Spiced rum death-match

I asked David, who runs the food and drink side of the Candlelight Club, if there was one of our previous Christmas cocktails that we could offer people to make at home, as a sort of vicarious seasonal experience. The cocktail in question was the Spiced Clementine Daiquiri (see below). The base spirit is spiced rum, which got me pondering.

At some point in the past I acquired a bottle of Sailor Jerry’s spiced rum and I found it repellently sickly. I’ve rather avoided spiced rum ever since. But I also remember, at the launch of the Chairman’s Reserve Rum range, that they had an incarnation that I thought was actually not bad. So I did a bit of online research to collate as many “top spiced rums” lists as I could find and, based on these recommendations, ended up with a short list of four. So, in the spirit of scientific rigour for which the Institute for Alcoholic Experimentation is renowned, I bought all four.

The cheapest on the list is Red Leg, which is common in supermarkets and can be had for £15 a bottle. It’s made from “Caribbean” rum, aged in barrels for an unspecified time before being infused with vanilla and ginger. It is named after the Red Legged Hermit Crab native to the Caribbean. It’s a golden colour, with a nose that is a strong, rather cloying, blast of vanilla and caramel or butterscotch. On the palate it is pretty sweet with a flavour of brown sugar and vanilla, with some heat: it’s only 37.5% ABV, so I’m guessing this might be from the ginger, although aside from this the flavour of ginger is not hugely apparent. It’s quite one-dimensional, all about the sugar/vanilla thing.

Next up is Dead Man’s Fingers, created at the Rum and Crab Shack in St Ives, Cornwall. These crazy cats wanted to add some unexpected flavours (I mean, does rum and crab even go together?), citing Cornish saffron cakes, spiced fruit and an ice cream they serve made with sweet, concentrated Pedro Ximenez sherry, plus “nutmeg, vanilla and a hint of orange”. It’s a darker colour than the Red Leg and has a powerful nose with a noticeable ginger element, plus what smells to me like lime. There is also a rather savoury mid-note, almost like onion, and I can get saffron too. After it opens up in the glass a smoky element emerges. On the palate it is less sweet than the Red Leg. There is definitely vanilla (which seems to be the main defining flavour in spiced rum), but a prominent flavour of fresh ginger, giving it a fiery kick, like ginger beer, and a slightly bitter finish. It leaves an aftertaste of Turkish delight, the kind that comes dusted in icing sugar.

Despite the skull on the bottle, Dead Man’s Fingers is not named after anything piratical, but after the local nickname for a crab’s gills (a bit of the crab that is discarded, as it doesn’t taste very nice). So that’s two rums named after crabs. The next up is Foursquare Spiced Rum which, by contrast, is named after the sugar estate, apparently one of the oldest in Barbados, where they’ve been making rum since 1640. The bottle gives nothing much away about its contents, only that the blending recipe is a secret known only to generations of the Seale family. It is very lightly flavoured compared to the others, paler than Dead Man’s Fingers and not really sweetened at all. Many reviewers talk about a primary flavour of cinnamon, but for me the most noticeable element is coconut, with a hint of sherry, which gives it a refined edge, and maybe a whiff of oatmeal. (I don’t know if there is any coconut in it, though I detect a hint of a similar aroma on the next rum and I wonder if it’s an impression created by clove in combination with something else.) On the tongue it is also mostly coconut that I get, plus the dry barkiness of cinnamon. Mind you, perhaps I’m doing it a disservice by tasting it after the gutsy punch of Dead Man’s Fingers, but I’m not really getting much at all from this rum. I try it again the next day, and I would say that it does have a quiet, genteel polish to it, but compared to the others there is not a lot going on.

The Foursquare is about £26 a bottle, and my final sample creeps up to £32—the Chairman’s Spiced Rum. It’s also 40% ABV, while all the others are just 37.5%. The label admits to “Caribbean fruits, bark and spice”, naming cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, clove and bitter orange specifically. The nose is buttery, with a strong waft of orange peel and some cocoa. It’s a bit like smelling a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. There is also a strong note of raisins, plus cinnamon and clove. The palate is led by the orange note again. They talk about “bitter” orange, but the result is rich and smooth, a bit like eating a liqueur-filled chocolate—though not particularly sweet as such.* This rum is the one that I would choose to drink neat, smooth but not too sweet, rich but subtle, detailed and not overblown. As you dig in new flavours emerge, all deftly blended. Going back to the Foursquare, the latter is certainly cultured enough to drink on its own, but it does seem thin and dry by comparison with the Chairman’s.

But let’s not forget that the starting point for all of this was a cocktail. How do these rums perform when mixed? Here is the recipe:

Spiced Rum Daiquiri
50 ml spiced rum
75 ml clementine juice
10 ml vanilla syrup
10 ml lime juice (optional)
3 good dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake all the ingredients together with ice in a cocktail shaker and strain into a (largish) cocktail glass. Garnish with a strip of clementine or satsuma zest.

Clementine juice is something that most supermarkets seem to sell at Christmas, though perhaps not at other times. It’s actually strikingly different from orange juice, sharper with more or a rindy pep, almost as if it already has a little lime in it. In any case, for my palate the added lime juice is needed to balance the syrup, but if you have a sweet tooth you may wish to leave it out. With spiced rum’s typical flavours of vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange peel and clove, plus the clementine juice (and Angostura has quite a cinnamon stripe to it) you've basically got Christmas in a glass. (I also tried it with a bitters that David had made a previous Christmas, which is heavy on clove, and this really boosted the Christmasy combination.)

Although I found the Red Leg rum a bit sickly on its own, it works fine in this cocktail, and it was Mrs H.’s favourite out of the lot, though she has a sweeter tooth than me. Dead Man’s Fingers benefits from its strong flavouring and punchy profile, easily making its presence felt against the other ingredients. For me this was probably the best choice for the drink, though Mrs H. didn’t like it so much—I think the edge of bitterness it brought wasn’t to her taste. The Foursquare was the least successful here: it’s too delicate to make much of an impression, and if you try to adjust this by adding more of the rum, it just unbalances the cocktail. Finally, the Chairman’s Spiced Rum certainly does work well in this drink, though I would argue that its leading flavour of orange might get a bit lost against the other citrus in the drink—and to be honest I’d rather save it to drink neat.

I also tried these rums with Fentiman’s ginger beer, with and without a squeeze of lime (so a Dark and Stormy cocktail). For me the Red Leg is just too sweet without a hefty dose of lime juice, and again the Foursquare got lost, but the other two worked well. You might think that the Dead Man’s Fingers with its strong peppery ginger character would be overkill with the ginger in the mixer, but it seemed to work OK. Again, I think the vividness of this rum makes it good with mixers in general.

But for me the star of the show was the Chairman’s Spiced Rum. It’s the only one I would choose to drink neat, and that is indeed what I was doing with it over Christmas. In a way it’s the first spiced rum I’ve tasted that, for me, justifies the existence of spiced rum as a concept—they are generally too sweet, crude and overblown for me, but this example is complex and poised. Whether you’d want to mix with it, given the price, is another question. If you specifically want a spiced rum for mixing, at £18 the Dead Man’s Fingers is a good bet.**

* I have a distant recollection that the Greek spiced fortified wine Metaxa tastes a bit like this, with an orange thrust. I’ve got some Metaxa in the cellar so I go and check: the dusty bottle is 95% empty, so probably not at its best, but in fact it has a floral nose and a muscaty taste, so nothing like the rum at all. Forget I ever mentioned it. And I can report that the Chairman’s Spiced Rum is a far superior drink in any case.

** The Kraken is another popular spiced rum, but I didn’t include it in this experiment as it didn’t really feature in my initial trawl of other people’s top-spiced-rum lists, but I have tried it at a trade show once and I don’t recall being terribly impressed. I think was was probably too sweet, and the underlying rum a bit rough.

Celebrate International Pineapple Day!

A Pineapple Mule, made using the items in my mystery package (plus mint from the garden)

It seems this is the third time I’ve said “I don’t usually do unboxings”, but once again That Boutiquey Gin Company have pulled the stops out and it would be churlish not to give them credit.

This package arrived unannounced on my doorstep: at first I thought it was a slipcase for a high-end book (not that there is any reason someone would send me one of those). In fact it is an elaborate promotional pack for TBGC’s spit-roast pineapple gin. As you can see, underneath some flyers is a tote bag, then the actual gin, plus some ginger beer, a metal straw, a burlap pouch containing a couple of limes and an enamel lapel pin.* I didn’t open the box immediately, making a mental note to do so when I had the opportunity to take photos, but it’s just as well I didn’t leave it too long—it didn’t occur to me there might be fresh fruit inside…**

TBGC have a track record of making oddly-flavoured gins that nevertheless show poise and skill in the balance of flavours, avoiding the trap of just making a gooey fruit liqueur that is a gin in name only. Here the first thing you’re probably asking yourself is, “OK, it’s a pineapple gin—but why specifically a spit-roasted pineapple gin?” My guess is that it was the flavour of caramelised pineapple that inspired whoever came up with this. We’ve probably all tried pineapple that has been grilled or sautéed, but I confess I have no experience of the precise qualities of pineapple that has been spit-roasted, as opposed to being cooked in any other way. But I’m willing to believe TBGC’s pineapples have been treated in this way. (I went to the Master of Malt offices once, which I assume is where TBGC is based, and it was a bit like wandering through Q-Division in a James Bond movie. In one room someone was experimenting with dipping bottle necks in wax, and I’m sure I saw a carboy where they were finding a way to pump smoke through some vodka.)

The tote bag

Apparently pineapple gin was, like orange gin, a Thing in the early 20th century. TBGC say their pineapples are roasted on a spit with Demerara sugar, so clearly the processing is all about getting that caramel flavour.

The gin does indeed have a caramel element to it. There is obviously pineapple there too, but once again I am struck by the fact that it is still definitely a gin. In fact I could believe that that juniper levels have been made especially pronounced to make sure they poke through. And there is no clash here: the tart, fruit flavours do harmonise with the dry steel of the juniper.

On the nose you are struck, first and foremost, by the juicy fruit of pineapple, its distinctive flat, waxy elements blending with juniper. Below is the dark caramel layer. Here and there other gin botanicals, floral or savoury, seem to pop up, but only fleetingly. On the palate is where the juniper really pushes through, making a rich and intense drink.

Unsurprisingly, the spirit has been sweetened, which most fruit gins seem to be (I guess in the tradition of sloe gin, which in fact is a useful analogy to how the pineapple gin works—and in fact when we did our sloe gin taste-off I did find that my favourites where the ones that still had strong gin flavours in them, such as Hawker’s, which sadly no longer seems to be made). I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, so it’s not a drink I would drink neat, but cocktails seem an obvious way to go, given that many of them feature a balance of sweet and sour ingredients.

The branded lapel badge. Not sure who would wear
it, but it has not one but two pin fastenings on the back
so clearly is intended for hurricane-prone climes

In fact logic would suggest that just adding citrus to this gin would create a sort of proto-cocktail of gin, sweetness, tartness and fruit, and indeed this does work remarkably well. I try it with lime juice and neat it is a bit intense, but if you lengthen it (I just used water), you suddenly get a balanced drink. I can imagine that the pineapple gin, lime juice and soda water, over ice, would be a delight to sip on a summer’s day.

I expected the TBGC website to feature a number of cocktails using this gin, but in fact I can’t find any. Instead they seem to be pinning their hopes to the Pineapple Mule, essentially a Moscow Mule made using spit-roast pineapple gin instead of vodka. The ingredients are the elements there were included in my surprise package.

Pineapple Mule
50ml spit-roast pineapple gin
100ml ginger beer
1 lime wedge squeezed
Build over ice and garnish with another lime wedge and a sprig of mint

It’s a deft concoction, essentially like the highball I describe above, but with the ginger flavours too—and even though ginger beer will have some sugar in it too, the overall drink does not come across as too sweet. (The ginger beer included is Fever Tree, which may be less sweet than some others.)



You can try making your own Pineapple Mule at home easily enough (the photo at the top is one I made last night, using mint from our garden). But if you’re feeling lazy and you’re London-based you can pop into TBGC’s pop-up pineapple gin parlour at 15 Bateman Street.

The tote bag, pre-surgery

Give the password “Mule” and you’ll get a complimentary cocktail.

The pop-up opened yesterday and will close tomorrow, so get down there ASAP. Since today is, apparently, International Pineapple Day, what could be more appropriate?

* I freely admit that was just an excuse to say “burlap pouch”, a phrase I have been joyously rolling around my mouth for days. I mean, we don’t even call it burlap here in the UK, but somehow “hessian pouch” isn’t quite the same.

** Mrs H. nodded approvingly at the reusable metal straw (I just hope its easy to clean), but curled her lip at the lapel badge (is it recyclable?). As for the tote bag, she has spent several evenings now trying to scrape away the printed logo with a scalpel. I suggested an electric sander but she favours a less invasive treatment. If she succeeds in producing a plain tote bag without any gin advertising on it, I think she will be placated.

Regal Rogue, an Aussie vermouth fit for a king?

It seems only yesterday that I was commenting how rare it was for a new vermouth to be launched. That was in the context of Quintinye Vermouth Royal, and in truth it was a full eight months ago. (By comparison, last Monday I was helping DBS judge the Craft Distilling Expo’s Gin of the Year awards and although it was only open to craft gins launched since July 2013 of this year, there were 41 entrants.)

So the arrival of Regal Rogue still marks a rare example of a new vermouth range. And in fact it literally turned up on my doorstep unannounced: a courier knocked on the door and handed over a cardboard suitcase, which turned out to contain a complex assemblage. In addition to bottles of two new vermouths, a rosso and a bianco (according to the website there is also a dry), there were bottles of approved mixers, along with approved garnishes too. There were various bits of paper and cardboard, a couple of straws, a silk pocket square and a feather. The handkerchief is one of three that have been produced to play up the gentleman-rogue image, each one representing the botanicals of one of the three vermouths. My one (see picture) represents the Dry, according to the name of the image file on the website, though I’m not sure exactly what is being depicted—it looks like a bacterial culture under a microscope. As for the feather, the only clue I can find is the recent win at the Sydney Design Awards, which they refer to as “a feather in our cap”…*

The box of goodies, including mixers, garnishes and a silk handkerchief

Vermouth is wine that has been “aromatised” with herbs, spices, fruits, barks, etc, and often fortified as well. Its homeland is Italy and France, but Regal Rogue hails from Australia and makes use both of local wines and local botanicals. It is intended as a celebration of these and apparently is also made in annual batches to mark the variations from vintage to vintage (although in fact the bottles I was sent have no vintage statement on them). The bianco is made from Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, bottled at 18% alcohol by volume and infused with bush lemons, lemon myrtle, finger limes, sage, oregano, basil, native thyme, lemongrass and vanilla. The rosso (19% ABV) is made from a blend of Semillon, Shiraz and port. This is interesting in itself, because red vermouth is typically not made from red wine, but usually white wine, with caramel colour sometimes added. Regal Rogue Rosso is therefore redder than many rossos. This wine blend is infused with wattle seed, pepper berries, orange, cocoa nibs, clove, cinnamon and ginger.

Behold the Regal Rogue Dry official pocket square

Official straws, the Dry at the top and the Bianco below

The name “vermouth” comes from vermut the German for wormwood, and vermouth is traditionally defined by the presence of this bitter herb, consumed for its perceived health and digestive benefits, yet neither the labels nor the website suggest there is any of it in Regal Rogue rosso or bianco.* (Mind you, the website does state that the dry vermouth contains wormwood, along with olive leaf, juniper, rosemary, quandong, nettle leaf, gentian and orris infused into Sauvignon Blanc; sounds interesting, especially with the juniper and orris, both traditional gin botanicals.)

Where Quintinye played upon a historical connection with Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinye, botanist to King Louis XIV of France, Regal Rogue manages to embrace its bouncy, earthy, playful New World origins, but at the same time projects itself as the character of “Lord Ward” an imaginary aristocrat playboy (so, to be pedantic it’s more Noble Rogue than Regal Rogue…). On the bottle he appears as a medieval knight, though elsewhere in the literature the milieu seems to be the 17th or 18th century.

The preferred serve for the bianco, with elderflower pressé,
garnished with a slice of grapefruit and a spring of rosemary

But what of the liquid itself? Despite the unusual ingredients, the bianco’s nose is recognisably that of vermouth, hitting you primarily with sage and lemon balm or lemon thyme. Compared to Noilly Prat it is heavier and more pungent, where Noilly is sharper, more delicate and honeyed, with a hint of vanilla. Regal Rogue is more of a savoury, vegetal punch. Maybe it was because I was tasting it around suppertime, but I kept thinking it would be nice in pasta sauce…

On the palate it is sweetish but with a slightly bitter finish, and the same sage/lemon thyme thrust. Noilly is obviously drier (but then the Regal Rogue I’m tasting is a bianco, traditionally a sweet white, not a dry). Although it is definitely doing the same job of the French vermouth, it takes a more muscular approach.

Time to try it in the obvious cocktail, a Martini, which I approach with 40ml Bombay Dry gin and 10ml Regal Rogue bianco. This obviously makes a sweetish Martini, but at this ratio the vermouth is not as powerful as I might have expected after tasting it neat. But even here you can tell, from the distinctly savoury character of the vermouth, that this drink is yearning to be a Gibson (a Martini served with a cocktail onion as garnish). Add another 10ml of vermouth and we reach an agreeable botanical balance, though it is now a bit sweet for me.

The preferred serve for the Rosso, with ginger beer and garnished with
a slice of orange and a sprig of mint

The accompanying literature actually has a recommended Martini recipe, unexpectedly combining 40ml vermouth with just 20ml gin—they recommend Westwinds Sabre Gin. I don’t have any but I try Captive Spirits’ Big Gin, which is indeed big, punchy and pungent. The juniper backbone certainly makes its presence felt but this is too vermouth-heavy and sweet. Add just another 10ml gin, however, and the balance comes into focus: it’s busy but everything seems in its place.

Interestingly, the bits and pieces that came in the box are actually geared towards a less traditional serve: on the rocks with a mixer, in this case elderflower pressé, garnished with a slice of grapefruit and spring of rosemary. Probably not a combo you would have knocking around at home, which I guess is why they included the components in the box. And it is indeed an excellent combination, the vermouth’s herbal pungency merging with the prickly aromatic tartness of the elderflower, and the grapefruit adding a fresh citrus note to the lemon thyme dimension already present.

I attempt to compare the Regal Rogue Rosso to some Martini Rosso, although the latter has been around a bit and looks distinctly brown. But the nose of the two is still remarkably similar. The Regal Rogue has the trademark pungency but the sage notes are less pronounced here; I get orange, cinnamon and cloves and a hint of nettles and even tomato. On the palate it is less sweet and caramelly than the Martini, lighter, fresher, more delicate and more aromatic. It has both tartness and bitterness and is not particularly sweet, being more a broadside of fresh, aggressively fragrant herbs. Mind you, when I try to make a Manhattan featuring Regal Rogue Rosse and Rittenhouse Rye 100 Proof, the vermouth surprisingly takes a back seat at 2:1, although it adds a little sweetness and softness. Add a bit more and orange notes come through, along with the strange tomato element. I’m not sure it’s ideal for this cocktail.

A Gibson made with Regal Rogue Bianco and Big Gin

But try their recommended long drink, on the rocks with ginger beer, garnished with a slice of orange and a spring of mint, and once again they have a winner, with the herbal notes blending seamlessly with the ginger tang (and there is ginger in the vermouth too). It is rather moreish like this and more drinkable than the vermouth on its own.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about these two Regal Rogue products is the fact that they don’t seem to be pushing them in the traditional cocktail ingredient roles, but instead suggesting them long with mixers and no other alcohol. I have noticed of late a bit of a move towards lighter, longer mixed drinks, using wine and vermouth and no spirits, so Regal Rogue may have been created to ride this wave. Perhaps more of a summer thing than for the autumn, but that is just a niggle. And I’m sure in time mixologists will come up with plenty of spirit-based cocktails that make the most of the unique flavours of this new range.

At the moment you can only buy Regal Rogue by the bottle at Selfridges (at a hefty £24.90 for 70cl), plus in select bars such as the Soho House Group and Granger & Co.

* I later spoke to someone from the PR agency and he didn’t know about the feather either, but guessed it might be connected with the owl that is depicted sitting on the rogue’s shoulder on the label of the bottle. I had assumed that the whole package had been dreamed up by the agency, but apparently it all came from the founder of the brand, Mark Ward—truly his is an all-encompassing vision.

** At the launch of Quintinye, Jean-Sébastien Robicquet stated that under EU regulations anything labelled as vermouth had to contain wormwood. (In fact see Section 2 (a) here.) Indeed, after speaking with the founder, the PR was able to confirm that all three Regal Rogue products do contain it.

A cocktail for Christmas

Only a few days left till Christmas now, but still time for me to wish a hearty “God rest you!” to all you merry gentlemen and gentlewomen and to share a few tots of Christmas spirit.

I’m pleased to say that our seasonal cocktails went down a treat at the Candlelight Club this weekend, so I thought I’d share the recipes. However, I then realised that all but one of them involved ingredients you probably won’t have to hand—the Mince Flip uses mincemeat vodka (kindly made for us by DBS himself), the Cherry Christmas uses a rosemary tincture (made by infusing rosemary in vodka for about 24 hours), the Figgy Pudding uses fig liqueur and the Chestnuts on an Open Fire uses chestnut syrup. And of the course the Gold, Frankincense and Byrrh uses Byrrh and Goldschläger, not to mention Frankincense bitters!

But the sixth cocktail only uses ingredients you can easily find in the supermarket. It’s a sort of cross between the Dark n’ Stormy mixture of rum and ginger beer and that cheesy classic the Snowball. Mrs H. has become quite addicted to them.

Ginger Snap
1½ shots rum
1 shot advocaat
1 shot ginger wine (optional)
Ginger beer to top

Either shake everything but the ginger beer with ice and pour into an ice-filled highball, or just build it in the glass with ice if you don’t have shaker to hand. Then top up with ginger beer. Advocaat is made from brandy and eggs and is a bit like alcoholic custard, lending a rich, puddingy quality to this drink, which makes it dangerously moreish! The ginger wine isn’t essential but adds a bit more gingery pep.

If you’re after inspiration for more easy-to-make Christmas cocktails, Tesco have launched a slick-looking Christmas Cocktail Finder app on their Tesco Real Food website. You can search for recipes based on the ingredients you have to hand, or by details such as sweetness, glass type or even whether it is shaken, stirred or blended (presumably handy for when you really fancy a cocktail but simply haven’t the energy to deploy a shaker).

Despite all these variables, the database currently has only 69 recipes on it, but that’s still plenty to keep you going and almost certainly includes combinations that will be new to you. And while something like Simon Difford’s similar searchable database has, by contrast, thousands of recipes, the emphasis with the Tesco version is that all recipes require only ingredients you can easily get hold of in a supermarket. Such as Tesco, for example. As a spin-off from the website’s recipe finder, it also tells you the nutritional content of each drink (though not the number of alcohol units, oddly). I’ve just found another advocaat recipe here, the Kentucky Cheesecake (203 calories), which combines advocaat with bourbon, amaretto, lemon juice and maple syrup: I’m going to have to go and try that one. (That’s the thing about advocaat, by the way—once it’s open you’re supposed to keep it in the fridge and consume within six months. But you’re not really going to be wanting to drink it in the summer, so the only solution is just to keep drinking it now…)

Now, for the record, here are those other recipes:

Mince Flip
2 shots mincemeat vodka
1 shot cream
1 shot sweetish sherry, such as Harvey’s Bristol Cream
Nutmeg

Shake everything with ice and pour into a Martini glass, then dust with nutmeg. The vodka is made simply by steeping mincemeat in vodka, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how David does it. Trade secret, I suspect!

Cherry Christmas
1½ shots gin
¾ shot cherry brandy
½ shot sugar syrup
¼ shot rosemary tincture
Dash of cherry bitters
Cranberry juice

Shake everything but the cranberry and pour into an ice-filled highball, then top with cranberry and stir briefly. This drink is all about the unexpected combination of cherry and rosemary. The precise amount of tincture you need will depend on how strong you have made it, so go easy to start with. We used Fee Brothers cherry bitters, which made quite a difference to the cherryishness of the drinks, as will the cherry brandy you use. Cherry Marnier has bright confectionary cherry flavour, whereas Cherry Heering is actually rather dark and savoury.

Chestnuts on an Open Fire
2 shots gin
1 shot apple juice
½ shot Laphroaig single malt whisky
½ shot chestnut syrup
½ shot lemon juice

Shake everything together and strain into a martini or coupe glass. I’ve lost track of the number of people (all ladies, now I think about it) who declare that they don’t like whisky but love this drink. It’s a relative of the Smoky Martini but lengthened and sweetened. You don’t have to use Laphroaig but it probably has the most smoky flavour so you don’t need much to make the point. The combination of spicy gin, fruit from the apple juice, chestnutty sweetness and smoky iodine from the whisky is fascinating. We used Monin chestnut syrup.

Figgy Pudding
2 shots bourbon
½ shot crème de figues
½ shot ruby port
Dash of Angostura Bitters
Orange peel garnish

Shake everything with ice and strain into a Martini glass. Squeeze a strip of orange peel over the top and drop it in. A variation of the Manhattan, the bourbon here sweetened and fattened by the puddingy flavours of figs and port with some Christmassy orange zing to finish. We used Briottet crème de figues, though there may be other fig liqueurs out there.