The Spirits #61: The Siesta

~ Yawn! ~ Unchartered Territory ~ The SUBSTACK APP ~ I Go To Sleep ~ Molotov Cocktails ~

~ THE SIESTA ~

45ml tequila
5ml Campari
15ml lime juice
15ml grapefruit juice
10ml golden sugar syrup

Place all of the ingredients into a shaker, add lots of ice and shake it all hard. Strain into a cocktail glass that you had the forethought to put in the freezer five minutes ago. Garnish with a lime wheel or, if you just used up your last lime, a grapefruit twist.

Some Siesta Notes:

1) Do you know, I replaced about 10ml of that tequila with mezcal (Montelobos Espadín to be precise) and it was delicious? Mezcal has a special affinity with grapefruit and always gets on rather well with Campari too.

2) Blanco tequila is customary; but I tend to prefer reposado in almost all tequila contexts, including here.

YAWN! Do come innnnnnn zzzzzzz.

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INTRODUCING… THE SPIRITS APP!

OK. It’s a Substack app rather than strictly speaking a Spirits app. But it’s a great way to read the Spirits - and other splendid newsletters too. Like Brandon Taylor’s Sweater Weather. Or Sophie Heawood’s The Sophist. Or Nikesh Shukla’s Writing Tips. Or Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker. Or Helen Dawson’s Fiction Fundraiser: a short, gin-soaked story, told in serial, to raise money for the British Red Cross’s Ukraine appeal…

You can read more about the app (and about Substack’s general philosophy) right here. And you can download it for iPhone or iPad here. Should you have an Android phone, that version is coming… and when it does it will be here.

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🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here. 
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.

…and if you like The Spirits, do please forward this to all of your friends. If you hate it, maybe send it to your enemies too.

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THE Siesta is a mid-00’s spin on the Hemingway Daiquiri. It was invented by Katie Stipe at the Flatiron Lounge in NYC. She kept the grapefruit and lime of the original, but replaced the light rum with tequila and the maraschino with a mere dash of Campari. It seems sort of obvious now - all of these flavours marry so well! You can take any two of the four main ingredients and they make fetching couples. But it wasn’t necessarily so obvious at the time. Apparently lots of other NYC bartenders at the time - like Phil Ward (Stipe’s boyfriend at the time) - were annoyed that they never thought of it first.

Stipe told Punch that she made it up partly as there just weren’t enough tequila drinks around at the time. There was the Margarita and the (shitty) Tequila Sunrise and “…so much uncharted territory within the world of cocktails.” Imagine. This was the era when all mixologists were rediscovering old classics like the Aviation and the Last Word and even the Negroni - but also filling in the gaps in the canon, bringing a little systemic riguour to the whole mixing business. How come no one ever thought to combine gin, lemon, sugar and bitters? What happens if we try this one with tequila? Etc.

Well, I think it’s a rather good sour. It’s not a million miles away from the Jasmine and also, a bit like a shortened Paloma. A drink that, like the melody to I Say a Little Prayer, simply had to exist! But that once upon a time did not.

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A NEW POST FOR THE CABINET

NOW that Spring is here again, I am preparing a bunch of new ‘Ingredients’ posts for paying subscribers of the CABINET. The way these work is, I take a particular bottle, and sort of talk you through it - where it’s from, how it’s made, and how best to use it… plus ten or twelve (fairly loose) recipes. If you have a bottle at the back of your cupboard you don’t know what to do with, hopefully you’ll get some ideas here.

Past entries: GREEN CHARTREUSE; MARASCHINO; and APRICOT BRANDY.

Just this morning, I sent out CREME DE CACAO. You probably shook your head at my Pessoa/Passoa confusion (hey, I’m doing this on my own).

Next up will be… CYNAR, the intriguing artichoke-infused amaro that features widely in the 21st century cocktail renaissance. I’m hopefully going to pick up the pace with these in the coming months: shorter, sharper, more frequent. I would hate for you to miss out.

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PLAYLIST

YAWN! Isn’t it…. ahhhhh…. so tired…. time… to ….. sleep… perchance to dreammm… YES sleepy-ones, here are songs about sleep, siestas, dreams, dodo, naps, beds, duvets, pillow-men, the sweet, sweet lure of unconsciousness. I always find it instructive, compiling these playlists, how certain artists, genres and eras take up themes more readily than others. The Beatles, specifically John Lennon, have so many songs about sleep! As, nominative-deterministically, do R.E.M. And so many of those lovely 50’s soda-fountain ballads are on a sleepy-dreamy theme too. What was it about that era that made everyone quite so somnolent?

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 wrote about Servant of the People, the sitcom that launched Volodymr Zelensky’s presidential bid. (Evening Standard)

And about Wales, the Hiking Chic Fashion Capital of the World… or something. (Travel + Leisure)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. Honestly, I can’t recommend enough if you are interested in what happened to post-Soviet Russia. (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

What if Russia loses? (Foreign Affairs)

This and this and this and this 🤨.

Johanna on How We Fell Out of Love With Work. (New Statesman)

A Journey to the Centre of Our Cells. (New Yorker)

…AND Alice Lascelles spoke to the Ukrainian brewer responsible for this excellent bottle art. Makes a classy Molotov cocktail. (Drinks Business)

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SHOPPING LIST

Brandy, grenadine, lemon juice, sugar. If you’ve no grenadine, another sweet syrup or liqueur will do (orange liqueur, Chartreuse, raspberry syrup, etc).

🌼