Trinidad's crimson Christmas drink — dried red hibiscus (sorrel) steeped with cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel into a deeply tart, festive drink that fills every home during the holiday season.
Sorel is Christmas in Trinidad. From late November through January, the deep red hibiscus flowers appear in every market, and the drink made from them — steeped overnight with cloves, cinnamon, and sometimes rum — fills homes with a fragrance that is inseparable from the holiday. If you visit a Trinidadian home in December and are not offered a glass of sorel, something has gone wrong. The flowers are dried sorrel calyx, not the green leaf sorrel, and their color is extraordinary — a deep, jewel red that stains the glass and announces itself from across a room. The flavor is tart and bright, with the spices providing warmth and depth. The sugar balances the natural acidity of the hibiscus. And then there is the rum, which is not strictly required but is, in most traditional Trinidadian households, not optional. Sorel is a drink of the diaspora as much as the island itself. Trinidadian communities in New York, Toronto, and London make it every December, the dried sorrel flowers shipped or hand-carried from home, the making of the drink a ritual of cultural continuity. To steep the sorrel is to be, however briefly and wherever you are, at home.
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