Cocktail Club - Edition One

As we celebrate the festive season, we’re partnering with Spiritland mixologist Hamish Denny to create some special - and sustainable - cocktails to make at home. Combining seasonal ingredients and bar staples with a few trade secrets, the resulting recipes present inspiring ideas, with the aim of bringing people together to foster a sense of connection.

Clementine Collins

“This recipe is an innovative way to use every element of the clementine, a naturally sweet and bright fruit that’s perfectly in season,” writes Hamish. “The sherbet will keep in the fridge for up to a month, and can be used as a festive addition for soft drinks, too.” Based in the remote moors of Northumberland, Hepple is a gin distillery rejuvenating the local wild juniper population, making it Hamish’s gin of choice for this seasonal twist on a classic Tom Collins. Through modern distilling techniques, Hepple ingeniously extracts the best from this once prolific British botanical.

Ingredients
For the clementine sherbet:
20g clementine peel
200g sugar
200ml clementine juice
4g citric acid

For the collins:
30ml clementine sherbet
30ml gin
100ml soda water

Method Firstly, to make the sherbet, add your clementine peel and sugar to a jar or tub. Seal your container and shake it for a minute or so until the sugar smells aromatic. Stir in the clementine juice and citric acid and mix until all of the sugar has dissolved.

For the clementine powder, combine the strained peel from the sherbet syrup with some extra clementine peel and dehydrate it in an oven on a very low temp, around 50-60°c for 8-10 hours. After, blend the dried peels to a fine powder. They become really aromatic and make a fragrant addition to enhance the cocktail. You can also mix it with tea to have a clementine Early Grey style tea.

Take your highball glass, add in a few ice cubes, pour in your gin and sherbet (and clementine powder, if using), and finally top up with soda and give a gentle stir. If preferred, you can skip the gin for an equally refreshing soft drink with a touch of fizz.

Boulevardier

For the second recipe in our Community series, mixologist Hamish Denny from London’s Spiritland shares his take on the boulevardier, a seasonal whisky-based negroni, ideal for evenings of festive hosting and celebrating as we gather together. “There’s no need to ship in products from overseas when we can use ingredients much closer to home to make innovative and exciting drinks,” writes Hamish. “This British take on a boulevardier uses a malt whisky from the Cotswolds, vermouth and rosehip bitters from London, and a modern Amaro that has been blended with British pinot noir grapes and English hops.” Simple yet inspiring and celebrating the beauty of local, Hamish’s resulting cocktail is strong, short and tart. For a further festive twist, you can even try using a sloe-berry whisky.

Ingredients 25ml Cotswold whisky 10ml Sacred rosehip cup 30ml Vault red vermouth 15mll Asterley Bros Dispense Amaro Rosemary sprig Method Fill a short, weighty tumbler with plenty of ice, pour over your measures of each spirit and stir. Garnish with a simple rosemary sprig.

Spiritland is a series of spaces in London for music lovers built around excellence in culture, curation and listening. Exploring a wide range of musical genres and eras in depth, Spiritland’s hi-fidelity, hand-built sound system delivers an unparalleled audio experience with a cultural and musical programme to match. Incorporating a restaurant, café and bar, a radio studio and a shop, Spiritland re-frames the bar and listening experience, delivering music, drinking and dining in a relaxed setting. Products used: Bar Culture Long Drink Glass, Boris Tumbler