Try a taste of Coachella with this gin and grapefruit cocktail

By Georgina Torbet Published April 17, 2025

Gray Whale Gin

This week saw the sun, stars, and epic lines of Coachella, with performances for festival in the midst of the desert from Charli xcx, Lady Gaga, and Megan Thee Stallion. Queen Latifah even turned up for an surprise performance, which everyone braved the baking heat to enjoy.

The festival isn’t only about music (and these days, tech founder networking) though. There is also a whole aspect of the culture there that’s about celebrating other aspects of culture like food and drink. And this year, Gray Whale Gin turned up at the festival for a farm-to-table culinary experience featuring local chefs and locally sourced ingredients.

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Sadly we can’t all enjoy the fresh flavors of California in the spring sunshine, but the brand has shared the recipe for the signature cocktail it created for the event, so we can recreate it at home. The Desert Whale Song recipe calls for fresh grapefruit juice, which is perfectly refreshing for a hot spring day, and edible calendula flowers which add a gorgeous pop of color to the drink.

The recipe also calls for basil simple syrup, which is a great way to infuse the fresh taste of herbs into your drinks and is something that you can easily prepare in advance and then use to make drinks in batches, so you can whip up a load of these cocktails for your friends and give them a taste of Coachella.

Desert Whale Song Cocktail Recipe

Ingredients:

1 part Gray Whale Gin
2 parts Fresh grapefruit juice
0.5 part Fresh lime juice
0.5 Basil simple syrup
Garnish: Edible Calendula flower

Georgina Torbet

Georgina Torbet is a cocktail enthusiast based in Berlin, with an ever-growing gin collection and a love for trying out new…

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