I have three elderberry bushes. One is a traditional culinary variety that my friend Barbara gave me (don't know the name, but Sambucus canadensis I think). One is a Black Lace, and one is a Black Beauty (both Sambucus nigra). I wanted to make elderflower cordial, but I just couldn't spend the flowers of the culinary variety on a cocktail mixer, when my mockingbird would be so distraught over the loss of his future berry harvest that he would have to throw himself off of something very high, and not flap on the way down.
So instead we made the cordial from the Black Lace and Black Beauty elders, which in my garden do not produce many berries. Black Beauty has pink flowers, and oh, what an exquisite color this cordial came to be... A luminous ambered pink. The smell is indescribable, unless you're familiar with the liqueur called St. Germain. I think this cordial could stand in as a poor man's version of that.
I used this recipe, but might cut back a bit on the sugar next time.
