Real peel redistillation beats orange flavouring, and the label usually tells you
- ▸Nobody in the category prints grams of sugar, including the good ones