Bird of Paradise

Don’t be distracted by the Christmas tree in this photo: this is definitely an all-year-round cocktail!  The cream in the ingredients list suggests it might be better off as an after dinner cocktail, but it isn’t syrupy or puddingy enough to count as pudding.  With dessert, perfect.  Or even a mid afternoon cocktail.  Almost any excuse and you won’t be disappointed.  Think of it as a more sophisticated Baileys or Rose Tequila.  

It is also a rare creamy tequila cocktail, which is what attracted it to me, and I wasn’t disappointed.  I was however disappointed that I’d chosen such a small glass, so do yourself a favour and choose a decent size coupe or martini glass.  

So gather your ingredients, and start by filling your shaker full of ice.  Add:

1.25oz reposada tequila

0.75oz crème de cacao

0.5oz amaretto

1.5oz single cream

If I were making it again, I would definitely sub the single cream for milk, so if you are finding the cream a little off putting give that a go.  As you’d expect, shake it and strain it to enjoy.  

Coletti Royale

Last Friday we got home after our super-secret hiding in plain sight wedding and had planned ourselves a whole evening to wind down after the madness of the previous day.  Before leaving for our hotel on Wednesday I remembered to pop a bottle of Kylie Rose Prosecco in the fridge ready for our return, although I hadn’t yet decided what to do with it.  

Thursday (the day of our wedding) we just did not stop from meeting at the Registry Office at 10am to leaving the cocktail bar at well gone midnight.  We walked 11 miles around the city centre.  Eleven!  It’s no wonder whatsoever that I slept like a blinking log and was ready for a substantial cocktail by the time the Friday bar opened.  

After much umming and aahhing I came across this Coletti Royale that married a rose prosecco with both tequila and Cointreau and it just felt exactly the right level of heavy weight and celebration to give it a go.

So get yourself a big cocktail shaker, add ice and shake the first 6 of these ingredients hard, hard, hard:

1.5oz tequila reposado

0.5oz triple sec

0.5oz elderflower liqueur

0.5oz blood orange juice

0.5oz lime juice

2 dashes orange bitters

Rose prosecco

Strain it carefully into a decent sized glass, leaving yourself plenty of room to top it up with your rose prosecco.  

This really is a delicious cocktail that was properly celebratory; properly heavy weight; properly what I needed to sit down and just switch off.  Albeit temporarily.  

Stone Wheel

Patron, those purveyors of tequila that should be everybody’s first choice, have an annual competition for bartenders extraordinaire to be recognised as Patron Perfectionists.  This year I managed to catch it in time to actually participate in the judging.  But as usual, given that mine is not a professional bar set up, I’ve had to substitute the occasional ingredient or two.  So although I will definitely be submitting a vote, it will only be relative to how ‘home bar friendly’ their entry is.  

The first to be put to the test is a Stone Wheel, from Yoann Tarditi of The Lobby Bar.  

Apart from actually having all of the ingredients (or as near as damn it), I particularly liked the use of cider as a mixer.  If you have all of these ingredients you might be in time to submit your own vote here.  

Half fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add everything except the cider:

40ml Patron Reposado 

5ml Green Chartreuse

7.5ml vanilla syrup

7.5ml ginger syrup

20ml lime juice

60ml cider

Shake it all hard, strain into a Collins glass full of ice, and top with the cider.  

As an amateur cocktailer, I can honestly never be bothered with ingredients in such small volumes like a bit more than a medicine spoon, usually, but I made myself stick to it on this occasion, and actually, I can kind of see that it worked.  But in all honesty, this wasn’t a cocktail that knocked my socks off.  It was refreshing.  And it did have a fair bit of alcohol in it, but it didn’t taste like it.  

I’m not sure it will get my vote, but would it get yours?