This is a bit of a short hodgepodge newsletter, and before I get stuck in have to apologise for the lack of content of late. I will be back on normal form from the start of May, with a piece on Pimm’s, and other fruit cups, kicking things off for the Bank Holiday, and then a more in-depth dive into wine colour and categorization in the Roman and Greek imagination (so yes the “wine-dark sea” will get a mention).
I recently got my results for the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust’s Spirits 2 course that I did at the start of the year, and am very happy to say I passed with distinction. As such I feel I ought to use this as an opportunity to do a bit of self-advertising so:
I think everyone has wanted the ability to walk into a bar and order a cocktail named after, or by, them. A bespoke drink perfectly matching their tastes, each sip a fluid crystal memory of pleasure.
You could wait until you stumble across a new combination of ingredients that just happens to work, or you could have me devise such a personal collection: carefully calibrated flavour profiles to suit your tastes, linking in to the atmosphere of that bar or party you remember where every drink was just right.
Of course, cocktails are an odd, almost magical thing, that are as much about the surroundings and style as they are about taste, and so my bespoke recipes come as an art deco style recipe card, with a brief description of the cocktail and framing text to suit the occasion. If interested you can see some more details here: http://bit.ly/Bespoke-Cocktails.
I also ought to mention that I created a cocktail for the brilliant The Endless Knot podcast for their 90th episode (which you can see here):
The Codex Cocktail
50ml Dark Rum
25ml Cold Black Tea
25ml Honey
25ml Lemon Juice
100ml Soda Water
In a tall stir the honey, tea, lemon juice and rum, add ice and pour over the soda water.
The dark rum, with its oaky vanillaish flavours is a nod to the woody origin of the codex (from the Latin caudex which originally meant a block of wood).
Similarly, the honey gives a hint of the hinged wax tablets that might have led to the design of the codex, plus honey works well with rum.
Then the tea gives a sense of muskiness almost like old vellum. With well brewed tannic tea, there might also be a hint of connection to the gallotannic acid of Oak-gall ink, which was heavily used from late antiquity onwards for documents and books.
The lemon does not work thematically but a cocktail needs balance and lemon goes wonderfully with honey.
The straight forward way of making the drink with soda layered in gives a hint of the different leaves of a codex. This could be accentuated by carefully pouring the soda over the back of a spoon so it leaves the rest of the drink as a distinct layer.
As it has been such good weather, in the main at least, I have spent far too long dreaming of the perfect refreshing drink. And whilst a perfectly chilled lager is always brilliant, there is nothing quite like a pint of shandy, especially after a cycle. Perhaps the Germans do have it right in calling a similar drink a radler, as it comes from the word for a ‘bike’ and so could be rather loosely translated as ‘the cyclists drink’.
Such mixed beer drinks often get a bad press, and are seen as drinks for those who do not like beer. That argument sort of works if you are thinking about the taste of a lager shandy, but even then, it forgets the main purpose of the drink which is to refresh.
It also forgets that a shandy made from a decent bitter, has plenty of taste with the characteristic fruitiness from British ale yeasts and the notable bitterness, perfectly combining with the sweet, slightly lemony, and very light lemonade.
Shandy is also a good drink to open up the idea that beer is not something that needs to be drunk with any sense of purity. On hot days many beer combos are just what is needed, be it larger and lime, or a beer-based punch. If it tastes good, it works and should be celebrated.
It is a bit like how I have had a few pints in pub gardens recently, and have greatly enjoyed them, even though none of them were perfectly conditioned. It was the occasion and sense of familiarity that made the drinks work. Ideally every drink would be perfect taste wise, but it is very rare that I am drinking just for taste, instead each drink is part of an occasion and wrapped up in social conventions and memories.
As normal if you enjoy these please do share, and if you haven’t already, please do sign up to get the lastest newsletters straight to your inbox.