Rosemary, Honey and Lemon Syrup

I am cooking an Iranian dinner on Sunday together with my friends.

It will be a lot of work to do, so I wanted to prepare a couple of things ahead of time.

Iran is a strong muslin country, so alcohol is not served there for dinner. I will go with the tradition  and banned all kinds of alcohol from this day.
I checked different websites and looked for alternative drinks. Syrups are often used and served watered down with cold water. They are refreshing and go along with all kinds of food. Some use Rosewater to flavour them, others use herbs.

For dessert I will serve black tea. Coffee is not often drunk there.

The combination of rosemary and honey together with lemon is a good base for a syrup.

recipe for 6 portions:
250 g sugar
280 ml water
3 short stems of rosemary
170 g honey
400 ml lemon juice

Slowly heat up the water and the sugar until that is completely dissolved, add the rosemary and cook on low heat for 5 min.
Drop in the honey to make it easier to dissolve too.
Let it cool down 30 min and take out the rosemary stems.
Add the lemon juice.
Pour that through a fine mash sieve into a container and put it in the fridge.
When you serve it, just add enough cold water or cold sparkling water.