Aviation Fizz

I hope you appreciate the visual pun.

I was watching this video on how to make a Violet Fizz, and being neither able nor particularly inclined to include cream in mine, I thought 'what if I replaced the simple syrup with maraschino and just made an Aviation but as a fizz?'

 So:

1 1/2 parts dry gin
3/4 part lemon juice
3/4 part maraschino
1 egg white
Creme de violette to taste (and depending on brand...I needed to put quite a lot in )

Dry shake to combine, then shake with ice, strain into a highball glass (without ice) and either top with soda or add the soda first, an intriguing suggestion I got from the linked video...obviously that means you've got to be very good at judging how much to put in.

I'd show you a picture, but I drank it already. Suffice to say that it pours an even, opaque white colour with a silky texture, and looks beautiful. I think this is a great drink, about halfway between a gin fizz and a Ramos fizz, so try it for yourself and see what you think!

Genesis of the Garlic

Hello loyal readers. Sorry it's been so long, I've been busy. I'll try to make up for it by sharing with you a few of my recent cocktail exploits.

My sister, a renowned gin fan, was given a bottle of 'The Botanist' Islay Dry Gin for her birthday. While it's obviously a great product, she was at something of a loss to pair it with anything else in cocktails...its peculiar earthy character, with no one botanical coming to the fore, makes it a challenging ingredient to mix with. I tried some and had a think. There's room for some sour notes, but the delicate botanicals could easily be overwhelmed by a dry vermouth or something herbal...I thought perhaps fino sherry would be a good fit. And to garnish, something savoury...pickled garlic perhaps? Worth a try, anyway. It would certainly be different.

So, this first resulted in a sort of Botanist Martini:

50ml 'The Botanist' Islay Dry Gin
25ml Fino sherry
Clove of garlic (I couldn't find pickled garlic in a shop, so I briefly boiled a clove in water and vinegar to take the edge off)

Stir well and strain into a chilled glass.

This makes for a curious but surprisingly normal martini. The sherry allows room for the gin's flavour to remain at the forefront, just adding a bit of balance. The garlic is surprisingly unobtrusive. An olive would be an equally good substitute. Overall, this is a savoury drink that would make for a good, if not especially remarkable aperitif. Perfectly good enough though, and a good showcase for the gin.

Note: Interestingly, it turns out that the 2:1 gin/sherry mix with a lemon twist is the original recipe for the Tuxedo Cocktail, so perhaps this should be a Garlic Tuxedo.

All this excitement led myself and my partner in crime Dominic Sewell to start having mad garlic ideas. Dom suggested muddling the garlic, which I'd initially thought would be too extreme, but we went for it anyway. Then I wondered if orange would also go, since orange bitters is a classic martini ingredient and also goes very well with sherry (in a Sherry Cobbler, for example)...could it possibly work? The answer turned out to be a resounding yes.


Genesis of the Garlic

50ml 'The Botanist' Islay Dry Gin
25ml Fino sherry
Small clove of garlic
Tiny pinch of salt 
1 Dash Orange bitters
Olive and orange peel to garnish


This is quite something. The garlic was crushed first, then muddled with the sherry, gin and salt. Both stirred and shaken versions seem to work well, double-strained to remove leftover bits of garlic and served up in a chilled cocktail glass as before. The orange peel was squeezed over the drink, rubbed around the rim of the glass and then placed in the drink along with a single green olive.

This was taken prior to the addition of the orange twist. Obviously.

The flavour is really unlike any other drink I've tried. First, as you bring the glass to your mouth to sip it, you get a strong orange aroma from the peel, then you taste the sherry, gin and garlic in sequence. This drink is best suited as an aperitif; I don't think it would be something you'd want at any other time, but in that role it excels, particularly preceding a meal that used similar flavours. This is really out there, and definitely one worth trying...if you do make it yourself, please leave a comment and let me know your experiences!

More gin excitement to follow soon, I promise. Also, for more frequent (and inane) updates you can now visit my facebook page here, so come and say hello.

The Spirits of Lurgashall: Blackdown Artisan Spirits

I'd been hearing about Lurgashall Winery for some time, and was very pleased to finally pay the place a visit. Of particular interest was their brand new Blackdown Artisan Spirits range, currently composed of a Sussex Dry Gin, a vodka and most unusually of all a white vermouth, a first for an English producer as far as I'm aware.

A happy hour or so was spent sampling the produce, which included silver birch wine, rose petal wine, an impressive and diverse range of meads, and some extremely good fruit liqueurs. I came away with a bottle each of the gin and vermouth, so while I was impressed all around I'm going to focus on those. Or should I say these:

Nice bottles eh?

 The vermouth (vermuth or vermooth? I feel like I'm bowing to peer pressure whichever way I say it) is by far the most intriguing of the bunch, since it's unique in more ways than one. Firstly it's an English vermouth, but secondly and more importantly its base is the silver birch wine for which the winery is known, rather than the typical grape wine.
The flavour is light and transparent, not at all cloying, gently sweet, but not sticky, and yet with a dry finish (future batches may not be labelled 'Bianco' as those who've tried it, including me, tend to think that it could work just as well as a dry vermouth). I'm also led to understand that it has an unrefrigerated shelf life of around six weeks, which gives it one hell of an advantage over regular vermouths that barely last two weeks refrigerated without losing their freshness.

Now on to the gin. The flavour is again both dry and gently sweet (for a gin at least), with cinnamon and liquorice notes balancing out the juniper flavour, which is prominent but not so much as to be harsh. The silver birch sap seems to impart a quality I can only describe as clarity to the flavour, filling in gaps without overwhelming any other aspect.
To sum it up in as few words as possible, where many dry gins have a heavy-handed pine-tree harshness that can be offputting, this is delicate, but still sharp...cut-glass rather than cut-grass, if you will. 

The vodka also has this quality of bite without harshness, just in a more straightforward form.


I couldn't think of a better way to put these ingredients to the test than in a martini. 
Having initially tried a 4:1 ratio I found that the delicate flavour of the vermouth required a 2:1 mix, with a squeeze of lemon peel to finish the drink off and glue the flavours together.

 The resultant drink was light and delicately sweet, with an appropriate amount of juniper but not so much as to overwhelm the other flavours. To be quite honest, I would be quite reluctant to pair this gin with another vermouth as they seem to compliment each other so well. The flavour of the silver birch comes across clearly but gently. It's a unique combination of sweet and dry that I don't think I've encountered anywhere else.







So, in short, these are unusual, characterful products that are surprising without being outright bizarre, and are well worth investigating if that's within your reach. The brand is at the very beginning of its life, so hopefully they'll be available across the UK before long.

For more info visit the facebook page here, follow on twitter here, or visit their website. 

I (my friend) get(s) by with a little help from my friends (me)

A cocktail horizon! Get it? HAHAHAHAHA

It is always a pleasure for me to assist someone in broadening their mixological horizons, and so I was delighted to receive the following inquiry (or ginquiry) from a friend of mine:

"In duty free I bought a litre of vodka (Stoli) and a litre of gin (Tanqueray Export) with the intention of pushing my cocktail knowledge a little beyond the dry Martini and the White Russian. Which relatively hassle-free cocktails do you suggest I start with?"

The first thing that occurred to me was that with only gin and vodka, the choices are quite limited without the purchase of at least one further alcoholic/specifically cocktail-oriented ingredient. That in turn sounds like a challenge, which I always enjoy, so let's see what I can come up with.


The following group of drinks require some or all of the following: carbonated mixer, citrus fruits, fruit or vegetable juices, sugar, Angostura bitters and of course plenty of ice.

Gin Fizz

 1 1/2 measures london dry gin
1 measure fresh lemon juice (or about half an average lemon's worth of juice)
1/2 measure simple syrup*, or one to two teaspoons of caster sugar
Soda water

Shake with ice and strain into an old fashioned glass, which can be full of ice or just chilled. Top off with a bit of soda water to add effervescence and you're done! Garnish with a lemon twist or slice or wedge or other lemon part, although you'll scarcely have time to enjoy it before the drink is gone in all likelihood. This is a short, classic refreshing drink and incredibly straightforward to make. It's also easily customised...use more or less sugar depending on your preference, or if you're feeling adventurous try one of these eggy variations:

For a Silver Fizz, add egg white before shaking (and shake without ice first to combine the ingredients properly)
For a Golden Fizz, add egg yolk.
And for a Royal Fizz, add a whole egg!


While outside the scope of this hassle-free category, there's also the Green Fizz which has crème de menthe added, and the Diamond Fizz or French 75 which uses sparkling wine instead of soda water.

*Simple syrup is just a combination of sugar and water. I make mine by combining an equal volume of sugar and water and shaking until the sugar is dissolved, although this is only one method.

John/Tom Collins

Use the same recipe as above, but build in a collins glass with ice (build being cocktail parlance for 'pour all the stuff into the glass'). Or you can shake it and strain into the glass, or if you're of a rustic bent just pour unstrained into an empty glass. Once this is done, add a dash of Angostura bitters to the finished product, garnish with a lemon or orange wheel and maybe a cherry or something, and serve with a straw. I don't tend to serve fizzes with straws. They're such similar drinks that altering the drinking experience is the only way to justify the two remaining separate rather than being merged into a John Fizz or something.

Gin Rickey

2 measures london dry gin
Half a lime
Soda water

Squeeze the lime juice into a collins glass full of ice, add the gin, top up with soda. Some people add sugar but I'm with David Wondrich on this one, there's no need. This is a simple, very refreshing drink with no frills, and I commend it to you.

Salty Dog

This is such a simple drink that recipes for it vary, but it's pretty difficult to get wrong:

1 1/2 measures (ish) gin or vodka
Juice of half a grapefruit

Shake with ice and pour into a highball glass with a salted rim, sans ice. To salt the rim of the glass, place some good-quality salt into or onto a bowl or plate, then moisten the rim of the glass with the grapefruit half and rotate it in the salt until good coverage is achieved. You might want to wipe any excess off the inside edge of the glass as if there's too much it can fall into the drink and make an unpleasant salty mess.

Apparently without the salt this drink is called a Greyhound.

Sea Breeze

1 1/2 measures vodka
4 measures cranberry juice
1 measure grapefruit juice

According to some sources the drink known as the Sea Breeze has contained everything from grenadine to Galliano over the years, but the modern version is both simple and elegant. While I'm normally an advocate of fresh ingredients at all times I think juicing your own cranberries might be going a bit far.

Moscow Mule

2 measures vodka
Half a lime
Ginger beer

Squeeze the juice of the lime into a highball or collins glass and then throw in the lime shell for good measure. Add the vodka and some ice and top off with ginger beer.
I refer you once more to the excellent David Wondrich for an entertaining commentary on this drink.

Old Fashioned

As you may already be aware, the drink called the Old Fashioned is now mainly made with bourbon or rye, but its name derives from the original Cocktail after which all mixed drinks are named: any mixture of spirit, sugar, water and bitters. Accordingly, it's possible to make a drink in this style using any spirit and any bitters, with a bit of creativity and care.

I've written in the past on this subject, but to get the drink to work with gin or vodka it might be worth experimenting with different citrus peels and perhaps even garnishes to get enough interest and a good balance of flavours. While this classic formula should be treated with respect, it also provides a good platform for some subtle experimentation.

Bloody Mary

Here's a chance to really have some fun (unless you don't like tomatoes, in which case here's an opportunity to be all gloomy and sad). The Bloody Mary is a drink where you can alter the ingredients vastly while still retaining its basic essence: vodka and tomato juice.
Personally I find this drink benefits hugely from some kind of chilli, without which it's acidic and harsh and generally awful. The International Bartender's Association recipe is as follows:

4.5cl vodka (roughly 1 1/2 measures)
1.5cl lemon juice (juice of half a lemon or a bit less)
9cl tomato juice

To which they suggest you add worcester sauce, tabasco, celery salt and pepper, stir gently, and strain into a highball glass with ice, garnishing with celery and an optional lemon wedge. This is a perfectly nice drink, and good for waking your digestive system up sharply if for some reason it's gone to sleep. However, the very best Bloody Mary that I ever had was at the Covent Garden Hotel, with a recipe that included Chase potato vodka, PX sherry, apple juice, fresh basil, celery, and chilli, and it was tremendous, enough to convert even a hardened tomato juice hater to the cause. So collect together the contents of your fridge, bar and garden and get experimenting!

Easter Madness: Creme Egg Mojitos

Before you say anything, yes, I know these aren't Creme Eggs. Artistic license. Or Creative Commons in this case.

As an enthusiast of the unusual I was of course very interested to read this Metro article about Jack Williams's Creme Egg Mojito. Of course purists will insist that a mojito must only include lime, mint, sugar, rum and soda, but such people should A: probably get out a bit more often, even if only in their imaginations and B: consider that in Havana, by some accounts, you are quite likely to have your Mojito made with sacreligious lemon juice! Cocktailmaking has always been a tug of war between preserving the form and taking it to new places, and that's all part of the fun I suppose. But I digress.
I knew that the chocolate mojito concept worked well from having tried Michael Thompson's intriguing Chocolate Gin Mojito recipe, so I was confident that I could produce something fit for a human with this combination.

The Metro article only gives a rough guide to the preparation and ingredients of the Creme Egg Mojito, so with what I had to hand I tried my own version based on the same concept. It went something like this:

1.5 measures white rum
2/3rds of a measure creme de cacao blanc
Simple syrup
Half a lime
A few mint leaves
Half a creme egg
Soda water

If I recall correctly (I'm writing a good week after the event itself) I started in a conventional fashion, gently pressing the mint in the bottom of the glass, then adding the lime juice, then I actually muddled the creme egg half (which the original recipe, I now note, did not do) until it was a right mess. Then I added the creme de cacao and syrup, then filled the glass with crushed ice, added the rum, used my bar spoon to bring the mint leaves and chocolate pieces up from the bottom a little (as illustrated in the Chocolate Gin mojito video), and then finally added the soda, a straw, and the mint sprig garnish. From the look of the Jack Williams drink I'd say they must have used something like Mozart chocolate liqueur, as my drink was pretty clear in colour rather than chocolatey brown, but the flavour was still there. It's a nice combination, and not nearly as insane as it sounds. Definitely worth a try while the eggs are still on sale!

A John Collins - Experiences in the Field

Let me explain. This Saturday just gone, I had motive, means and opportunity to go to a cocktail bar in Covent Garden, London, UK, Planet Earth, and as this isn't an everyday occurrence for me I was naturally craning my neck to see the manner in which our drinks were made. After all, I might learn something. This place was rammed full of people, with chaotic lighting, slightly peculiar dance music at conversation-thwarting volume, and plenty of competition for service at the bar. Once there, and a round of drinks ordered, I watched their preparation and noted the following things:
Everything that could feasibly be done with huge sweeping movements of the arm was performed thus, and around 25% of all ingredients poured went on the bar rather than in the drinks. This seemed to be standard operating procedure.
This, then, was performance mixology, albeit a low-key variety, where visual flair counted for at least as much as the quality of the drinks. I became increasingly curious as to how the drinks would turn out.

Spying a bottle of Sagatiba cachaça on the back bar I decided to have a Caipirinha. An old-fashioned glass was produced, into which an extraordinary number of 1/8 lime wedges were placed...easily between six and eight, until the glass was mostly full already. Then some light-brown sugar was added on top of this, and then the cachaça, followed by what looked like cracked ice on top until the glass was full, and two large straws.

The eagle-eyed among you will note that (unless I was extraordinarily unobservant) no muddling or shaking took place, so of course the drink tasted like cachaça with lumps of undissolved sugar interloping their way up the straw. The lime's purpose seemed to be mostly visual. Not very impressive.

As I understand, in Brazil they would make the drink something like this:

2 measures Cachaça
Half a lime cut into 6 equal pieces
A generous teaspoon of sugar, either caster/superfine or something unrefined and otherwise desireable

Place the sugar in the bottom of an old-fashioned glass. Add a little cachaça, then the lime pieces, and muddle until all the juice has been released. Fill the glass with ice, then pour the cachaça on top and you're done. If you're Chris McMillian, you'll then pour the whole lot into a shaker and shake hard, then pour unstrained back into the glass and top up with a bit more ice. Simple, and beautifully effective; no labour-intensive drink this. And no bloody straws needed either.

Meanwhile, my sister was trying her John Collins and remarked that while it looked nice, it just tasted of gin and soda. This got me thinking, as after all a John Collins is if anything an even simpler drink than a Caipirinha...shouldn't it be very easy to make quickly and stylishly? What could go wrong other than an ill-thought-out recipe?


So, this evening, with the Collins on my mind, I made myself one to see what could be done with it. A John Collins is essentially a gin and lemonade made with fresh juice. I started off by juicing some available bits of cut lemon that were lying around, but discovered I had more than I needed for a typical recipe. Of course, I just threw it all in anyway and decided to make it work somehow. Here's the resultant recipe:

2 measures gin
1.5 measures fresh lemon juice
About 6 teaspoons of caster sugar
Soda water

Fill your glass with ice (I used a highball as I don't own any proper collins glasses), then pour all ingredients and ice into shaker. Shake hard then pour unstrained back into glass and add additional ice as needed. Top off with soda and add a generous dash of angostura bitters, serve with straw.

Somewhat nonstandard, but try it and tell me that isn't awesome.

The Importance of Proper Glassware

The purpose of cocktail glasses is just to look pretentious, right? It'd be just as well to drink things out of a pint glass, or a mug, or a shoe, wouldn't it? It's still the same drink after all. Mine's a Cheeky V.


No.


These days we are inundated with the accumulated specialist drinkware of centuries, and so with all the different shapes, sizes and styles available it is not difficult to mistake this variety as something that exists largely for aesthetic reasons. Obviously to an extent this is true, as how a drink looks is the first stage of its making an impression on the drinker, and so the importance of the visual aspect is not to be discounted. However, more often than not a glass's primary function is practical in nature, with two main aims: firstly, maintaining the temperature of a drink, and secondly to accentuate its aromatic qualities.

Let's go through the most important types:

Cocktail glass AKA Martini glass

The glass most synonymous with what we might term 'serious' cocktails (i.e. those not served in a jug with four measures of vodka and 'cosmopolitan mix' out of a carton), this type originated around the beginning of the 20th century. Drinks in these are almost always served chilled without any ice in the glass itself. The stem allows the drinker to hold the glass without warming the drink with their hand, allowing it to stay cool for longer. The wide mouth and conical shape means that it's difficult to drink from it quickly (without considerable care and/or practice), and so it encourages a manner of drinking that is more conducive to enjoying 'short' drinks like a Martini, Manhattan or Cosmopolitan. The shallow bowl also brings the drink closer to the nose of the drinker, meaning that any citrus oils or other fragrant elements will be easy to detect and will add considerably to the drinking experience.

Old Fashioned glass AKA lowball glass, rocks glass

As the name suggests, this is the glass you'd be served an Old Fashioned cocktail in. Drinks served in these are often served over ice, or 'on the rocks', hence the 'rocks glass' name. However, some drinks like the Gin Fizz or the Sazerac are traditionally served in an Old Fashioned glass without ice. The thick base allows fruit and other ingredients to be muddled with impunity.

Collins glass

So named because this is the glass you would be served a Tom Collins in. These glasses are suitable for 'long drinks', more dilute than you would typically encounter served in an Old Fashioned glass and served with a lot of ice, and probably a straw.

Highball glass

Like an Old Fashioned glass but taller and thinner, or like a Collins glass but shorter and wider, depending on your perspective! Functionally this is really used in just the same way as a Collins glass, for drinks where the volume of alcohol is balanced with a fairly substantial amount of non-alcoholic ingredients. 

Shot glass

This is the sort of glass you'd normally encounter layered drinks in such as the B-52. Being so small allows decent-sized layers to be created with ingredients that you wouldn't normally want to drink straight in any quantity such as blue curaçao or grenadine. In any case, for layering to work at least some of the ingredients must be fairly sugary in order to create adequate separation due to the variation in specific gravity.

Champagne Flute

This is the obvious choice for champagne cocktails or any made using sparkling wine, for the same reasons you would use them to drink the wine on its own: the narrow mouth means less exposure to the air and longer-lasting bubbles, as well as focusing the effervescent aroma of the drink.

There are other types of glassware that you might encounter...champagne coupes, for example, are often used for Margaritas, as they allow more room for ice should you wish to serve them that way, but equally a regular cocktail glass will do fine. Similarly, while an Irish Coffee will look nicer in a heatproof glass, there's no taste-related reason why you can't make an equally good one in a mug if that's all you have available. The above types have a closer relationship with the drinking experience, and so if you're serious about cocktails, it's probably worth getting hold of a couple of all of these types.