The Spirits #41: The Gooseberry Club

~ The Time of the Season ~ THE SPIRITS IS BEING REPUBLISHED! ~ Bear ~

ENJOYING THE SPIRITS? Join the ‘Cabinet’! Subscriptions really do help me keep this show on the road. The Cabinet is like the Spirits, but each mail will focus on a different ingredient as opposed to a different cocktail. I just did a HUGE one on Maraschino - including an exclusive recipe for the STRAWBERRY AVIATION - and there’s this on Green Chartreuse too. Next up, it’s apricot brandy.

---

~ THE GOOSEBERRY CLUB ~

50ml gin
15ml lemon juice
~20ml gooseberry syrup (see below)
15ml French vermouth (optional!)
10ml egg white

Put everything into a shaker and shake hard with ice. Strain everything through a sieve into a spare vessel, discard the ice, and then shake the cocktail again for maximum froth. Pour into a frozen cocktail glass and garnish with the single gooseberry you thoughtfully saved from earlier.

GOOSEBERRY SYRUP

Gooseberry syrup is a byproduct from preparing gooseberries as Nigella Lawson prescribes in her all-time classic, How to Eat. Put 750g gooseberries in a pan w/ 350ml water and 6 tbsp [golden caster] sugar. Simmer for a couple of minutes, strain out the gooseberries and then reduce the syrup by boiling it for five minutes. [NB All I had on this occasional was a small 250g punnet of gooseberries, so I employed maths to help me arrive at 120ml water and 2 tbsp sugar.] Eat the gooseberries with cream, yoghurt, or in an Eton Mess, fool or whatever. And use the syrup for drinks.

A few pointers:

1) This is a riff on the classic CLOVER CLUB cocktail, which (how I make it) is more or less the same but with raspberry syrup. You can either make raspberry syrup using the ‘hot gooseberry’ method above; but what I usually do is just throw a few raspberries into the shaker with some basic sugar syrup. If you can’t find gooseberries for whatever reason - which are right at the end of their season - use raspberries. Redcurrants are good too. You can use these to make an old-school groseille syrup.

2) This makes a good long drink, if you serve it over ice and top it up with fizzy water. (Or prosecco?)

3) Nigella Lawson, in her little gooseberry bit, commends the classic Victorian combination of gooseberry and elderflower. So, if you happen to have any elderflower cordial leftover from your English Martini… or maybe just a tot of elderflower liqueur, by all means, add a dash or two.

Hello. Hang on. WHAT’S THAT MUSIC? .

---

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! 👇

---

THE SPIRITS IS BEING REPUBLISHED!

I HAVE lost count of the amount of people who have asked me this past year where they can get a hold of my old book, The Spirits. As with many essential goods and servies in these straightened times, it has been incredibly hard to find. All copies went to frontline staff. But FEAR NOT. My publishers and I have been working hard to remedy this and I am pleased to announce that The Spirits is being reprinted by popular demand. It will be available in all good bookshops - and probably some mediocre ones too! - from the 30th September! This will hopefully give everyone plenty of time to purchase multiple copies for friends, family, pets, etc.

Expect a barrage of immodest self-promotion around that time. But for now, you can pre-order by pressing on any of these buttons.

---

PLAYLIST

The gooseberry is for me the quintessential English garden fruit and so, here is a basket of songs about gardens, gardening, hoeing, raking, planting, tending, harvesting and so on.

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

---

THINGS TO READ

I wrote about rum! And how you should all be drinking it. (Telegraph)

It was going to be huge: David Runciman on the last days of Trump (LRB

And from the same issue, Patricia Lockwood on having sex with bears (LRB)

Here’s Johanna on how badly Bridget Jones has aged (New Statesman)

Otherwise: Inspector Maigret mysteries and Roald Dahl’s Boy + Going Solo with my own lad… which are as good as I remember them!

SHOPPING LIST

Mint, bourbon, sugar.

🌿🥃🍬