Hard as it may be to believe, but this guy who has wasted so many years of his life writing about beer used to be a Cocktail Guy.
Truly, before the Beer Nerd portion of this reporter's life began, he was a cocktail nerd. We're talking, shirts with Martini glass-shaped buttons, owning multiple sizes and shapes of cocktail shaker, practicing flair bartending in his bedroom, all that good stuff. Tom Cruise in Cocktail minus the looks and talent but about the same height, one out of three ain't bad?
But I've never disavowed and abandoned cocktails, I'll still happily drink them on a day of sunshiney drinking if the spirit moves me (and let's be honest, the spirit moves me a lot) and, since not everyone likes beer, this week your correspondent is digging into the pre-mix cocktails to see what the state of play is with them.
Will they match the standards of a man who once sent three Wilkinsons tumblers to Valhalla in a single night trying to recall his old flair bartending moves because he'd told a lass he was courting that he used to do it when he was younger?
Will they turn out as hellish as the Long Island Iced Tea this reporter had at a Mitchell and Butler's that was so heinous it literally killed God?
Let's find out.
Sipsmith Zesty Orange G&T
Initially the plan was that, because I intended to drink a lot of these things and write about them in one go, I would spread the drinking out over a week, like a reasonable adult who is able to defer his gratification,one of the things that separates us from most of the animals. This didn't work, it seems, except for this first drink.
I walked over to my mam's last weekend (always check up on your mams, lads) with a couple of cans of this in a bag and garden drinking on my mind. It's from Home Bargains, a snip at 99p and I had little in the way of hopes for it.
The surprise was immediate, it's better than not bad! For 99p it's better than could be expected, the orange flavour is a bit too strong and the fizz is turned up pretty high, but the quinine snap of a gin and tonic is there in full effect. Is it going to beat a gin and tonic expertly made by a bartender? Of course not, it's a penny less than a quid. Is it good? I don't even like G&Ts that much, and it certainly surprised me in a positive way. At 7% abv it's not cocktail-strong but also not messing about.
Dead Man's Fingers Margarita Mix
And now we shift into the present tense as your correspondent decides, with a self imposed deadline looming and a night out with his family in like an hour's time also looming, that it's best to get every other pre-mix cocktail he bought seen off in one mammoth run. We don't use the word "binge" round here.
Dead Man's Fingers rum is everywhere at the moment, or so it seems. There's a ton of different flavours, and the brand is knocking on the doors of "shots shots shots shots shots" type liqueurs (they have a strawberry drink in their range that appears to be in the same vein as Tequila Rose, a shooter that is neither tequila nor rosy). They're in the pre-mix cocktail game too, it seems.
It's perfect cocktail weather. Your correspondent lounges in his garden, linen-shirted and already starting to boil in the heat. Here comes Dead Man's Fingers, and it is... it's okay.
Branding is a funny thing, if you get a killer brand you can stick it on a lot of things and make money from them. This only weighs in at 5% abv, alcopop territory, and although it's also the largest in physical volume of today's drinks, coming in a 330ml can. At £2.50 from Sainsbury's, it still seems like a lot to pay.
It disappears in three mouthfuls and then your correspondent fires up Amore del Tropico by The Black Heart Procession, noirish and impossibly cool and perfect cocktail music.
I've already forgotten about this drink. Next!
Funkin Nitro Cocktails Passion Fruit Martini
The can opens with a weird cough of nitrogen, the surprised writer operating the can almost dropping it in shock. Loud.
The nitrogen forms a head, making it look for all the world like it had been shaken, agitated by a specialist then decanted into the glass. The texture is smooth, it's certainly fruity
The sun beats down from a cloudless sky and the drink does not linger. The reporter is thirsty, I make short work of this drink then read the back of the can. It's missing a few ingredients, much like the Dead Man's Fingers Margarita was missing Triple Sec (orange flavouring in its place), this drink is just vodka and passion fruit juice. Retailing for £2.30 at Asda, I find it slightly mad that Home Bargains can deliver a stronger drink for much less. A drink approaching actual cocktail strength.
This reporter looks at his empty glass and wonders if there's some dangerous number of cocktails that he can day-drink, alone, before a switch of some kind flips and he enters some kind of Hemingway Mode, suddenly becoming interested in bullfighting and picking fights with newspaper editors.
He shrugs it off and grabs a can of:
Moth Espresso Martini
and finds it happily lacking in bits of actual moth.
MOTH stands for "Mix Of Total Happiness"and this reporter wonders just how hard the Advertising Standards Agency would come down on a brewery which sold beers under a name that suggested they contained happy-juice. But I put such bitterness and suspicions aside because this, this feels like a proper cocktail, although the can reads "VODKA COLD BREW COFFEE LIQUEUR PLAYLIST". And this metal son of a bitch isn't getting anywhere near my playlist.
The coffee hit is strong, a shot in the arm, a breakfast cocktail to drink on the balcony of the room in which last night you ruined your life (uh oh, there's the Hemingway tendencies) and at 14.9% abv it's at what I suppose we can now call "cocktail strength". At £3.75 for a little 125ml can, it's still cheaper than a real cocktail and edging into the zone where quality sort of overshadows price.
My pace of drinking slows, the Martini stays in its glass a while longer, a stay of execution as your correspondent breathes the air of his garden, watches the bees fly around his wild cherry tree, remembers he has only eaten four slices of toast today. Meditates upon this and other facts and makes the drink disappear in one last go, the warmth of the alcohol and the cold-but-should-be-hot of the cold brew coffee fighting each other all the way down.
There is one more can in this reporter's fridge.
White Box Cocktails Boulevardier Cocktail
I reflect on the trip on which this back garden mini-lash has taken me. I have drank a not insignificant amount of booze in a short period of time and now find myself listening to Edith Piaf as the sun dips beneath the trees in the park which my garden faces. I sit with the drink in front of me, not touching it for now. Edith is Sous le Ciel de Paris and this reporter is under the infinitely better Ciel de East Hartford and soon he takes his first sip.
This is real, this is it. This is the surprise that I kept for myself, knowing that after paying a fiver for this at the Hazy Daze bottle shop in Whitley Bay that this was either going to be a winner or a travesty, a "how can I get more of this right now?" or a "how much?" and it is the former. A proper big and boozy cocktail straight out of the 1920s, I can't bring myself to neck it. It is bitter and strong and I stick some Django Reinhardt on, eye still on the clock because soon I've got to go and drink probably the equivalent of all of this in beer at our monthly family drinking night (cherish your family lads).
The bees are slowing down. The drinker is too, the bourbon whiskey combining with every other ingredient (Italian bitter aperitif, sweet Vermouth and orange zest) to make a drink that is to be sipped, not thrown back. A contemplative drink, a little 100ml tinny of philosophy. Drinking this in a bar with mates may be a different experience to imbibing it in your unkempt bee haven of a garden, that you love dearly since leaving your job in an airless and windowless Misery Factory.
Even looking through the drink in the glass, seeing the oily texture that tells you that yes, this is full of hard liquor and too many of these will mess you up is a pleasure. Fiver well spent, the sun continues to dip and time is short.
Francoise Hardy sings as I see the drink off in two mouthfuls. The aftertaste lingers, puckering, bitter, boozy, feeling like I'm still drinking it. It tingles and burns just a little.
Proper. Real. The tiny can makes it seem at first glance like a raw deal. After drinking it, this drink that feels like a professionally poured cocktail, the fiver feels like the deal of the decade.
The day is cooler now, the glass empty, this reporter hungry and thirsty still and has thirty minutes- no, less, twenty eight!- to go meet his family for even more drinking.
La vie certainly is en rose, friends. Somewhere I smell a barbecue firing up. Time to move, time is short. Cocktails are good. The end.
If you enjoyed this piece and would like to put a little in this reporter's tip jar, you can through this link: https://ko-fi.com/ruariotoole
