Cocktail of the Week: Watermelon Spritz

Central Park was about as close as I ever got to the countryside as a kid. It was there that I enjoyed my first picnics, warm summer afternoons full of delicious, messy food chief among them watermelon, which captured my imagination with its gargantuan size, its marbled rind, and its vibrant, seed-studded, sticky sweet fruit.

Still, it's been some time since I've actually considered hauling home one of the huge, heavy things, let alone bringing one to a picnic. So it was with with as much surprise as delight that I found myself buying a watermelon for the first time in years in order to make a pitcher of Watermelon Spritz, a gin based cocktail from Santa Monica chef Jeff Mahin (it's called "The Merchant's Wife" on Mahin's menu) that takes its vibrant pink hue and subtle flavor from the melon's sweet juice.

The drink itself is sunny and rich: A bright mix of watermelon, Aperol, and lemon juice, topped with a splash of club soda for something well-balanced and pleasantly effervescent, with a final note that blooms on the tongue.

The mild astringency of the Aperol tugs back at the melon's sweetness and reignites the gin, elevating the neon-hued cocktail to the heights of sophistication. Mahin calls it "summertime in a glass." The cocktail evokes more than just the season; it's my mystical picnic glade of childhood, with an age-appropriate touch of booze.