The term “shrub” used in reference to a drink was only something I heard about two years ago, but its low-key popularity dates back to colonial America, a refreshment enjoyed by colonists on break from the daily grind of colonization. Originally, it was devised as a way to preserve fresh fruit for use in the winter as a stand-in for fruit juice, but has since gained popularity for its use in cocktails, mocktails, and as a soda alternative with powerful digestive properties and no additives. One taste of this beguiling, tart beverage and you’ll immediately understand its appeal. Sometimes referred to as “drinking vinegar,” shrub is a cinch to make at home and a fantastic way to make the most of an abundance of seasonal fruit. From cherries to blueberries, strawberries to peaches, shrub can be made from an array of local produce as wide-ranging as the number of inlets on any one of the Finger Lakes.

This year’s shrub adventure took me to Wickham’s Tango Oaks Farm in Hector for one of the best sour cherry crops on record. While the sweet cherries had succumbed to yet another late spring frost, the sour cherry blooms emerged later into perfectly hot and dry conditions. The trees sagged, glittering with galaxies of cherries as bright and shiny as pearls of stained glass. I quickly fell away into a cherry-induced trance, accidentally collecting six pounds of fruit. What resulted was an enormous amount of shrub, possibly enough to keep me liquid until the cherries are ripe once again.

The recipe for shrub includes three main ingredients: Fruit, vinegar, and sweetener, using one equal part of each. Feel free to use different vinegars and sweeteners. A lot of recipes call for red wine vinegar, but I found the flavor too overpowering (you want to taste the delicious fruit!). I prefer white wine vinegar, raw apple cider vinegar, or a combination of the two. These lighter vinegars will allow the brilliant cherry red color to shine through in the final result.

For my shrub, I put three cups of lightly mashed sour cherries into a sixty-four-ounce Ball jar. To remove the pits, I gently squeezed them out, but they can also be removed with a straw or cherry pitter. Then I added my sweetener, opting for three cups of pure white sugar. Feel free to be creative with other sweetening agents such as honey, brown sugar, or maple syrup. I chose white sugar hoping to highlight the bright sour cherry flavor and not distract from it. I let the fruit and sugar meld for a couple of hours in order to extract more juices and then added three cups of vinegar (half white wine vinegar, half raw apple cider vinegar).

Incorporate all three ingredients by shaking them vigorously inside the jar, then store the whole thing in the fridge for at least a week, shaking once or twice per day. At the end of a week, you’ll want to strain out the solids through a cheese cloth-lined colander. The resulting syrup will be tart and tangy, and you’ll have made an amazing shrub. Mix the syrup to taste in a cold glass of seltzer, or use it to enhance a bourbon cocktail, such as an old-fashioned. If mixing with seltzer, start by adding roughly one ounce of shrub to four ounces of seltzer, and adjust to taste.

If you’re doing a blueberry shrub (which I highly recommend), you’ll want to do a double-strain. After the initial strain, let the shrub sit for an hour. A fine blueberry sediment will collect at the bottom of the jar. Carefully pour off the top liquid into a separate container, reserving the finer sediment, a byproduct that I’ve dubbed “Blue Gold.” This stuff is absolutely precious and not to be discarded. Store the blue gold in Tupperware for use in yogurt, oatmeal, or other cereal.

The leftover fruit from making shrub is a bonus gift for your troubles. I like to pack the used cherries into small Ball jars and top them up with a decent quality brandy like Hennessy. Allow the brandy to soak into the cherries over a couple of weeks and use them to garnish a Manhattan cocktail or spoon them over vanilla ice cream. Heap them onto a Belgian waffle with whipped cream, or gift them to your resident bourbon aficionado. There are no rules with brandied cherries.

Now that you have the basic concept of what a shrub is and how to build one at home, there are ways to spice it up if spicy is the way you’re feeling. To one of my larger 3:3:3 ratio shrubs, I added one teaspoon of crushed (not powdered) allspice berries, one teaspoon of crushed juniper berries, and half a teaspoon of crushed black peppercorns. When using spices in your shrub, demonstrate your incredible patience by letting the flavors build for at least two weeks. This brings out a whole new world of complexity. A spiced shrub is far and away the most interesting in terms of its depth and flavor profile, the one drawback being that the leftover solids are less reusable as a culinary ingredient. The last thing you want is to bite into a peppercorn while digging into that long-awaited bowl of Chunky Monkey.

In terms of its longevity, shrub will last for months in the refrigerator, but if you’re like me, it tends to move a lot faster than you’d expect. Sometimes I find myself longing for that bright and nervy cherry tang more so than a post-work dram of booze. I haven’t gone soft. I swear. But I do find myself wondering if this time-tested, sustainable sipper has turned my habitual drinking rituals, dare I say, more sustainable, as well.