The Spirits #54: The Mulled Negroni

~ The Spirits LIVE ~ Make it hot ~ Phase One, in which Doris Gets her Oats ~ Spotify Rewrapped ~

🎄The Spirits x CHRISTMAS Live 🎄
Fanfare! I will be hosting a LEGAL and ENTIRELY-ABOVE-BOARD LIVE Christmas party-slash-cocktail masterclass on Wednesday 15th December at 8pm GMT. By “masterclass”, I mean I will be attempting to make a couple of Christmass-ish drinks LIVE over Zoom for you… which may prove to be a disasterclass but, hey! You’ll have front row seats. I will also be taking your cocktail-related questions. And hopefully we can all just have a nice time.

Please note, this is a Paid Subscriber-Only event. So if you’d like to attend, hit the button, sign up, and I’ll reveal more in due course - including which ingredients to get in so you can mix along. If I don’t completely disgrace myself, I hope to do more of these in future. If.

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~ THE MULLED NEGRONI ~

25ml gin
25ml Italian vermouth
25ml Campari
75ml elderberry tea (or similarly ‘red’ tea)
Orange, lemon, grapefruit
Star anise, cinnamon (optional)

Prepare the tea in the conventional manner, hopefully in a pot. (Note that herbal tea generally benefits from a longer steeping than regular tea.) Now warm the spirits in a saucepan with a mélange of citrus slices and maybe some spices, if you fancy. Just as the aromas begin to make you feel a little dizzy, pour over the tea and stir well. Serve in a tea cup? And maybe spoon in some citrus slices and spices, if you like.

Some Mulled Negroni Notes:

1) This is definitely a drink to be made on a grand plan. For example a party! (That you will probably have to cancel!) The quantities above are for one but be prepared to use mathematics to multiply by these figures by 2, 5, 10 or frankly whichever number you like.

2) Just a light spritz of lemon or orange really lifts this - squeezing the citrus a bit as you pour is all it takes, really. You may feel it needs a spoonful of sugar too, depending on the sweetness of your tooth.

3) I find Pukka’s (underrated) Elderberry & Echinacea the best tea to use here, with its rounded berry warmth. Hibiscus tea is another good choice. Or a more basic red berry tea type arrangement will do just fine.

MMM welcome.

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I am the journalist Richard Godwin and this is my cocktail 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 here. And here is an index of all cocktails featured thus far, searchable by ingredient. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find out what to get in for next week’s special.

Please consider hitting the SUBSCRIBE button to become a member of the ✨THE CABINET✨. This way you will learn about exciting things like Maraschino and Green Chartreuse and Apricot Brandy and you can also come to my party. Oh and if you opt for the priciest ‘Founding Member’ option, I’ll send you a signed copy of my book with your very own bespoke recipe in it.

Please share The Spirits with anyone you reckon might be into this sort of thing. And feel free to @ me with your creations!

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THE Cold Negroni, I assume we are familiar with by now. Presumably you saw Stanley Tucci shaking his all sexily back in the early lockdown? Or maybe you have read one of the 62 articles I have been commissioned to write about this particular cocktail for the national press in the last decade or so. Hopefully, no more, for I have no more synonyms for “bittersweet”; no desire to re-recount the tale of the Count Negroni and his Florentine epiphany. Negronnui has begun to set in. At least as far as the Cold Negroni goes. The Hot Negroni? Well, that’s another matter.

I know I always go on about the importance of ice (although maybe not often enough judging by some of the under-iced drinks pix I’m tagged in….) but actually, ice is not the only way to tease your spirits to deliciousness. Before there was ice, there was heat. Old-school punches would mostly have been served with the molecules thus agitated; and all kinds of cocktails benefit from warming. The Brandy Milk Punch, for example: that is wonderful nuked in a microwave. There’s a famous Lancastrian panacaea known as ‘Benny and Hot’ - the French liqueur Bénédictine plus hot water - which dates back to the First World War, when soldiers from the East Lancashire regiment were hospitalised in the Bénédictine distillery in Normandy. To this day, the Burnley Miners Social Club is the distillery’s largest customer, which pleases me. And now I come to think of it, the cocktail that I make most at this time of year is the Hot Toddy. Usually it’s honey, lemon or lime, Angostura bitters and then Scotch, rum or maybe gin. Sometimes, if I’m in the mood, I’ll throw in some maraschino cherry syrup or a rechercé Italian amaro or some fresh ginger. It all seems to work, frankly.

One of the things that the heat does is make it much easier to stir and combine ingredients: honey dissolves no problem; ginger infuses quite happily; flavours fuse together. Another thing is that it lifts the aroma into your nostrils via the medium of steam. That’s why people make Mulled Wine; it’s aromatherapy as much as a drink. And the Mulled Negroni is a wonderful step up, halfway between a Negroni and the sort of punch Charles Dickens might have served. The Campari becomes, with the vermouth, quite Christmassy when hot; if you throw a star anise in there, it becomes wonderfully complex; and it becomes insanely moreish if you squeeze in just a dash of citrus.

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📚 THE SPIRITS (i.e. the book that inspired this newsletter) is available once more! You can find it at: Bookshop.org, Foyles, Blackwells, Hive, Waterstones, Amazon and even WH Smith. Makes a great Christmas present, just saying 📚

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PLAYLIST

I too have been watching Get Back, i.e. The Beatles do Big Brother! I too have been reminded exactly why I fell in love with them in the first place! Instead of giving you my tediously long take, here, unoriginally, are some Beatles-y songs that I have always loved and are hopefully not too thumpingly obvious for you. Enjoy.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I interviewed Lorde! (ES Magazine)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

The Secret Prison Keeping Migrants out of Europe (New Yorker)

The 975-Day Nightmare (Guardian)

How to Speak Publisher by the very funny Robbie Millen (The Times)

And I’m grateful to Elle Hunt for capturing my feelings vis-a-vis Spotify and its joyless algorithmic Unwrapped ranking of the year. “All I really want for Christmas is a new playlist, made by a person,” she concludes. Erm, how about a new one every week? (Guardian)

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SHOPPING LIST

Cranberry juice, orange liqueur, prosessco. Maybe a soupcon of brandy.

🦌