As promised this newsletter is a Christmas special. I have broken it down into sections so you can skip bits to focus on what you prefer, with an initial bit about Chrismas cocktails, then beer, then port, then some musings on colour in drinks.
Christmas Cocktails
In putting this bit together I realised that most of my go-to Christmas cocktails have already been mentioned, so do forgive the use of some slightly rarer ingredients.
Champagne Cocktail:
1 sugar cube (or 1 tsp of sugar) — white sugar is typical but brown works.
Champagne
1 dash Angostura Bitters
Add the sugar to a flute glass and the dash of bitters, leave for a moment so part of the sugar dissolves. Top up with champagne and garnish with a lemon twist.
Sloe Gin & Tonic:
25ml Sloe Gin
50ml Lemon Tonic
Add the gin to a tumbler of ice, top up with the tonic and garnish with a lemon twist. If you have no lemon tonic, normal tonic will work if you replace 10ml of it with lemon juice.
Brandy Angelico:
25ml Cognac,
20ml Frangelico
20ml Cream (double is best)
Shake with plenty of ice and strain into a coupe glass, garnish with a touch of ground cinnamon.
Franciscan Dream:
30ml Cognac
20ml Frangelico
5ml Strega (or similar liqueur, like Galliano)
5ml Lemon Juice
Shake with plenty of ice and strain into a coupe glass.
Suacy Cosmo:
50ml Vodka (ideally citron)
25ml Cranberry Sauce (if too chunky blend/mash it, Slightly spiced stuff works brilliantly)
20ml Lime juice
15ml Cointreau
Shake with plenty of ice and fine strain into a Martini glass. Garnish with a lime or lemon twist.
Zabaione Cocktail:
1 egg, separated
50ml Advocaat
30ml Marsala
15ml Cognac
15ml Lemon Juice
Beat the egg white until white and fluffy. Briefly shake the other ingredients without ice, then add ice and the beaten egg white and shake again. Strain into a coupe glass.
Beer
One thing I have particularly missed due to the pandemic has been pubs. There are many reasons to love pubs but in this case, I am thinking of the choice they offer. Without walking into pubs, seeing something new and ordering it/asking about it, I would have not found many of my favourite beers. If you add, the social element, to the passive choice given by a wide selection, you can find even more drinks you might not have thought to try.
OK, I have nipped to the loo leaving my wallet with a mate and asked them to get me anything that looked good to them and come back to a hideously thick stout that was like drinking tar. But more often than not I have tasted things from friends that I would never have ordered and found myself liking them.
Without pubs, this is far harder. (And, once it is safe, I will be going back to many pubs for that very reason.) Yet, I have found a new way to widen my beer experience. By ordering mixed boxes I end up drinking styles I would not normally, or revisiting styles that I thought were rather predictable, and have repeatedly been pleasantly surprised. That is not to say I have loved every beer. Instead, I have been able to get part of the pleasure of standing by a bar scanning the taps, weighing up different beers, seeing which my mood suits.
Of course, it still lacks the human touch of talking with mates or a good recommendation by good bar staff. Even though selection boxes are curated often with notes to guide you, I have found myself drawn more to beer writing for recommendations. So to perpetuate it here are a few brief reviews/my notes on a few beers I have drunk recently.
Utopian, Ten Degrees – 3.9% abv:
An exceptionally good session lager. In the glass, it has an enticing golden colour with a nose of straw tempered with a hint of stone fruit. The double decoction mashing gives a lovely malty body with a rounded sweetness that you might expect from a more alcoholic beer. All in all, the interplay of gentle hops and malt yields the perfect drink for Christmas evening as you return to the leftovers.
Browar Grościszewo, Surfer – 4.8% abv:
A decent wheat-beer with a nice estery nose, heavy on the bubblegum and without the dominate banana notes that are often overdone. With a lovely honey colour, it does not disappoint taste-wise, with a gentle maltiness, balanced as it is not too sweet and a gently backing of hops.
Browar Grościszewo, Komtur – 6.5% abv:
A very nice dark beer, which tastes less alcoholic than might be expected. The nose is strongly dominated by coffee and chocolate malt, and the flavour is well balanced with a pleasing sweetness without being overly heavily bodied. The sweetness is complemented with a hint of caramel.
Erdinger, Alkoholfrei – 0.5% abv:
A particularly good low alcohol wheat-beer. It has plenty of body and a pleasing malty sweetness with a hint of bubblegum esters but does lack the depth of estery flavours of the alcoholic version. It does make a very good lunchtime drink around Christmas for those days when you wake up feeling you rather overdid it the night before and fancy something hydrating and tasty.
St Austell, Mena Dhu – 4.5% abv:
A lovely stout with an almost spiced nose and very rich flavour. Yet for all the six different malts, including oats, it is very drinkable with a clean finish. The malts give a lovely toasty flavour tending towards the fruity notes of coffee and almost a jammy fruitiness. All-round it is a great stout for those long afternoons watching Christmas telly.
Port
Port can have a reputation either as a rather stuff drink saved for after dinner, or as an ingredient in some truly dreadful drinks like the Cheeky Vimto. Yet it is far more versatile than that and can be enjoyed in a range of ways and rightfully has a place in many Christmas celebrations. (Before getting into port itself let me say that Portugal makes a brilliant range of wines from delicately pétillant Vinho Verde to smoothly rich Dão.)
Port is a fortified wine made in the Douro valley in northern Portugal, and gain its name from the city of Porto, which sits at the mouth of the Douro valley and so was the major place of export. In the fortifying process, a neutral spirit distilled from fermented grapes (and so like an un-aged brandy) is added which stops the fermentation before all the sugars have been used up. This leaves port with a significant sweetness. The finished alcohol content is normally around 20% abv.
Most port is made from red grapes and can be split into four main categories, Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, and LBV (Late Bottled Vintage). The differences in these styles are due to the ageing process. Ruby is not aged significantly and is done so in sealed glass or metal tanks, which prevents oxidation. This is typically the cheapest and is the most common style. Tawny is aged somewhat more and as the ageing is done in wooden barrels oxidation can happen, and so it has a darker, almost brownish colour. Vintage port is aged in barrels for no more than 2 and a half years before being aged in bottles, typically for at least 10 years. LBV is port that has an initial ageing period of around 4 years in barrels is then bottled and left to age for at least another 3 years. This style was originally made inadvertently when there was little demand for vintage port so the port ended up being aged longer before bottling.
Port can also be made from white grapes, and white port can be aged in the same ways as mentioned above, but instead of being described by age is normally described by taste, from sweet to dry. This is controlled by altering the fermentation time, with longer fermentations producing dryer ports.
What is interesting is that many ports have British names, as most of the large producers were originally British shipping houses. This is in part because Portugal has a very long-standing alliance with England, and later Britain, and so during many periods of war it was still available whereas French wine was not. It also helped that as a fortified wine it is less prone to damage if improperly stored, or during the poor conditions encountered on a long sea voyage.
So although port is often seen as a very posh drink to be passed around after dinner with all sorts of social shibboleths, it is one of my favourite fortified wines, and I feel should be drunk more frequently than just at Christmas or after fancy dinners. The body, sweetness, and balanced acidity of a good tawny port can work brilliantly with some cheeses that might dominate other wines and port’s depth of flavour makes it a perfect drink it share a bottle, sipping it as you chat with friends.
I particularly feel that white port is often under-represented. It might not have the ubiquity of Ruby or Tawny, but makes a brilliant aperitif and can be mixed into some lovely cocktails. Many of these are well suited to sipping on some warm summer evening, but from their lightness also can bring some well-needed contrast to the heft of traditional Christmas drinks. So here is a selection of my favourite white port cocktails:
White Port & Tonic:
50ml White Port
100ml Tonic
Add the port to a tumbler of ice, top up with the tonic and garnish with a lemon slice.
White Port, Gin & Tonic:
50 White Port
25ml Gin
50ml Tonic
Stir the port and gin in a tumbler with ice, top up with tonic and garnish with a lemon slice.
Hi Ho:
50ml Gin
25ml White Port
dash of Angostura bitters
Shake with plenty of ice and strain into a coupe glass, garnish with a lemon twist
White Port Negroni:
25ml Gin
25ml White Port
10ml Suze
Assemble in a tumbler over ice, stir, and garnish with a twist of lemon.
Colour
I was thinking about a chartreuse cocktail recently and remembered the oddity of its colour, as many people have a false memory of it being a vivid red. Instead of explaining this myself, I will let a part of this brilliant article in The Paris Review do the work:
“I really adore the other chartreuse, the imaginary one, the one that sounds right but isn’t. You know, that maroon-y red that looks wine dark and sweet. I long thought that chartreuse was two colors—one red, one green. But it’s not. Chartreuse refers only to the acidic green.”
What I find most interesting about this is not just that so many people think of Chartreuse as this vivid red colour, but that it seems to be the only drink that has such power over the imagination. I was introduced to the colour chartreuse at the same time as the drink, so should fully reject the idea of it as a red, yet it still somehow fits.
The drinks focused part of my mind is almost offended by the mislabelling of a colour so different to the alluring hue of the drink, whereas the rest of my mind is more than happy for the conflicting use of a word for two colours, and feels that the connotations of Chartreuse fit perfectly well with a red vermilion hue, and can happily imagine an alternate world in which Chartreuse is dyed not with blue (for Green Chartreuse has a blue dye added which combine with the yellow of the herbs gives that lurid green) but instead takes its colour from something medicinal seeming, like the toxic cinnabar, or more plausibly the resin known as Dragon's Blood. Perhaps there is a gap in the market that should be filled?
Although Chartreuse is the only drink that can claim to promote alternative realities, it is not the only drink heavily associated with colour, or the lack of it. I cannot see a tumbler of vodka without thinking about Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I had a look and it seems my memory was wrong and she does not talk about the baptismal purity of vodka, but does focus on the clarity of it and imagines that it will purify her, and only later, and I imagine still under the influence of the vodka, does she use overtly baptismal language when discussing a bath. (I can recommend very cold vodka over ice, as a brilliant bath drink.)
In a way, this is the antithesis of chartreuse's association with the intoxicating vigorous red, yet is rooted in the same idea of a strong spirit, either colourless or a vivid primary colour, being able to bring life. Think of aquavit, whisky, and so many other drinks that have names based on being the water of life. And with the ability to bring life, there is the inverse ability to destroy, or perhaps they are linked with the drink stripping away the old and letting the drinker enter a new life. Regardless colour is vital.
I cannot imagine a fixation with a spirit or liqueur that is grey, or dull brown. Instead, the drinks seen as potent are the green of fresh growth (Green Chartreuse), the clarity of cleaning water (vodka) or the bright red of freshly drawn blood (Imagined Chartreuse or, to stick with reality, red wine). The symbolism of colour is strong enough to even alter reality it seems.
Now, this might be a rather tangential discussion for most, but I feel it shows how vital colour, and by extension appearance, is for drinks and so I would stress that when making a cocktail it pays to spend time thinking about the look. I would not always suggest going as far as using dyes, but would suggest that the choice of ingredient can be dictated by colour. For instance, when bitterness is desired Campari and Suze will both give a kick of bitterness, but their colour might make them unsuitable for the cocktail. E.g. a white Negroni does taste markedly different but also is approached differently for its colour.
Moving from cocktails into wine gives even more examples of colour and drinks intersecting in odd ways. Take the colour described in English as burgundy, it has become a term removed from wine, used by people for a range of reddish hues, some which do not match any burgundy I have every drunk. In part, this is because of colour's subjectivity and as burgundy is a common colour it is easier to misappropriate it than remember a specific hue.
Yet what is more interesting is that in France the colour is described not by comparison to burgundy, but to Bordeaux. Both wines are as close to the colour as each other and so both make sense, yet I do wonder what happened that led to two French wines being used in different countries for the same colour. N.B. in Quebec the colour is described, like the English, as Bourgogne.
I suspect the use is due to different wines being commonly drunk when the colour was named, and perhaps links to the old English habit of describing red Bordeaux as claret (from a specific Bordeaux that was commonly exported to England) which is sometimes used to describe a similar colour to burgundy. This method of describing a colour by comparison to food and drink is far more common than might be expected. E.g. the colour orange comes from the fruit, before which English used ġeoluread (literally yellow-red).
I hope you have enjoyed this and have a good Christmas. The next newsletter will be for New Year’s Eve.
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