Two: Bloomsbury Cosmo

I've been kicking around some ideas ahead of Thursday's regional for the Diageo World Class competition. The heat could involve presenting up to three different drinks, including one classic or twisted classic gin cocktail. I'm not sure if this one is right for the comp, but y'know, still tasty.

Bloomsbury Cosmopolitan

40ml Tanqueray Gin
10ml Elderflower cordial
30ml Cranberry juice
15ml Lime juice
1 dash Fee Brothers Orange Bitters

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a flamed orange zest.

One: Homecoming cocktail

It seems that I thought it would be a good idea to post a new cocktail recipe every week through 2009, which is what happens when you leave me in a room with a bottle of 10 Cane. So, without any further ado, I present the first of the fifty-two. 2009 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a man who would, over 37 short years, come to embody Scottish literature. Moving between rural Ayrshire and Edinburgh high society, Burns became a major celebrity - his intemperate ways helped him to premature aging and an early grave which is about as rock'n'roll as you can get before Rolls Royces and swimming pools were invented.

Every year, Scots celebrate January 25th the same way - with a dinner for Burns Night. There are toasts to the poet's immortal memory, the Selkirk Grace, even an address to a haggis. In addition to the traditional celebration, the Scottish Government has launched Homecoming 2009, a series of events aimed at attracting people with Scottish ancestry to visit the country. The fun kicks off on Burns night and, over the course of the year, will cover events like the Edinburgh International Festival, the Heineken Cup Final and the Royal Highland Show. One thing that isn't included in the calendar is, of course, anything cocktail-related.

See that? Smooth.

There are a decent clutch of contenders for a Burns night cocktail. You could go for a Rob Roy, or a Whisky Mac or Rusty Nail could be in with a shout. Then again, there's always the Bobby Burns, detailed in the Savoy Cocktail Book, a blend of Scotch, sweet vermouth and Benedictine. It's a good starting place and a great drink, so I haven't made any huge changes to it. The major change is that I decided to use Drambuie instead of Benedictine, mainly because it's Scottish and it fits the idea of the drink. There's a bonus given that as a whisky-based liqueur, it blends well with pretty much any Scotch as well as bringing a bunch of interesting floral and spicy flavours. On top of that, I decided to push the boat out and use a single malt for the whisky. I had wanted to use Auchentoshan - a Lowland malt - purely because it's made closer to where Burns grew up than most others, but it's also triple-distilled and unpeated and didn't come through against the Drambuie. In the end, I went for a 12 year-old Bowmore, kinda smoky and a bit peaty, but nowhere near as full on as some other Islay malts. Finally, I lobbed in a couple of dashes of Fee Brothers Peach Bitters. It's not a hugely exciting recipe, but it is a tasty drink and at least it's a start.

Only fifty-one to go...

Homecoming Cocktail

40ml blended Scotch Whisky (I used Johnnie Walker Black Label)
15ml Drambuie
25ml sweet vermouth (Martini Rosso)
2 dashes Peach Bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled Rocks glass. Garnish with an orange zest twist. It doesn't have to be as mental as the one in the photo.

MxMo: Spice

It's Monday, and that means it's about time for the international drinkblogging community to showcase all the cool things we've been playing with. This month's Mixology Monday is being graciously hosted by Craig at Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments (thanks!) and - topically, for Christmas - the theme is spice. Spices belong to that category of things you won't miss until they're not there. It's literally inconceivable to eat without salt and pepper on the table. Vanilla has become so prevalent as a flavour that the word can be used to describe things that are boring, unremarkable, and yet the general connotation of spices is of exoticism, of a faraway culture.

The problem I've always found when using spices in cocktails is that I tend to focus on one in particular, with the result that the drink ends up pretty one-dimensional. This time, I made a conscious decision to use a range of spices but I also realised that combining a number of ground spices, roots, barks and the like in a shaker would prove troublesome. In order to get around the problem, I made a bottle of Krupnik, a traditional Eastern European vodka liqueur, using some honey, cloves, cinnamon sticks, vanilla pods and nutmeg. Being honest, if I'd used red wine as a base and replaced the honey with a couple of orange wedges, I'd have ended up with mulled wine - the stuff tastes like Christmas in a bottle.

There was another problem, and this time there wasn't a lot I could about it. Christmas is crazy time in the bar industry, meaning 300 covers over the course of the day in the brasserie and 12 hour shifts representing an easy day. Saturday, for example, started at 10am and finished at 2am, with just about enough time to grab a Chinese takeaway and a coffee around 5pm. All of this made it tough to find the time to prototype drinks.

This isn't something I'd call a hardship. After all, I've always been a fan of making drinks that are a simple twist on an established cocktail. From what I know of David Embury's Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, he concludes that all cocktails can be traced back to six 'essential' cocktails, so I can claim I'm on decent theoretical ground. I played with a couple of ideas - a Krupnikito could have legs, I reckon - before deciding on a simple twist on a Cosmopolitan. Substituting the Cointreau for my Krupnik, I also opted to use some Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka with the aim on contrasting the mellow floral notes with the stronger spice flavours in the liqueur.

Stargazer

25ml Zubrowka Bison Grass Vodka
25ml Homemade Krupnik honey vodka liqueur
25ml Cranberry Juice
15ml Lemon Juice
1 dash Egg white

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into chilled martini glass. Garnish with an apple fan.

This recipe will work with commercially produced Krupnik, which has less of a spice hit than my homemade variety. If you're using it, garnish with some ground cinnamon and nutmeg; flame them over the drink for effect. I'd probably recommend using less lemon juice, too. The homemade Krupnik is almost syrupy sweet.

*** 

The name comes from the Polish tradition of keeping a vigil for the first star on Christmas Eve, the moment which marks the start of the traditional Christmas feast. It seemed appropriate, given I'd chosen to use two Eastern European products in the cocktail.

Thanks to Craig for hosting this month's MxMo; the fun continues over at TDIF!

MxMo: Made from scratch

Mixology Monday is a monthly catalogue of interesting things people have been doing with alcohol, based around a theme set by that month's host. November sees Doug at the Pegu Blog calling out all our homemade treasures - every drink has to contain one ingredient that's made from scratch. It's often said that every major ingredient and technique in cocktail-making was on the table from about 1920 onwards. This is largely true, if you discount the recent emergence of molecular mixology which is going to be one of those terms that sticks if only because there isn't a better-sounding one, and also one of those things where its influence will probably be obvious decades down the line. So, when you want your drinks to stand out from the crowd, it's usually easier to go old-school, and make your own ingredients.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the majority of spirits began life as a backyard venture, just to see what happens if... There's still a strong tradition of home-distilling in France and Eastern Europe, and the kudos that comes with being a small-batch, artisanal spirit or liqueur is as high as its ever been. There's a wealth of bartenders using their knowledge to make their own bitters and recreate lost ingredients.

And then there's me. I've written about my attempts at making my own grapefruit liqueur (verdict: not bad) before - recipes here! - but what I didn't mention was that, at the same time, I diverted some resources into another simple project.

The story goes a little something like this: after prepping up the grapefruit liqueur, it turns out I had about a third of a bottle of vodka leftover. Couple this with a jar of cinnamon sticks that weren't doing anything, add a couple of days in a mason jar and 70-odd ml of overproof rum in a misguided attempt to make it inflammable and you get a serviceable cinnamon tincture.

One of the first things I tried was throwing it into something resembling a Rob Roy, mainly because I wanted a pretext to buy a bottle of Monkey Shoulder. This served to prove the hypothesis that a serviceable cinnamon tincture isn't necessarily a great replacement for purpose-made aromatic bitters. The major problem is the clarity: the tincture is pretty cloudy, and combined with the Punt Y Mes I used, the drink came out really dark and opaque. The overall effect didn't compare well to a standard Rob Roy.

I used my second attempt to use the tincture as an accent rather than a main ingredient, spraying it over the top of a twist on an Old-fashioned. As a package, it was a lot more successful but again, nothing to recommend it over a regular Old-fashioned. There is a drink out there for a serviceable cinnamon tincture, but until I find it, I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Ednbrg's Serviceable Cinnamon Tincture

250ml Finlandia Vodka
200g Cinnamon sticks

Soak cinnamon sticks in vodka for up to three days. Strain through a cheesecloth and add 70ml of Overproof rum. Or don't; it may work out better.

On the Martini

I've spent a decent amount of time thinking about gin recently. There are worse things to think about and I've sat in on two training sessions on it over the past fortnight. One thing that always comes up in any gin training is the Martini. It's one of the most iconic cocktails - everybody knows of the Martini, even if not everybody knows what it exactly is. It strikes me that the modern Martini drinker falls into one of two schools:

a) an experienced, hardcore drinker who knows exactly how they want their drink, or b) someone who's just seen a Bond movie and really doesn't know what they're getting into. I have fond memories of the aftermath of Casino Royale's release - making Vespers and, five minutes later, being asked to top them up with lemonade.

All of it boils down to this: the Martini - or, rather, the modern dry Martini - is an incredibly inaccessible drink. If you don't like the taste of straight spirits, there's no point of entry unless you turn to neo-martinis which are an entirely different beast.

It's a shame, really. I used to make a Cosmopolitan-flavoured martini-style cocktail as a party trick. At work, we've prototyped something that looks like a proper, old-school martini, and tastes like Neopolitan ice-cream. In both cases, I've found that people are really surprised in the sheer amount of flavour that you can get from a clear, colourless drink. Taking that idea further, I tried to come up with a more accessible Martini.

The other thing that sticks out at me is how unfashionable vermouth is in the mass-market these days, despite George Clooney's best efforts. If you want to blame someone, Winston Churchill's probably your best bet. Depending on who you ask, he took his Martinis with either a glance at the bottle while stirring or a pass of the bottle over the chilled glass. The drying of the Martini probably reached its logical conclusion with Salvatore Calabrese's Naked Martini, where the vermouth is sprayed into a chilled glass before adding gins straight from the freezer, creating possibly the most hardcore cocktail the world has ever known.

So, yeah. Let's make a more accessible Martini, but without using vermouth.

I do try to make things easy for myself.

The Duke of Marlborough

50ml Tanqueray Gin
25ml Sauvignon Blanc (I used Anapai River 2007 from Marlborough, New Zealand)
1 barspoon Acacia Honey
1 dash Fee Brothers Peach Bitters

Dissolve honey into white wine in a mixing glass. Add the gin and bitters, and stir with ice. Fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a mint leaf wrapped in a lemon zest twist.

(Picture credits: Martini Time, from wickenden's Photostream on Flickr; news.bbc.co.uk)