So I thought I would republish my paean to pancakes — which are kind of like cocktails, if you think about it —— from last year. Only this time, it's FREE. Enjoy.

~ THE SLOPPY JOE COCKTAIL ~

40ml light rum (I used Bacárdi)
20ml French vermouth (I used Noilly Prat)
20ml lime juice
10ml orange curacao (Pierre Ferrand)
5-10ml grenadine (homemade)

Now, darling, I want you to put your prettiest cocktail glass in the freezer. Can you do that for me? Wonderful. Now, carefully measure all of the above ingredients into your shaker. Swirl and taste. OK? Add a decent handful of ice, bang on the lid and now you're gonna shake shake shake shake shake shake it up. Phew. Fine-strain into the pre-frozen glass — through a fine-mesh, that's it — and drink immediately. Happy Valentine's day, baby.

~ SLOE GIN ~
English gin-based fruit liqueur / 25-28% ABV / c£20-£32 for 700ml
Friends with: gin, naturally enough. Also Scotch, calvados, dark rum, rye. Honey is a great sweetener and Drambuie a nice partner. Apricot brandy and other stone fruits. Lemon, lime, orange. Champagne.

The blackthorn tree is a common sight across rural England — common for a particularly English reason. As the rural reformer William Cobbett noted in The Woodlands: A Treatise (1825), in addition to making fine walking sticks, flail swingles and shillelaghs, the blackthorn is an excellent hedge. It's hardy, it's spiky, and it's dense, a kind of natural barbed wire — formidable enough to discourage trespassers, be they animal, human or even machine. Blackthorns can apparently puncture tractor tyres. "Better the bramble than the blackthorn, but better the blackthorn than the devil," says the proverb. It grows fast, too, entangling in upon itself by means of voracious suckers. It's nature's way of saying: "Get the fuck off my land."

The blackthorn was therefore a popular choice among the new class of "landowners" (ponder the word for a moment) created the Enclosure Acts of the 18th and 19th century. From mediaeval times, much of our landscape had been held in common; peasant farmers had the customary right to gather firewood and graize their cows more or less where they pleased. After the enclosures, this way of life was no more: larger tenant farmers, local gentry and urban speculators acquired the legal means to keep them all out. As the great poet of the Enclosures, John Clare, wrote in The Mores:

Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done
And hedgrow-briars - flower-lovers overjoyed
Came and got flower-pots - these are all destroyed
And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft
Fence now meets fence in owners' little bounds
Of field and meadow large as garden grounds
In little parcels little minds to please
With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease

Even with the benefit of two and a half centuries, I still don't think it's widely enough appreciated that the classic English landscape, with its little parcels of fields, its hedgerows and fences dry stone walls — the landscape that for Stevens, the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, "possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess" — is not some age-old arrangement. It is the fairly recent result of internal colonisation by deed, title and Parliamentary act; avarice mandated by force; the original enshittification. Blackthorn is merely the scar tissue.

Still, nature has its ways of giving back. The blackthorn bush acknowledges its part in this war on the commons in the form of its melancholy blossom, a pretty white spray of white flowers that usually appear in the cold of late March when they're easily mistaken for snow. Hence the term "blackthorn winter"; a final reprise of coldness before the spring arrives. It's always darkest before the dawn.

And then, come Autumn, the blackthorn bush bears its bitter fruit, the sloe — a kind of plum. Indeed, the ancestor of all plums. It's not much to eat; it's no mulberry and no boys ever ran to fill their hands with them. Should you bloody your smock with its juice, it will stain for ever. But if you leave these bare-black bullets macerating in gin with sugar, you're rewarded with a lovely rich, woodsy liqueur that has been an English mainstay since, well, since the time that landowners started planting blackthorn bushes everywhere. It's dark and sweet and bitter, almost a native amaro — though from what I can make out, it seems to have been prized as a domestic alternate to port (a drupe dupe, no less!). Port would have been heavily taxed; whereas gin was cheap and sloes were just there for the scrumping. Indeed, it's really not that hard, still, to make your own sloe gin — though I'm afraid you'll have to revisit this post with the first frosts, which is the time to harvest sloes.

And I can't help wondering if sloe gin represents a small draft of compensation — however meagre — to the enclosed. The slow strangulation of the rural poor during the Enclosures created a new class of wage labourers, pushed off their native soil and forced to look for work elsewhere — either in the cities, or further away in the New World. The families whod stayed would become the new proletariat, easy prey for the owners of the new factories and mills. And it's a historical coincidence that this internal migration coincided, more or less, with the London gin craze, the mother of all moral panics (and a great episode of In Our Time). It's probably a bit ahistorical to say that the one influenced the other; but it's not such a stretch to imagine a disgruntled wage labourer arriving in London from his enshittified village and finding consolation in gin, the harsh new urban stimulant. Maybe he had a couple of sloes in his pocket; maybe the lightning zag of opportunity struck; maybe he made it taste a little more like home.

For there is a weird alchemy in the fact that this barbed wire fruit should have such an affinity with gin, the spirit of melancholy and mayhem. Indeed, what those early landowners may not have realised is the blackthorn is magic. The blackthorn was, supposedly, where the fairies lived; blackthorns were haunted by the ghosts of witches; it was a blackthorn that pricked Sleeping Beauty; blackthorn helps you see beyond negatives to opportunity; blackthorns that marked the boundaries not merely of property but of worlds.

To think! All this is there in the principle ingredient of the Alabama Slammer. But the poets have long been alive to these mysteries. Here is a poem about sloe by the Cumbrian poet and sea trout fisherman, Tom Rawling — sometimes referred to as the "John Clare of the Lakes". It's a response to Seamus Heaney's own poem about sloe gin, equally stirring — though I feel this one suits our mood a little better. I like how the blackthorn pierces the skin of the narrator; and the narrator then pierces the skin of the fruit; and I suppose in turn, the elixir of this bloody transfusion pierces the consciousness of the poet and time is distilled for a moment or two.

Sloe Gin
by Tom Rawling (1916-1996)
for Seamus Heaney

Let the first hard frost
expose the spiny twigs,
reveal the bare-black fruit.

Reach through jutting thorns
for the blue-hazed sloes,
ignore the blood on your wrist.

Needle prick to the hard stone,
watch their transfusion seep
through the gin. Each day

an agitation of the jar,
and after many days of alchemy,
decant this ruby in your glass

to taste silk-sliding fire
of frost and thorns
and bitter fruit.

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YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY:

~ THE FIRESIDE FLIP ~

Fresh ginger
15ml honey, loosened with a little hot water
25ml Scotch
25ml sloe gin
1 whole egg
Dash Angostura bitters

Freeze a diminutive cocktail glass. Peel a little coin of ginger and muddle it up with the honey and water in the bottom of your shaker. Now, add the spirits and the entire egg (yes, yolk and all). Shake once without ice for maximum froth. And now again with ice to cool it all down. Fine-strain the mixture into your diminutive glass. Drop the Angostura on top and swirl with a toothpick to make a pretty pattern. Sip by a hearth.

Some Fireside Flip Notes:

1. It's Burn's Night this weekend. And this excellent little drink from Ryan Chetiyawardana's Good Things to Drink struck me as rather apt for the season — a hearty cocklewarmer combining the warming whiskiness of the Penicillin with the plum-crumble-and-custard qualities of sloe gin and yes, an entire egg. Quoth Ryan (who is particularly good on Scotch cocktails, I find): "This Fireside Flip has comforting, malty notes matched with the fruity/nutty flavours of sloe gin, all tied up with a hint of golden spice from honey and ginger. It's at its best made two-in-a-shaker you you and a loved one."

2. I have entirely come round to whole eggs in cocktails. I think this one might just be the Great Chieftan o' the Eggy-race.

3. Speaking of which: you can read me in the Guardian's FEAST on Saturday again. I'm talking about Scotch this time; and the poetry of Robbie Burns; and the great Highland writer Neil Gunn; and the lamentable and somewhat paradoxical elevation of "single malts" to luxury marques; and how actually there's a lot more affordable fun to be had seeking out independent bottlers and sloshing blends around in cocktail shakers. It'll be online next week — so, buy a paper in the meantime?

4. The sloe gin edition of the Cabinet is also forthcoming; I've now cleared enough deadlines (and illnesses) to have no excuse not to have this opus ready for you by Monday.
   

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~ THE SLOE GIN FIZZ ~

45ml sloe gin
15ml gin
20ml lemon juice
10ml honey (loosened with a little hot water)
Dash Angostura bitters
~150ml fizzy water

Freeze a tall glass. Now, measure all of the ingredients into that new shaker you got for Christmas. All the ingredients except the fizzy water, that is! Add ice, apply the lid and exercise your shaking muscles. …

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Hello friends —

I hope we all had good Christmases and didn't come down with the quademic? Mine was lovely, thank you. I got a Boston Shaker, among other items — a sign that it's time to get serious with this cocktail business.

The Spirits is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscri…

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JANUARY

THERE is a momentary pause in the music and I repair to the kitchen to mix a strong gin and tonic before returning triumphant to the dancefloor. It is a New Year and we are all starting it as we mean to go on. Intentionally.

The King is Charles III. The Pantone colour is Mocha Mousse. Bradford is the city of culture. You laugh but Bradford's actua…

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Note: This might be "too long for email". So click on the link and head to the app.

Oh fuck. I have caught you at the precise pivot between "there's loads of time" and "there's no time at all", haven't I? You had all these organised, benevolent thoughts, three weeks ago, of what to get for Cora and Jim and Uncle Feather and the Aspen Girls; you planned s…

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~ THE MANHATTAN ~

50ml bourbon (or rye)
25ml Italian vermouth
Dash Angostura bitters
Lemon zest (optional)

Freeze your glassware. Combine the bourbon and vermouth in a mixing vessel, half-fill with ice and stir until a melancholy thought occurs to you. Now strain this mixture into the cold glass. Garnish with a cherry or an orange zest twist — though I actu…

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What with it being the season and all, I figured it would be useful to compile republish some advice for those of you who are hosting over the next few weeks. And also, to provide some impetus for those of you who are thinking of hosting. Because as diverting as it is to prepare a Baby Turtle for oneself of a winter eve, it is 100x more fun to drink Baby Turtles with all of your favourite people in a room. It's sort of what Baby Turtles are for.

Some people fear hosting. I don't, I love it and see it as the logical endpoint of becoming good at making cocktails. I can't remember who it was who wrote that the most important thing about cocktails (alcoholic or not, I should add) is that they make people happy. "Honestly, people really light up when you offer to make them a cocktail. If there's one thing that you need to know to make good cocktails, it's that. Why would you not want that for as many people as possible?"

In other words, we're all coming to your house. Friday? Great.

Naturally, constitutions and temperaments differ. It may be that nothing less than a strangers having sex in corners type of party will do for you. It may be that throwing a few random acquaintances together is all the fun you need. In all cases, however, I feel you're aiming for a certain alchemy. A good party is exponential. It's what happens when spirits multiply and the bowl overflows. It's the work of a few moments — but you can feel these moments for days, weeks, sometimes years afterwards. Cocktails, says the authoritative volume quoted above "provide the feeling that this moment is special and that feelings and moments are important."

So I'm afraid there's no getting out of it. We're coming over. What there's no time before Christmas? Well, some of the best parties I've hosted have been in January. Step to it. Here's how.

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1. Just fucking do it.

Seriously. There are 305 reasons not to have party. I mean, that horrible damp patch on your wall, for a start - no one wants to look at that! The size of your home, the reluctance of your children to go to bed in a timely manner... Also, do you know enough cool people? Is there enough time between now and Advent? Won't everyone be busy? What if everyone laughs at your drapes?

None of these are good reasons. The fact is, if someone says: 'Hey, we're having some friends over for cocktails - come?' You'll probably be quite pleased. Particularly if you know that this person has been talking about this great cocktail newsletter they subscribe to and how it had really upped their mixing game. You might even think it incumbent on this friend of your to have a few of the rest of you over for cocktails. Particularly as all you really need to do these days is create a WhatsApp group entitled "PARTY", add various acquaintances and hit send. No one will mind the damp patch on the wall besides you. Although you should think about changing your drapes.

2. Don't overthink the guestlist.

It's so tempting to curate. It's so easy to think, ah but what do these disparate people in my life have in common? And also, what if Terence gets talking to Diane, it will be a FUCKING DISASTER! But here's the thing. Your friends are adults (even Diane, technically) and they will have hopefully worked out how to be civil and interesting around other adults by now.

In fact, I would advise actively inviting incongruous groups of people from your life (as per this rather good Vox article). It's more generous, I feel? Try to include: someone you just met the other day who seems interesting; someone who has known you your whole life; one or more actual neighbours; someone who is on holiday in your country; someone who just got home after a long trip; someone who has recently moved to the area; someone who seems interesting but it would be a bit much to invite them over to dinner; the chief of the fire dept; a member of the clergy; two or three people who can perform a musical number in a tight spot; an ex-con; at least three people you fancy; and as wide a varity of ages as possible. OK, seriously, I suppose the main point is, if you JUST invite colleagues or people from the school gate - or solely members of the clergy - you will end up talking about the same boring stuff you talk about every day. Throw them all together and: gesundheit! Hopefully.

Naturally, you want to set a number that is within your level of whelm. I mean you don't want to be either over- or underwhelmed by guests. You will want to ensure three or four of your most reliable friends are available too - I mean those who can be relied upon to mix drinks, fix playlists, talk down Diane, etc. But be warned. No matter how pessimistic you are about RSVPs, the house is always 31% more full than you mentally envisioned.

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3. Start making ice now.

Probably 70% of house parties founder on inadequate ice. A tray will not cut it and nor will a bag of supermarket ice. Clear a shelf of your freezer and begin ice production a week in advance. Continually freeze water in takeway containers, hack up these blocks into glass-ready sizes, freeze some more ice and so on. You might choose to leave some large lumps (e.g. for punch bowls) and some smaller ones to fit in glass. You never want to serve a drink that is supposed to be cold at room temperature. Trust me: this will make FAR MORE DIFFERENCE to the perception of your drink-making than, for example, the price of your booze.

While we're on the subject: make sure you have fridge space available for the inevitable beers, wines, soft drinks, etc when they start arriving on the day. You don't want them balancing on half-eaten lentil dishes.

4. Set expectations re: food

It may be that you are in fact Jesus and 5,000 hungry mouths are no problem to you. It may be that you are absolutely shit at cooking and somehow manage to burn even salad. Whatever: be absolutely straight with your guest's gullets beforehand. I don't think it's such a bad thing to say in a WhatsApp reminder message 24 hours before an event (see #5, below) "There will be some food but I'd recommend having dinner beforehand". I'd want to know that if I were going to your party.

But there should be some zakuski - as the Russians call "drinking food". It's just civilised. Nuts, olives, crisps, salty whatnots, THREE ESSENTIAL DIPS, and some celery sticks, bits of charcuterie, slices of Spanish tortilla, that sort of thing. Maybe not those marinaded anchovies because they're difficult to eat while remaining elegant. Oh, you know what would be a good idea though? A big plate of gilda pintxos. If you're thinking more substantial? I'm personally in favour of the handheld: samosas, empanadas, sausage rolls, boreks, pierogi, those little cheese pies you made last time, hell, you might even devil some eggs. But this should certainly not require you to go back and forth to the oven all evening, Mercy, no. You are a host not a martyr.

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5. Make a playlist

I have just the playlist for you, in fact! Music is absolutely crucial and should not be left to the last minute. In fact, make two playlists. One for talking, one for dancing. Actually, I would add, make sure your GODDAM SONOS IS WORKING PROPERLY.

6. Send a reminder 24 hours before the party

You'll want a final head-count obviously and your guests will want to know your address, whether to eat beforehand (see rule 4), what to wear (if anything) and also what to bring.

Because: watch out! For some reason, even in 2023, the words "COCKTAIL PARTY!" seem to call forth random bottles of José Cuervo paint-stripper, expired Baileys, novelty liqueurs - and somehow never the artisanal vermouths and rare editions of Chartreuse one would ideally like. Even asking for something specific and useful like "gin" or "rum" can be perilous. I'll wager that you'll end up with spiced rum. Or worse: 25 bottles of spiced rum.

I suppose you could be super-specific: "Mount Gay Eclipse/Elijah Craig Bourbon/Antica Formula/Tarragona Chatreuse please!" But people will think you're an arsehole. And it's on you to provide the core alcohol. Ask your guests instead to bring wine or beer or "whatever you like to drink". Tactful when you have teetotallers coming. And also, beer and wine is good, because people can open it themselves. But probably the best injunction is: "Bring fizz." Most people will bring prosecco. Some might bring champagne. These can popped on the spot, saved as party currency for later in the season, or else incorporated into cocktails; see rule 7.

7. Make it easy on yourself

OK, this is super-important. You are not going to be making individual cocktails for people. Maybe you will towards the end - but don't plan this. Also your cocktails are unlikely to be served to your usual perfect standards. Embrace this. However adept you are at fixing Pisco Sours for yourself, it's really difficult preparing them for fresh waves of guests as they pour through the door. Even making cocktails for three is more of a faff than you think. You'll be separating the eggs for the Reverend and then Samantha and the girls will arrive demanding Negronis… and things will soon get out of hand.

Even if you are only having a handful of people over and want to try your hand at a range of live cocktails, please: squeeze lemons/limes in advance, cut the garnishes, freeze glasses, maybe even batch certain ingredients. But in all cases, you will need something ready to pour the moment they come in with their annoying coats. (It's winter. Have a coat strategy).

This isn't just about liquoring people up. It's about setting the tone. See 8.

8. Make a large quantity of something delicious

The way I see it, there are four options.

a) PUNCH. The best of these is the drink that is DESIGNED FOR PRECISELY THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. I mean punch. The basic RUM PUNCH is infinitely adaptable. Here are four further recipes if that doesn't cut it (my famous PNIN'S PUNCH; a CLARIFIED MILK PUNCH that I have served with enormous success at parties before; a non-alcoholic APPLE PIE PUNCH, remember those guys too; and the MULLED NEGRONI). A hot punch is a great idea in winter as it will fill the house with inviting aromas. Here is a tried and tested recipe for CARAMELISED PINEAPPLE PUNCH. Make a ritual of the preparation. And do this WELL IN ADVANCE so all you have to do is warm five minutes before the guests arrive. I can't tell you how much time it will save throughout the evening to have a big vat of something that guests can serve themselves.

b) A LARGE JUG. Other reliably crowd-pleasing cocktails that batch well include PALOMAS, JUNGLE BIRDS and variants, NEGRONIS, CAROUSELS (kind of a winter Negroni) and I bet you could figure out a cold weather version of the KING OF CUPS too. While punches should be served in bowls, these can be made in jugs and kept in the fridge - and perhaps withdrawn later - and maybe even thrown together live if you're in a tight spot. The GINGER ROGERS PUNCH is a good house party standby in this vein. For 12 people, muddle 8 mint stprigs with a bottle of gin (700ml), the juice of four limes, 1 litre of ginger beer, a heft glug of Angostura bitters and maybe a dash of sugar syrup (or something else sweet) if you feel it's required.

c) A FIZZ-BATCH. Remember! People are bringing "fizz". Use it. A good strategy is to make a base of something that can be topped up. For example: 50/50 Campari and Italian vermouth, well-iced in a jug. Top this up with prosecco in individual glasses and have yourselves NEGRONI SBAGLIATI. And I hardly need to tell you that you can top it up with fizzy water for Americanos (good for a long night drinking), gin for Negronis, bourbon for Boulevardiers, tequila for Rositas, etc…. The principle works with the Gin Sour too - top it with fizz and you have French 75s. Or even something like a Brandy Old Fashioned which becomes a Champagne Cocktail when fizz is applied.

d) A LITTLE SOMETHING. Oh and do keep something in reserve. I hosted a fun party this summer where I made a batch of MARTIKI and kept it in an old rum bottle in the the FREEZER. Alcohol over ~33% ABV or so should be "safe" to put in a freezer, so a Dry Martini, pre-made, not to much dilution, reasonably strong gin, ought to be fine too. You'll thank yourself when your remember it at 10.37pm.

9. If someone wants beer LET THEM

Seriously. One less mouth to feed. Enjoy the party. Individual cocktails are only to be made when there's five or six of you sitting around at the end.

10. Clear up systematically

The first thing is to throw away all food waste. The second is to gather all the recycling. The third is to put all the glasses/plates/cutlery by the sink or hopefully dishwasher. The fourth is to do any necessary washing up. Do this communally, with a co-host, with music on and gossip to share and it can actually be enjoyable. Assuming you tided your house a bit beforehand, it might all look quite respectable in surprisingly short amount of time - and it will have an additional party afterglow too. There's a reason they call it housewarming. And remember: hangovers, like cocktails, are best shared communally.

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~ BLOW MY SKULL ~

50ml dark rum
25ml brandy
15ml lemon juice
15ml sugar syrup
~150ml ale or stout

This is a species of punch - so make it in the glass. Introduce the spirits, and the lemon, and the sugar, and give it a stir. Add ice. And top up with beer to taste.

Some BMS Notes:

1) Some of you may remember Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Davey (1758-1823), the Devon…

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~ THE BABY TURTLE ~

50ml tequila (reposado)
10ml Campari
20ml grapefruit juice
20ml lime juice
15ml cinnamon syrup
20ml egg white
Pinch salt

Measure the ingredients into your shaker. Apply the lid and perform the action with unusual viguour. This is to froth up the egg white. Now stop. Add lots of ice and shake once more. Strain this admixture into a tumbler fi…

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~ THE JACK ROSE ~

50ml apple brandy
15ml lemon (or lime) juice
10ml grenadine

Freeze that cocktail glass! Now, add the liquids to your shaker, half-fill with ice and give it the old up-and-down. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into the glass and garnish with apple, somehow.

Some Jack Rose Notes:

1) I decided to mix things up a bit, pardon the pu…

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~ THE MARIANITO ~

75ml Italian (or Spanish!) vermouth (see note 3)
15ml gin
15ml Campari
Dash Angostura bitters

Fill an old fashioned glass with ice cubes. To do this really properly, you'll now make the cocktail in a mixing vessel over ice and then strain this into the glass. But I won't tell on you if you do it the easy way which is simply to combine the v…

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Everything must go at the Spirits Store! There are just a few bottles left now - type in SPIRITS50 at checkout and you will receive 50% off ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you can lay your hands upon.

The SPIRITS STORE

~ THE AIRMAIL ~

30ml light rum
15ml lime juice
10ml honey syrup (honey, loosened with a little hot water)
45ml sparkling wine

Place a champagne glass in the freezer. No…

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~ GALLIANO L'AUTENTICO ~
Italian herbal liqueur, flavoured with anise, vanilla and spice / 42.3% ABV / c.£23 for 500ml.
Friends with: rum; tequila and mezcal; gin (and tonic!); vermouth; amari. Orange (liqueur and juice). Also cream. Chocolate, mint. Pineapple.

THE yellow dust swirled under a pitiless Abyssinian sun. Major Giuseppe Galliano (1846-1896) crouched behind the last remnants of his fortifications, listening to the thunder of the rifles. The game was up. His men were defeated; he was defeated. Around him, Menelik's warriors surged, a living storm, now ecstatic in the fullness of their triumph. To his left, two soldiers from his battery lay wounded on the cracked earth whining pitifully for the mothers, and their soft weeping took him back too, to the wind-scoured hills above Nuoro, to the wild thyme after rain, to the sheep bells drifting across the twilight, to the laughter in the piazza. For Galliano was dying too. Galliano who avenged the Dogali massacre! Galliano who fought off 100,000 at Mek'ele! Galliano - oozing life into the Abyssinian dust. With trembling fingers, he reached for his hipflask. The metal was warm, dented from battle but when he uncorked it, the scent of Harvey Wallbangers and Golden Cadillacs rose into the acrid air. He smiled faintly and whispered, Per l'Italia, as the liqueur burned sweetly down his throat - and the dust received him as a mother...

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Everything must go at the Spirits Store! Enter the code SPIRITS50 at checkout and you will receive 50% off ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.

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~ THE PICCADILLY ~

50ml gin
20ml French vermouth
10ml grenadine
Dash absinthe

Place your glass in the freezer. Now make the cocktail. Add the alcohols to your mixing vessel, half fill with ice and stir patiently for 30 second…

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Friends -

It is now five years (and a day) since I sent out my first Spirits dispatch; and ten years (and a couple of days) since my book The Spirits was published. It's important to mark these occasions, I think - only I've been so busy these past couple of weeks, barely at home, that the thought of sitting down and gathering my thoughts as I did all th…

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~ THE HOTEL NACIONAL SPECIAL ~

50ml light rum
15ml apricot brandy
25ml pineapplie juice
15ml lime juice
5-10ml golden sugar syrup
Angostura bitters (to garnish)

Place your glass in the freezer. Now make the cocktail. Add the rum, apricot brandy, pineapple juice, lime juice and sugar syrup to the shaker, perform the eponymous action (I mean, shake it) and then …

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~ THE MIDORI SPRITZ ~
(AKA the Melancholy Spritz)

50ml Midori
10ml gin
75ml prosecco
~10ml fizzy water

Fill a wine glass with ice cubes. Add the Midori, gin, prosecco and fizzy water, and give it a quick stir. Garnish with green melon and lime.

Some Midori Spritz notes:

1) The Midori Spritz isn't a classic but isn't brand new either. I mean, I've found various…

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~ MIDORI ~
Japanese musk melon liqueur / 17% ABV / c.£18 for 500ml
Friends with: vodka, industrial sour mix, vintage disco. Oh but also gin, rum, tequila. Green things: Green Chartreuse, absinthe, lime, cucumber, green tea. And light spritzy things, tonic water, soda, prosecco.

Suddenly, Midori is everywhere. It is as if the collective consciousness - ChatGPT maybe - decided that the taste of now is a Japanese melon liqueur the colour of Slimer from Ghostbusters. No one knows how or why but suddenly all of the hip bartenders are desperate to show off their Tokyo Iced Teas and Japanese Slippers and June Bugs. Midori, according to this pair of Gen Z influencers I found on TikTok, is "slept on."

It's the sort of generational shift that is liable to leave a cocktaileur of my era feeling a little bewildered - a bit like in 2016 when all the hipsters decided that depressed R'n'B singers crooning about their Nikes through autotune was the thing and guitars the sound of neoliberal hegemony. Or, contrariwise, when everyone seemed to decide, earlier this summer, that actually Oasis are and always have been an excellent band. For I'm pretty sure that Midori was precisely the sort of sticky, synthetic alcohol product that the whole cocktail revival thing was designed to expel from the bartending garden, along with such horrors as Passoa, umbrellas, Chambord, Tom Cruise in Cocktail, Del Boy and our old friend "Sour Mix".

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~ THE GIN & FRENCH ~

40ml gin
40ml French vermouth

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There is no great art to it. You must simply combine the gin and the vermouth in a fetching glass over ice. Give it a little stir and garnish with a lemon zest twist. Perhap…

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~ THE CANTARITO ~

Tajín (see below)
50ml tequila (reposado best)
20ml grapefruit juice
15ml orange juice
15ml lime juice
10ml agave syrup
Pinch salt
~75ml grapefruit soda

If you are using an authentic earthenware cup, you mustn't freeze it. You must immerse it in cold water for 10 minutes or so. If you just want to try the drink, though, by all means use whateve…

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