The Spirits #39: La Pêche!

~ The forbidden fruit ~ How to eat a peach ~ Sunshine~

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~ LA PÊCHE! ~

1/2 ripe peach (or nectarine), cut into slices
One lemon wedge
50ml French vermouth
25ml light rum
5-10ml golden sugar syrup
Mint or basil to garnish
Dash peach bitters (optional)

Muddle the peach, lemon, rum and sugar syrup in the bottom of your shaker. Add the French vermouth and a big old scoop of ice and give it some of the old heave ho. Now fine-strain (through a strainer/sieve) into a glass filled with fresh ice. You will need to do a fair bit of patient scraping around the bottom of your strainer to sort liquid from gunk. Garnish with fresh herbs and more peach. Ta-da!

Some Peachy Notes:

1) If you fancy making this for any kind of crowd, I’d recommend that you do the muddling step in advance. So, for four people, you’d need two peaches, half a lemon, about 30-40ml sugar syrup and 100ml rum; sieve that to form a sort of boozy purée which you can store in the fridge until ready. Then, when it’s time to serve shake that up with the vermouth. OR INDEED PROSECCO. If you want to make a Bellini.

2) I used nectarine in the above picture and it was pretty tasty but I must say I did prefer the peach version I tried afterwards. And if you use a white peach, oh my, the colour, it’s so pretty.

3) Fee Brothers make an amazing Peach Bitters. It’s made from the peach stone so it’s more almondy than peachy but it does make a delectable cocktail all the more delectable.

4) I made that vase!

We have no football trophy but will always have cocktails. And MUSIC!

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I am Richard Godwin and this is my newsletter. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, orgeat ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations for a cabinet here - and here is the full archive of weekly specials. Do please share the Spirits with anyone who might like it - and feel free to tag me with your creations on Instagram or Twitter. Also scroll to the bottom for what to get in for next week! And please consider subscribing for the full experience! 👇

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LA Pêche! as in the French expression: “J’ai la pêche!” (“I’ve got the peach!”). It means: “I’m feeling good!” As you would, if you happened to be holding the last peach in existence. And La Pêche! is a hard cocktail not to feel peachy while drinking. If you have seen Call Me By Your Name you will be aware that no fruit imparts more pleasure than the peach. Indeed, it really is a wonder that Albrecht Dürer did not depict Eve tempting Adam with this most luscious of fruits in his famous engraving of 1504. I mean, it’s always nice to have an apple in your pocket; but it would be worth being cast out of Eden for a peach. This should taste of high summer, juices dripping all over everywhere. It is an unforbidden pleasure. Make sure you use a really ripe one.

The cocktail was invented by Brigitte Bardot at a garden party held by Albert Camus in an orchard just south of… ah, sorry, not really, it was invented and named by me a few minutes ago. In ordinary circumstances, I will rest on a tried and tested formula (or perhaps, a simple twist on a tried and tested classic) but when I wrote the shopping list last time, it was more in the spirit of the 1990s cookery gameshow Ready Steady Cook. I had a feeling that there was something delicious to be made with peaches, rum and vermouth, but I wasn’t at all sure what it was. This was the challenge I set myself; come up with something worthy of your attention within a week. Which then stretched to two (I got pinged by the app…) But I hope that sharing my thought processes (which as you can see, turn quite quickly Eden-wards) then it might embolden you to reinvent your own peaches.

I had two particular starting points in mind. The first was a delicious Provençal aperitif called RinQuinQuin. It’s made by macerating peaches and peach leaves in white wine and alcohol for about a year, then redistilling the solids and mixing it all together. I had a bottle once and I still think about it sometimes, it was that nice. So I thought, hmm, peaches and French vermouth, there has to be a way of combining those that doesn’t take a year.

The second was quite simply the following taste combination: a really first-rate fresh peach; and an ice-cold shot of light rum. In Diana Henry’s book, How to Eat a Peach, she suggest you drop peach slices into moscato wine, leave for a moment or two, and then appreciate the simple delight of wine-peach and peach-wine. “You don’t have to make food that is complicated for it to be wonderful,” she says. True. Only the combination that did that for me was actually peach-rum. Extremely cold rum from the freezer. There is something about the blousy warm texture of a peach, cleft with the icy dry cleanness of the rum that is just… well, 🍑.

I tried a few different versions of the combination. The first was a sort of Peach Daiquiri: 50ml rum, 15ml lemon, 10ml sugar syrup, shaken with peach, and lengthened with a little vermouth (above). Tart and interesting and even a little frothy but not quite peachy enough. Then I tried a “smash”, which is an old-time Southern American relative of the Julep: shake up peach slices, lemon wedges, and fresh mint with sugar and liquor. Also nice; but the subtle perfume of the peach was a little lost among the mint and lemon.

The above version is more aimed at teasing out the qualities of the peach itself - which does take a little teasing, since peaches do not give up their juice easily. There’s just enough lemon there to cut the softness, just enough sugar to keep it lush, and then a lot of that vinous summeriness from the vermouth. Plus just a shot of rum to stop it becoming too fuzzy. I used Dolin Dry vermouth and Flor de Cana 4-year Extra Secco rum. I have more or less come up with a Bellini, only with French vermouth as opposed to Prosecco. I fancy it would work wonderfully with Lillet Blanc or sherry too. There is nothing new under the sun. But there are peaches and that’s a start.

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PLAYLIST

I am up against the clock again - no doubt the above is full of typos and (worse) repetitions - but sometime this evening I will find time to update this with a list of the peachiest summer jams.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. Here is an ongoing archive of past songs.

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THINGS TO READ

I have mostly been reading about football I’m afraid. And I did particularly like this piece from Paul Mason’s new Substack about the England team. (HTSF)

Also: Sophie McBain writes a prodigious amount of really interesting clever things; this on the impending baby crisis (New Statesman).

And I wrote a big important piece about Boris Johnson’s Realpolitik (Guardian)

Plus another big important piece about salad (The Times). (Salads are a lot like cocktails, it occured to me while talking to the chef Chet Sharma about vinaigrette for this. He favours a 3:2:1 formula, three parts oil, two parts vinegar, one part sweet/savoury (e.g. honey/mustard). It still “works” if you sub out the vinegar for lemon, or the sweetness for, say, mirin or tamarind or whatever. Just like a sour!)

SHOPPING LIST

Oh why not? Light rum again, pineapple juice, a can of cocount milk (Thai best) and some sugar syrup.

🥥🍍🥥🍍🥥🍍🥥🍍🥥🍍