Cocktailonomics
Or, how to live an elegant life without spending tons of cash
WELL, friends, Happy New Year - if we’re still allowed to say that. I hope we all had a gleeful time. Our car was stolen just before Christmas, we were reversed into by a coach in our hire car and I accidentally sent out a half-finished Spirits post on New Year’s Eve, which wasn’t so great. But there were also old fashioned parlour games. A stolen snowball fight. Origami stars. Several accomplished snack solos. And a fucking banging NYE party.
Now. The standard flex at this point would be to tell you how to cut down on alcohol, perhaps recommend some non-alcoholic bottles, or walk you through some temperance drinks. The classic counter-move might be to offer some spirited defence of alcohol, or to tear the whole concept of Dry January to pieces.
I’m not going to do either of those things. I am a week into a dry spell myself - I was on the Shirley Temples last night - and I’m enjoying the feeling of clear-headed back-to-businessness. To everything there is a season. The Sautini Epoch was fun. Now I am enjoying a regimen of light exercise, decluttering and getting my shit together.
But that’s just me. It may be that you can’t contemplate the month of January without alcohol and I wouldn’t blame you. Things are quite apocalyptic out there. And far more universal than a desire to stop drinking at this time of year is surely a desire to stop spending. December is horrible in this regard. I am writing these words having just completed the preliminary phase of my January tax return and… well, I thought it would be a good moment to return to one of the key themes of The Spirits. Essentially: how to drink stylishly without drinking expensively. In these days of £25 Martinis, £12 G&Ts and £7 pints, this is useful knowledge.
One of the main reasons I learned how to make cocktails in the first place is because I have a strong streak of coupon-cutting 1950s housewife in me. I don’t like wasting money on silly things. I’ve never really understood how people justify giving £32.75 to a terrible, dystopian company like Deliveroo for a disappointing dinner when it takes one minute and £1 to make a three-egg omelette. I won’t go so far as to say I consider it a grave moral failing. But personally, I’d just always sooner either go to an actual restaurant - or learn how to do something myself. It’s more empowering. And it’s almost always more delicious. My guiding spirits here are Ernest & Celestine, the unconventional bear-mouse family unit from the delightful picture books by Gabrielle Vincent, who never let poverty get in the way of a lovely time.
Ernest & Celestine make their own decorations out of newspaper, turn a bit of red cloth into an outfit, dance to the violin - and have the most marvellous party.
“Now hang on,” I hear you demur. “Haven’t you been exhorting us to buy Green Chartreuse and fancy bourbon all this time? And to drink in expensice bars?”
Well, yes, maybe a bit. Then again, if you’ve laid down £45 on Elijah Craig, you’re going to want to use it well - so, the point stands. And besides these are investments in your future pleasure. A £45 bottle of Chartreuse, drunk in 5-10ml increments, will actually see you through 50-100 cocktails (yes). You can easily spend money that on a week’s worth of desultory lunches and stupid coffees. I would rather take a packed lunch (same principle) and drink a Champs-Elysées a week for a year.
Of course, I love drinking fancy cocktails in bars when I can. But that’s not something I can afford to do every time I want a fancy cocktail. As for your everyday mixing - most of that can be done with relatively inexpensive ingredients. The key component is of course ice and ice is basically (despite the best efforts of the internet’s ice influencers) free. Gin, the most commonly used cocktail base, is also not uncoincidentally the cheapest of the spirits - and the difference between a well-made cocktail and a badly-made cocktail is certainly greater than the difference between a £16 gin and a £36 gin. I’m sure you’ve heard me sing the praises of Beefeater London Dry before now, which is only about £16 for 700ml and will make you 14 Gin Sours for £1.14 apiece - plus the fairly trivial cost of lemons, eggs, sugar, etc. There are perfectly serviceable own-brand alternatives at our major supermarkets too. Which means one of the below will set you back, ooh, £1.35 or so, which is about the same as a crap beer:
~ THE GIN SOUR ~
50ml gin
15ml lemon juice
10ml sugar syrup
15ml egg white
Angostura bitters (optional)
Freeze a coupe. Shake all of the ingredients except the bitters over ice (add a swath of lemon zest to the shaker for extra sherbertiness). Fine strain into a spare vessel, dump the ice from the shaker, and give it a little extra dry shake for maximum froth. Now pour into the cold coupe and garnish with a couple of drops of bitters. Can also be served down over ice - or topped with sparkling water for a Silver Fizz.
Vermouth isn’t so expensive either, if you go with Dolin, Martini & Rossi, or Noilly Prat. Ryan Chetiyawardana, London’s most decorated bartender, once told me that one of his favourite Martini recipes is 50ml Beefeater + 15ml Martini Extra Dry with an olive. That’s £1.14 worth of gin and 24 pence of vermouth and how much is an olive? 5p? A £1.43 Martini! You could try my Clover Club recipe too, which contains 91 pence of gin and 48 pence of vermouth for a relatively inexpensive sour, too, £1.39 for the alcohol, plus raspberries, sugar, lemon, eggs. Not so bad, right?
Then there’s Campari (other red bitter liqueurs are available). As long as you’re OK with a bit of upfront investment. 700ml Campari = £18; 750ml Martini Rosso = £12; 700ml Beefater = £16. That’s 28 Negronis for £46, or £1.64 apiece. A bottle of chicken wine will set you back around £8.99 and will service six (small) glasses. Fairly comparable, then, price-wise. And if you go own-brand, you can get all of the above ingredients for considerably cheaper.
OK now, I’m looking back through my archive for the most expensive drink. The aged spirits are the ones that cost more so maybe it’s something rich and potent like the Vieux Carré. You’ll need rye (£35+), cognac (£30 odd), Bénédictine (£32) and Italian vermouth (and if you go with, say, Antica Formula, that’s c.£16.50 for 500ml). That’s chunky, as Logan Roy would say. Over £100 upfront! Then again, it still works out at about £3.10 per cocktail - about the same as a coffee-themed milk product from a terrible franchise! And roughly comparable to a £12-£15 bottle of wine.
I’d also stress that these costs are upfront. Spirits keep. There’s no need to finish all that in one sitting. The above will provide you and your lover with a Vieux-Carré apiece every Friday for three months. Just remember to vacuumise your vermouth and store in the fridge.
FIVE ECONOMICAL COCKTAILS
c. £1.25 per serve.
c. 80p per serve
c. 90p per serve
c. £1.25 per serve
c. £1.10 per serve
I’m offering you UK prices. Alcohol is fairly expensive here, though we do have cheapish Scotch. (The Famous Grouse, for example, is currently £15 with a Tesco Clubcard). But maybe you’re reading this in a more convivial jurisdictions. I’m used to Rittenhouse Rye 100 being £40+. If you’re in the US, you can get it for $25, maybe less. If you’re in France or Italy or Spain, many of those lovely liqueurs, amari and fortified wines that go for £25 here (and even more in the US) are in the sub-€10 category. And I know there are plenty of you in Brazil, Australia, India, Romania and elsewhere and I’ve no doubt there is some excellent local distillate that will work just dandily in place of the gin in the above sour recipe.
The point is, drink in moderation and purchase sensibly - and a cocktail habit can be one of the soundest investments you make. I don’t know if you’ve seen Whit Stillman’s delightful movie, Metropolitan, but a similar point is impressed onto our hero Tom Townsend by his new urban haute bourgeois friends about purchasing a tuxedo. It’s an outfit that willl see you through an entire season of socialising. The classy move is also the most economical move. Drink sensibly, now.
HOUSEKEEPING: Now, take heed. I’m taking the next couple of Fridays off. But at a certain point, I’ll drop a new edition of the CABINET centred on that delectable Scottish liqueur, Drambuie. This will be for Subscribers Only. But in the spirit of the above, I will be sure to include a recipe for DIY Drambuie above the paywall.
Normal spiritual service will resume on the 24th January when you’ll need Scotch and Drambuie. It being Burn’s Night on the 25th. This is the kind of clear-sighted forward planning that can be acheived with a few days off the vermouth.
Metropolitan is a near perfect film, as is that martini recipe (I have Tanqueray in the freezer & we have been having Harry’s martinis for pennie’s in our slightly less chic living room)
With all the fires and smoke around me I need your drinks more than ever.
What a beautiful post!
Thank you! I want to be as professional as you for my newsletter. Work in progress.