I was a relative latecomer to alcohol. As a teenager, I hated the taste and was more than happy with a dry ginger ale in pubs. I was the very antithesis of an underage drinker.
Once I hit my undergraduate stride, sweet wine, preferably fizzy, was just about tolerable - for my 18th birthday my aunt bought me a bottle of Moscato Spumante, with which I was really impressed, as it was even sweeter in taste than Asti Spumante (if you can imagine such a thing!). We couldn't afford tickets to the Christmas Ball at uni in my first year, so my friend and I bought ourselves a Chinese takeaway and a bottle of Black Tower to have in my room overlooking the quad at Royal Holloway where the ball was taking place, and thought ourselves the absolute height of sophistication. I stuck a succession of candles in that bottle and kept it for years.
By the time I was doing my MA in 1994, alcopops had become a thing, first tiny medicine bottles of 20/20, then Two Dogs alcoholic lemonade, then Hooch. These were easy to drink and extremely fashionable at the time, but I wasn't a huge fan. I was starting to develop a taste for buttery, oaked, New World Chardonnay, a la Bridget Jones.
Regularly buying wine to have with food was definitely not something my parents would have done in their 20s or 30s (“a bottle of Leibfraumilch or Bull’s Blood at Christmas was all we had”) but with the change in licensing laws allowing supermarkets to sell alcohol rather than having to make a special trek to the off license, wine had - and continues to have - a regular place in our fridge. However, making cocktails at home was just not a thing. Cocktails were the province of bartenders and the newer breed of mixologists, people (read, men) who had the arcane knowledge, the professional equipment, and the bottle-flipping abilities of Tom Cruise.
All that changed for me when I had an epiphany in 2013. My mother had planned a Gourmet Club summer barbecue themed on the book The Great Gatsby. For years, my job at these events had been to prep and served the welcome drink. And this year she wanted it to be a classic Champagne cocktail.
She sourced 45 vintage champagne coupes from charity shops (coupes were deeply unfashionable at the time, with their Babycham connotations and the fact that they had been scientifically proven to make fizz go flat faster than if it was served in a flute glass).
I had to prep the garnishes in advance (a small twist of orange and a maraschino cherry on a cocktail stick, x 45), but each cocktail had to be made as needed. Sugar cube into coupe, douse with two dashes of Angostura bitters, cover with a tablespoon or two of brandy (we did one tablespoon of brandy, one of Cointreau) and top up carefully with champagne - carefully, because the sugar can cause the bubbles to froth over the top of the glass. Garnish and serve.
It was hard work making 45 champagne cocktails back to back. But the feedback I got, and the beams on people’s faces as they took their first sip, made it all worthwhile. The sheer joy and gratitude people showed, because this was a delicious cocktail that had been made especially for them, was so intense, I felt like I had drunk them all myself. It was, truly, intoxicating.
The previous year, 2012, the year I turned 40, had been unofficially titled The Year of the Cakestand - vintage tea parties were very “in”, and I received three cake stands as birthday gifts from three unrelated people. I decided that 2014 was going to be the Year of the Cocktail. If I was going to recreate more joy, I was going to need the kit.
My brother bought me my first bit of research, The Savoy Cocktail Book, arguably the earliest and certainly the best known collection of cocktail recipes, dating back to 1930.
Compiled by Harry Craddock, head bartender of the American Bar at the Savoy, it is pithily and succinctly written and contains the best advice for how to make and drink a cocktail that I have ever read:
Other early tomes that helped me build my confidence and my drinks cabinet (and incidentally debunking the myth that mixology is a man’s game) included Victoria Moore’s brilliant How To Drink and Alice Lascelles’ Ten Cocktails. I would recommend these and later books like Drinking French by David Lebovitz and Bitters by Brad Parsons, for those who, like me, want to understand the history behind the ingredients and the ways that different brands and blends bring different qualities to the final drink.
Specialist equipment needed is minimal - a cocktail shaker with a built in strainer, a jigger to measure out ingredients accurately, and access to plenty of ice - but the glassware is a different matter. You could go on forever and spend a fortune. I have my own coupe glasses now, as well as V-shaped Martini glasses that everyone associates with cocktails but which I very rarely use, and a delicate pair of Nick and Nora glasses that I use constantly, after having a cocktail at the Wolseley with my brother and asking what kind of glass it had been served in.
Like the glasses, your library of ingredients can grow and develop over time, just like a herb and spice collection for cooking. I started out with just Angostura bitters, but soon realised from my reading that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Bitters can subtly but profoundly affect the flavour profile of a cocktail, and they last for absolutely ages, so it's worth getting a range and/or picking unusual ones up when you see them.
A decade on from my realisation that cocktails were not only cheaper but infinitely more fun to make at home than to fork out over a tenner a time in a bar, here are three cocktails I really enjoy making at home for others. And myself.
1. The Negroni
Victoria Moore says “drinking it feels like taking a sip of Florence”. Alice Lascelles says it “delivers more flavour per square inch than just about any drink on earth” which is why it’s essential to dilute the intensity with ice. You can play around with the flavours by mixing and matching the type of gin, the vermouth, or swapping the Campari with Aperol or another Italian amaro.
25ml gin (here I’ve used Bombay Sapphire, but I also love Slake Gin, made here in Worthing, Gin Mare or Silent Pool)
25ml Campari
25ml red vermouth (Punt E Mes is really punchy, but often I prefer the smoother, vanilla-y tones of Antica Formula)
Orange slice to garnish
Combine the ingredients in an ice filled tumbler or rocks glass and stir. Add the orange slice. Keep swirling the glass after each sip and the dilution of the ice will make the flavour profile change and soften. This is the perfect aperitivo so serve when snacks are around or food is near. You can also make the liquid element of this this in bulk in advance and store in the fridge if you have company coming round.
The Aviation
Another gin based cocktail, this one dating from the 1910s as early aircraft were developed. Its colour is meant to depict a sky with the cherry as the setting sun, hence the inclusion of creme de Violette to give a blue tinge to the drink. This one has become increasingly popular in cocktail bars over the past few years, but can vary immensely in flavour, appearance and quality. A couple of years ago I was served one that looked like this:
They said they hadn't put any food colouring in it, but I can't think what else would have made it look like a primary school paint water pot…
Anyway, a classic Aviation should be clear and sharp (Lascelles says “like a grown up lemon drop”). At the King’s Coronation I had a Charlie’s Aviation made by the bartender at the Brooksteed, a micro bar round the corner from me, where they’d replaced the maraschino liqueur with The King’s Ginger (see what they did there?) and it was delicious, so I often make this substitution too.
50ml gin (I used Silent Pool here)
15ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
15ml maraschino liqueur (or King’s Ginger)
15ml creme de violette
A maraschino cherry, to garnish (I always use Luxardo cherries - not cheap, but extraordinarily delicious and as far removed from the maraschino cherries of your parents’ drinks cabinet as a Valrhona chocolate disc is from a Cadbury’s chocolate button)
Half fill a cocktail shaker with ice and pour all the liquid ingredients in. Shake well together and strain into a Nick and Nora glass. Drop in a maraschino cherry and serve.
The Chocolate Cherry Brownie
This is one of the few cocktails I have devised myself, when I was doing what writer Ella Risbridger describes as the mental Rubik's Cube of thinking about ingredients and flavours: “this goes with this, so would this go with…this?”. I had bought a bottle of Guignolet (a sour cherry liqueur) in France because I was intrigued by it, and was looking at ways to incorporate it into a cocktail. I ended up with a version of the classic Champagne cocktail that started this whole obsession. I realise that this recipe is incredibly niche, and that many of my readers won't have these ingredients to hand. But I’m going to share it with you anyway, because I’m proud of it, and it might inspire someone to create their own version with whatever they have to hand.
1 brown sugar cube
2 dashes Fee Brothers Black Walnut Bitters
25ml Guignolet sour cherry liqueur
Champagne or cremant
Place the sugar cube in a coupe glass and douse with the bitters. Pour over the Guignolet and top up the glass carefully with the champagne or cremant. Sharp, fruity top notes; lovely toasty, nutty, caramelly flavours left on the palate, which intensify as the sugar cube dissolves. Cin cin!
A slight disclaimer here. Unlike several people I know, I was lucky enough to have grown up in a family unblighted by alcoholism. I am in no way advocating drinking to excess or, for those with addictive personalities, drinking at all. My friend Stuart and I once watched a documentary about Ulrika Johnson’s addictive personality (the only thing I remember about it was that she had equine therapy and the earnest American therapist was following her around as she was stroking horses asking, “How are you feeling in your BAHHHHDY right now?”) and having a serious discussion about whether either of us had an addictive personality. We concluded, somewhat gratefully, that we didn't - we were just…quite greedy. So I offer these cocktails to you as one greedy gourmand to another - but I won't be offended if you’d rather have a kombucha or a nice cup of tea. Bottoms up!
I make another sneaky appearance hehe