Outbound: the official cocktail of summer

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After much debate, we've decided on the 2010 Old Town Alchemy official cocktail of summer.

Feijoa Southside

50ml 42 Below Feijoa
25ml lime juice
15ml orgeat
8-10 mint leaves

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a single mint leaf.

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MxMo: Pain in the ass

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Mixology Monday is four years old, and as four year olds go, it's been well-behaved and mostly hygenic. This week, the world of drinkblogging descends on McSologogy with tales of pain in the ass drinks... 859,000. Remember that.

Eight hundred and fifty-nine thousand. Big number. Sure, there are bigger ones, but 859,000 is the sort of number that seems really, really big while still seeming within in the realms of realistic possibility.

859,000 is, coincidentally, the number of results you get if you put "how to make a mojito" into Google.

The mojito is currently the most popular cocktail in Britain. In one year, we sold over 2,600 in three bars. No other 'classic cocktail' (one that we haven't created) broke 600. It's a storied drink with a rich heritage and connections to piracy's golden age and generally convoluted and remarkable history of rum.

It's an utter pain.

First, there's crushed ice which is all well and good if you happen to have some mechanical means of crushing ice. If not, the mojito is an easy and effective way to develop RSI. Second, there's the length of time it takes to make one. It's not up to Ramos Gin Fizz timings, but if you're making batches of six, seven, eight, you want something with a 10 second prep time, not a minute-and-a-half. Third, there's the question of mint which has its own foibles when it comes to prep and storage. And if you run out, no-one's interested in a daiquiri. Fourth - and this is where that 859,000 comes in - everyone's an expert. Remember that mojito you ordered one time in that bar in Cuba? It was the best ever - the drink that your bartender's getting cramp crushing ice for probably won't come close.

Think about it - the mojito should be the bartender's ideal of a pain in the ass but it isn't. Why? Because it tastes really good.

Mojito

Take a highball glass, and add a handful of mint leaves. Add some sugar - however you like it (syrup, brown, white, whatever. It's really not that important) - and lime juice - about 15ml should do. Add some crushed ice and a large measure of your choice of rum and mix thoroughly with a barspoon. Fill with crushed ice and top with soda/sparkling water. Garnish with a mint spring.

Mezcal's global village

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"You have to remember," says Ron Cooper, "in 1995, there were three liquor companies on the Internet." It goes some way to explaining why he gives his web address as mezcal.com. But we're not here to talk about registering domains in the pre-Bubble era. Ron's been importing a range of single village mezcals since 1995 and they're starting to pop up in the UK. The Del Maguey range now includes eight mezcals, each made in a distinctive, traditional way by the local palenqueros. After a good dozen years of growing, agave - or maguey, as they're known in Oaxaca - plants are harvested and stripped of their leaves. The pinas (hearts) are then roasted in a conical pit over three to five days. Fermentation is left to wild yeasts before the distillation process that varies from village to village. The mezcal made in Chichicapa is run twice through a copper pot still, while in Santa Catarina Minas, the Minero comes out of a clay pot still. It's not only the type of still that changes - Del Maguey's Pechuga is distilled with almonds, fruit and a whole chicken in the still.

Watch What  creates  flavors  in  Mezcal in Lifestyle |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Not all of the range is as unconventional as the Pechuga. The latest addition is Del Maguey Vida. It's based on San Luis del Rio, one of Del Maguey's first single village mezcals, but it's distilled to a slightly friendlier 42%ABV - all of the Del Maguey mezcals are distilled at proof rather than being diluted to bottling strength - and they cut the distillate nearer the tails than the heads. It's reckoned to be a great mezcal for cocktails, which led to some great drinks from some of Edinburgh's best bartenders.

There was a rare bottle of Del Maguey Chichicapa from the first batch imported the US back in the 90s, and aged for 94 days in a Californian wine barrel up for grabs and in the end, it went to Jamie McDonald from the Raconteur for his twist on a Blue Blazer. Second place went to the West Room's Andrew Kearns with a straight-up sour with sage and rhubarb jam while third place was shared between Tonic's Tom Hodgkiss and, uh, me.

Todo Bien Tambien

50ml Del Maguey Vida
15ml Campari
1 barspoon agave nectar
8 mint leaves
the zest of one lemon, in thin strips

Combine the agave nectar, mint and lemon zest strips in the base of a glass with some crushed ice. Fill with crushed ice and add the Campari and mezcal. Mix well with a barspoon. Garnish with a mint sprig wrapped in a lemon zest twist.

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There's often a lot of talk about filtration and purity and technology when it comes to discussing spirits, so it's refreshing to come across a series of products that are so focused on traditional methods of production. There's a tangible difference between the various liquids and it all comes from the particular ways that the palenqueros turn two things - maguey and water - into mezcal. There's a reward for this approach, too - Del Maguey Tobala (made from wild maguey plants; it takes a month to collect enough) was named as a semifinalist in the Tequila, Mezcal & Agave-based category at the 2010 Ultimate Spirits Challenge in New York.

Thirty Two: Drake's Fortune

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I've been thinking a bit about gin cocktails of late, which is useful given that all the recipes I'm currently owe various people and competitions are supposed to be rum based. I set myself to making a summery drink that wouldn't be torture to make - essentially the polar opposite of A Walk In The Clouds.

Drake's Fortune

50ml Tanqueray Gin
25ml pink grapefruit juice
10ml St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1 dash Angostura Bitters
6 mint leaves

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. 

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The recipe is inspired by the Victorian Mojito - basically a standard Mojito, but with gin and apple juice instead of rum and soda - but I wanted to get away from the shorthand of using crushed ice to signify summer drinks. From there, it seemed obvious to use elderflower to complement the gin and a touch of Angostura to bring everything together.

And yes, more drinks should be named after videogames.

Twenty Four & Twenty Five: Colisão & Plantação

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I've been thinking a lot about cachaca recently. This is not unconnected to receiving a couple of samples from Anthony at Abelha Cachaca the other day. It might be the third most popular spirit in the world, but cachaca is in pretty similar position to that of vodka in the 1950s/60s - there is a global awareness of the product, but the majority of the spirit produced is not exported and it hasn't quite hit the mainstream in the export markets yet. Wikipedia suggests that only 1% of the 1.3 billion litres of cachaca produced annually are exported. While the availability of cachaca outside of Brazil is on the increase, we're still at the stage where there are only a handful of notable brands - Sagatiba, Germana, Ypioca, to name three. This is probably an excellent time to launch an organic, artesanal brand into the UK market. But I tend to be pretty busy most days, what with the working and the not working and the sleeping and the not going to Tales of the Cocktail, so it's helpful that Abelha have been bringing some over for a couple of months now. Both expressions are small batch, artesanal (pot-distilled, as opposed to the column distilled "industrial" style) cachacas - the Silver is unaged while the Gold is aged for three years in small (250ltr) Brazillian hardwood barrels.

I'll write about the Gold in more depth tomorrow, but I was completely blown away by the Silver. On the nose it has those familiar vegetal notes that come with cachacas and rhums agricole, but it also has a pleasant honey scent with a touch of citrus to it. The mouth feel is great - a slightly viscous texture, with a strong finish but without chemical burn of column-still spirit. Esquire just listed Abelha as one of its top three cachacas, but I'm not sure if you need the other two.

Unfortunately, the sampler I got wasn't big enough to try in some spirit/mixer combos, but there was just enough to make up a couple of cocktails.

The first thing I did was based around the other classic cachaca cocktail, the Batida. It's the Caipirinha's longer, more laid back cousin and totally deserving of some of the love thrown at the little peasant drink. I ended up crossbreeding it with a Smash, with the intention of coming up with something fruity for summer.

Colisão

45ml Abelha Silver Cachaca
25ml freshly squeezed red grapefruit juice
25ml pineapple juice
6-8 mint leaves

Shake all the ingredients with ice and strain into an old-fashioned/rocks glass over crushed ice. Feel free to add a touch of gomme/simple syrup into the shaker to taste. Garnish with a grapefruit slice and a mint sprig.

After that, I decided to go old-school. Cachaca tends to be used in caipirinhas and long punch-style drinks and not a lot else, but the Abelha Silver struck me as something that would work really well as an alternative to a white rum. So, I went with a simple mod of a daiquiri.

Plantação

50ml Abelha Silver Cachaca
25ml freshly squeezed lime juice
10ml sugar cane syrup
1 barspoon Maraschino

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini/coupette glass. Twist a lime zest over the top and discard. Garnish with a cocktail cherry.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow, I'm getting to know the Abelha Gold.