Cocktails

I've recently been having fun putting cocktails together, experimenting with different ingredients, discovering combinations that work together surprisingly well. I had never been much of a cocktail person - finding them too strong and expensive - but when I worked at hangingditch I became fascinated with the different spirits, liqueurs, and bitters that people would come in specifically asking for. Now I'm already becoming one of those people, searching out obscure ingredients that will provide a subtle but vital fix to the recipe.

history

Cocktails date from early on in the nineteenth century, when they were a mix of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. They gradually became more complicated, with liqueurs added to the mix. Their height in the US was during Prohibition, often to cover up the dubious quality of spirits. Gin was a popular base spirit - as in eighteenth-century England, an easy spirit to make, easy to make badly, and easy to get drunk on. After the Second World War, gin was replaced by vodka, a neutral spirit to which many flavours could be added. After a lull in the 1960s and 70s in the US (though in the UK they became popular with the rise of middle-class dinner parties), cocktails returned to fashion in the 1980s, particularly in New York. This was also the point when Bourbon, which hadn't really recovered from Prohibition, was embraced back into American drinking culture through cocktails like the Manhattan and Old-Fashioned.

bitters

Historically created for their health-giving properties, bitters are alcoholic liquids with bittering agents added, such as quinine, angelica, orange, or rhubarb. Those bitter flavours can also be aromatised by the further addition of clove, vanilla, coriander, or ginger.

Many of the great bitter drinks originate from central Europe, in particular northern Italy where they are called amaro. A famous amaro apertif is Campari, which is used to give colour to cocktails; its bitterness tempered with a sweet edge, it's made from bitter orange, quinine, and rhubarb. A lower strength, less complex, more herbal alternative is Aperol.  

Amaro can also be drunk as a digestif. Italy's top-selling amaro is Averna, which is sweet and made from herbs, bark, and botanicals. The Czech Republic also produces another famous sweet, herbal digestif, Becherovka. Other digestifs are overtly and intensely bitter, designed to be drunk in small quantities. A famous example is Fernet Branca, made from rhubarb, saffron, aloe, myrrh, iris, bitter orange, and cinnamon. More notorious is Jägermeister, made from 56 different herbs.

For use in cocktails, there are many specifically flavoured bitters which have been reduced to their essence. The most famous are Angostura's aromatic bitters, a secret recipe made from herbs and spices. Originally a medicinal drink for the army of the great Venezuelan revolutionary Simon Bolivar, these are an essential element of any cocktail bar. A classic cocktail featuring them is a Pink Gin, which dates from the days of the British Empire in India. A favourite of Ian Fleming, it's made with 2½ ounces of gin and 4-5 dashes of Angostura, with a lemon twist.

Another historic producer is Peychaud, from New Orleans, whose bitters are more aromatic and sweeter, and the key ingredient in a Sazerac cocktail. Other great producers include Bob's Bitters and Bittermens, and many new companies are emerging as cocktails once again become popular. My good friend Matt Hemeyer makes spiced bitters at addition, a fine example of the imagination and experimentation behind every great cocktail.

vermouth

Dating from late-eighteenth-century Turin, vermouth is a vital ingredient in classic cocktails such as a Martini, a Manhattan, or a Negroni. Vermouth is wine with herbs, bark, and roots added to it and can be either sweet or dry. Famous brands are Punt e Mes, from Italy's Carpano family who also produce Antica Formula, a richer, fuller high-quality vermouth, Cinzano, and Martini & Rosso.

liqueurs

A liqueur is a spirit flavoured, infused, or distilled with herbs, fruits, or flowers and often with a sweet syrup added. The complex, intense aromas make them ideal for adding to a cocktail. Crème de Cassis is a liqueur made by soaking blackcurrants in alcohol; added to white wine it makes Kir and to Champagne a Kir Royale. Other similar liqueurs, which will make a profound difference to a cocktail with just a small amount, include Crème de Cacao and Crème de Menthe. Another famous liqueur is Grand Marnier, which is Cognac flavoured with the distilled essence of bitter oranges, while Cointreau is another orange-flavoured liqueur from sweet and bitter orange peels (non-branded alternatives are called Triple Sec). Amaretto, meanwhile, is flavoured with almonds. The list is endless.

cocktails

Here are some cocktails I've made recently which I've enjoyed, arranged by the core ingredient.

Brandy

Although Cognac would be the preferred base, a good brandy will suffice. Likewise with fruit brandies - good Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy, is expensive and Laird's Applejack does the job.

Corpse Reviver

As the name suggests, this is a hangover 'cure' - at the very least, it will wake you up. There are a number of different recipes each called the Corpse Reviver; this one is brandy based. An equal combination of three ingredients - 1oz each of brandy, applejack, and sweet vermouth.

Champagne

It may seem sacrilege to corrupt a drink as fine as Champagne with other ingredients, but it nevertheless makes a superb base for complex cocktails.

Jumping Jellybean

Add 1oz each of tequila blanco, Grand Marnier, and fresh lemon juice to a chilled flute, and then top it up with Champagne. The result is a refreshing, citrusy, salty drink.

Gin

For some base drinks - for example, white rum - the quality of the spirit doesn't matter too much, but with a spirit like gin it's essential. The mix of botanicals will impart vital flavours to the drink. The classic gin cocktail is the Martini, a combination of gin and dry vermouth.

Alfonso Special

Mix and shake 1½oz of Grand Marnier, ¾oz each of gin and dry vermouth, and ¼oz sweet vermouth, with a couple of dashes of Angostura to create a bitter, spicy cocktail.

Rum

White rum, which has fairly neutral flavours of tropical fruits, is a great base for cocktails as it adds some but not too many flavours to the mix. It's what else goes into the mix that counts.

La Floridita

Mix and shake 1½oz white rum, ¾oz sweet vermouth, ¼oz crème de cacao, and 1oz of fresh lime juice, with a dash of grenadine. That touch of crème de cacao gives a strong chocolately finish to the spicy, herbal, cherry-like vermouth.

Tequila

Although darker versions of tequila can be used, it's tequila blanco that's most common - most famously in the Margarita. Always use good-quality tequila that's been made from 100% agave.

Tequila Mockingbird

Mix and shake 2oz of tequila blanco, ½oz of white crème de menthe, and 1oz of fresh lime juice. Float a sliced lime wheel on top. A beautifully coloured, salty, minty drink.

Vodka

A neutral-tasting spirit, vodka nevertheless comes in different guises, made from a range of base materials including grain, potatoes, or grapes. Increasingly fashionable now are flavoured vokdas such as vodka citron.

Agent Orange

Everything about this cocktail is orange, flavouring the neutral flavour of the vodka: 1½oz vodka, ¾oz Grand Marnier, ¼oz Cointreau, and ½oz fresh orange juice. 
 

Whiskey

Many whiskey-based cocktails use Bourbon (such as the Old-Fashioned) or rye whiskey (Manhattan, though some prefer Bourbon). Others use Canadian whisky, perhaps because so much whisky came from Canada during Prohibition, when cocktails were all the rage as part of the Roaring Twenties.

Commodore

1½oz of Bourbon, ¾oz of crème de cacao, and ½oz of fresh lemon juice. The flavours here are strong and powerful - great if you have a cold.

serving cocktails

There are different glasses for different types of cocktails. A Martini glass has a long thin stem with an inverted conal glass; a Margarita glass is similar but more like a goblet. An Old-Fashioned glass is a stocky tumbler, which is used for serving drinks over ice. The other classic cocktail glass is a Highball, tall and straight and to be filled with ice. Even if a cocktail isn't served with ice, it's usually mixed and shaken with ice in a cocktail shaker.

Cocktails are fun. They do require quite a stash of alcohol at home to make, which is fine if you're a collector like me. They work as aperitifs or as a pick-me-up after a hard day's work; they're also a great way of exploring spirits and discovering the world of obscure European drinks that survive because of the inventiveness of bartenders around the world.

Tequila & Mezcal

When visiting @drinkaddition in Seattle three years ago to avoid the Royal Wedding, he told me what a big tequila fan he was and how he was building up quite a collection. My reaction was, Why? Are you crazy? That stuff is foul. He protested the contrary and gave me a tasting through the different styles of tequila. The next day I went out and bought a bottle to take back home with me.

Like Jägermeister, building a reptuation on being so rough that it has to be necked as quickly as possible is not good for the long-term economic stability of a drink - compare that to whisky or brandy, drinks seen as sophisticated and mature and therefore commanding premium and super-premium prices. As I learnt, tequila is capable of that sophistication, but also of a welcoming intimacy sometimes lacking in those superaged drinks. Tequila's a drink that should be taken seriously, and the gradual rise in the sales of premium tequilas suggests that consumers are finally beginning to appreciate this.

what is tequila?

It's made from agave, a pretty crazy plant that grows in the ground like a potato, looks like a pineapple, and has massive razor-sharp leaves. Tequila production is always going to be small, especially compared to spirits like vodka, because it takes seven to ten years before the agave plant's ready to be harvested (and it dies once it's flowered, so that's that for production). Harvesting also involves tackling those massive razor-sharp leaves with a large axe, a time-consuming and labour-intensive process.

Tequila has to come from a specific area of Mexico, loosely around the town of Tequila and the city of Guadalajara, and has to be made from blue agave (there are 200 other varieties). There are two types of Tequila: Tequila 100% Agave, which is exclusively made from blue agave, and Tequila, or mixto, which is 51% blue agave. It's the former you want to be trying.

how's it made?

The leaves are cut off as close to the plant's hard core (piña) as possible; this piña is halved and cooked, either in traditional ovens or pressurised cookers, which produces fermentable sugars. This cooked agave is ground down to release the sugary juice and then fermentation starts, which lasts several days. Distillation then takes place in a pot still to produce a spirit which at around 55% is still full of the agave flavour, before it's watered down to the desired level of alcohol (min. 35%).

styles

blanco - tequila aficionados argue that this is the purest expression of the agave, as the drink undergoes no oak ageing.

reposado - this literally means rested, which is quite an expressive way of saying that it's spent a small time in oak (minimum two months). This gives it a pale golden colour and a light sweetness. Personally, I find this style a bit of an inbetweener.

añejo - this means aged, meaning that it's spent at least one year in an oak barrel (old Bourbon). Again, certain tequila purists may argue that this takes away from the agave flavour, but it does add a buttery, vanilla complexity to the drink, as is the case with any spirit.

Which style you prefer depends entirely on personal preference, but the characterful agave flavour should always be evident. There's also a style called muy añejo (very aged) which I've never tasted, but I wonder if the oak would smother that agave taste.

what does it taste like?

The agave taste is very distinctive; the nearest British equivalent is perhaps turnip. Unlike a lot of other white spirits, the aroma of tequila is immediately apparent: bitter, green, rooty, earthy, and, quite simply, agave (if I ever get to smell agave, I'll say it smells like tequila). You might get other spicy vegetables like pepper and jalapeño, but that might be overcomplicating the simple expressive agave qualities. If it's been aged in oak, then there'll be a creamy vanilla texture as well; but the key is marrying the natural agave characters with the oak.

diploma tasting

We only tasted two tequilas, both of them from El Jimador, a major brand. The blanco was very simple; it didn't really have the immediate, expressive agave flavours that one would expect from this style, and was quite disappointing. The añejo was superior, with cheesy, vanilla, cigar smoke aromas. I think this demonstrated the point about the greatest tequilas being blancos; it takes real skill to create highly expressive, complex drinks solely from the plant, while oak can add a complexity that hasn't come from the plant itself.

mezcal

And then there's a sibling drink which at its worst can be as bad as anything out there and at its best even better than anything out there. Mezcal isn't as geographically specific as tequila and can be made from a number of agave varieties. It also very rarely encounters oak. The piña is roasted in underground ovens, which gives mezcal aggressively smoky and earthy aromas - a more extreme version, for both better and worse, of tequila. This is a drink you have to spend some money on - and when you do it's worth it.

Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal - Santo Domingo Albarradas

Here's a mezcal I bought on my last trip to Seattle. On the nose it has all the characteristic bitter green vegetables from the agave, with a delicate smoky earthiness. That smokiness really comes through on the palate, where it's almost like an Islay whisky, with seaweed and smoked fish flavours, but there's a lasting smoked spiciness to the drink, like roasted peppers. This is a white, unaged spirit that tastes as complex and long as an aged whisky, yet is youthful and fresh, full of the aromas of the raw material. This is tequila/mezcal at its most expressive and youthful, but with real lingering complexity, and proof that you don't need oak ageing to produce a great spirit.

note the absence of a worm