December means Christmas and its gastronomic blow-out. The interesting thing is how our drinking habits at Christmas have changed over the last 10 years and now include hot spiced drinks, port, red wine, sherry, Champagne and newcomers like whiskey and fruit schnapps. However traditions like drinking Egg Nog remain popular because the Christmas Spirit pays tribute to the things we have enjoyed in the past. This Christmas try this classic recipe as an aperitif to offer guests, without too much trouble and with easy ingredients. Salute!

Ingredients >
5cl freshly squeeze mandarin juice
Prosecco (Italian sparkling wine)

Preparation >
Pour the Mandarin juice directly into a chilled champagne glass. Pour the Prosecco gently over the juice. Stir and serve.

With its myriad styles and flavours, whisky is as fascinating, delicious and complex as any wine. Smoked eel, trawler ropes, cigar smoke, sticky toffee pudding, deck oil, fig, gunpowder? If anyone thinks wine appreciation is the sole preserve of the ludicrous tasting note, think again.

BLENDS
The Famous Grouse, 40%, > Its fame and popularity shouldn’t detract from its reputation as one of Scotland’s great blended whiskies. Light, gentle and sweet, it has a creamy, honeyed nose and a soft, almost vanilla-style finish.

Black Bottle, 10-year-old, 40%, > For anyone who loves the phenolic, seaweedy, peppery smokiness of Islay, this is a sensational whisky. A blend of seven different malts from the island and a touch of grain whisky, Black Bottle has all the characteristics of a cracking Islay dram, with a pleasant underlying gingery sweetness.

Chivas Regal, 12-Year-Old, 40%, > An apertif whisky that I like best with lots of water. Light and pure, it has a soft, grassy, nutty finish with a short, feminine punch.

VATTED MALT
Six Isles, 43%, > Blending whiskies from six of Scotland’s islands is a novel idea, and the result is a surprisingly elegant, restrained whisky with a hint of smoke and peat. Delicious.

Monkey Shoulder Batch, 40%, > New on the market, this blended malt, made up of Kininvie, Balvenie and Glenfiddich, has gained cult status through its raised brass motif, which has become a collectors item. It’s easy on the palate with a soft, honeyed vanilla style, but packs a punch in the finish.

Johnnie Walker Green Label, 43%, > A lovely dram, offering a blend of Caol Ila, Talisker, Linkwood and Cragganmore. A hearty malt with smoke, ginger, spice and everything you could want in a whisky.

Whisky wisdom >
• “There are two things a Highlander likes naked, and one of them is malt whisky” Scottish proverb

• Veteran rocker Alice Cooper, was introduced to whisky by his granny at just a few months of age. “A little whisky on the gums is also good for teething. That’s an old hillbilly cure”

• “I just had 19 shots of whisky, I think that’s a record” Dylan Thomas’s last words

• Famous Macallan drinkers include Nicolas Cage, Bill Clinton, Michael Douglas, Bob Hoskins and Emma Thompson, while those more partial to a snifter of Famous Grouse include HRH Prince Philip and Charlize Theron

• “I Like my whisky old and my women young” Errol Flynn

• Bill Murray’s character in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation was in Tokyo filming a commercial for Japanese whisky producer Suntory, which has a 60% share of the Japanese market

Related Links >
Scotch Malt Whisky Society > http://www.smws.com
Scotch Whisky Association > http://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk

No matter how big of a Scrooge you might feel around the holidays, winter beers will warm you up.

A Christmas present, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, is a holiday favorite among hopheads and is one of the standouts of The Winter Beer Tasting. “It’s basically a gift from the brewery to the public,” said Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. He began brewing holiday beer in 1983.

Brewing special holiday ales is a centuries-old tradition in Europe, where brewers craft small batches of darker, more robust beers to celebrate the season. Early American brewers carried on the tradition, but The Grinch that Stole Alcohol, aka Prohibition, put an end to holiday beer in America. Holiday ales didn’t make a comeback in America until 1975, when San Francisco brewmaster Fritz Maytag released Anchor Steam’s Our Special Ale. Samuel Adams, taking the microbrew revolution to the masses, released its Winter Lager in 1989, and today robust “winter warmers”, from large breweries to neighborhood brewpubs, dominate the Christmas Season.

Vermont brewers this year have three winter ales, Long Trail Hibernator, Magic Hat’s Feast of Fools, and Otter Creek’s long-named Double Decker Olde English Holiday Ale.

“Winter ales give brewers the opportunity to showcase what they can do,” said Ted Farmer, owner of Heads Up Brewing in Silverdale, a brew-on-premises shop where Farmer is serving his winter offering, a bourbon-barrel-aged imperial amber ale “that’s pushing” 16 percent alcohol by volume, definitely a sip-it-by-the-fire brew.

“Summer ales, you pound them for thirst,” Farmer said. “Winter beers are all about flavor, body and complexity. Winter beers are darker in color, higher in alcohol. Sort of like comfort food, but comfort beers.”

For the winter beer tasting, held recently on a gloriously snowy evening in Silverdale,  Farmer was asked to assemble a lineup of winter beers that showcase the season’s bounty. In all, more than a dozen beers were tasted, from a spicy Belgian ale that tasted like Christmas in a glass to a gnarly barley wine that rivaled India pale ale in the hops department, to a porter that had more smoke than a Cheech and Chong movie.

That makes Jenn Gridley, brewer at Fish Brewing in Olympia, feel like a kid at Christmas. “Personally, it’s my favorite time of the year because there are all these wonderful beers that are hardier than what you can normally get,” said Gridley, whose winter lineup features Winterfish Ale and Leviathan barley wine. “They’re usually bigger beers. They’re fun. Summer beers are pretty strict about the styles, colors, even the malts used. With winter beer, you can call it anything you want. Have fun with it.”

“In winter, you have more options,” said Doug Tiede, brewer at Engine House No. 9 in Tacoma, who this year boosted the hops and alcohol in his Winter Warmer, a reddish beer with lots of bitter edge. “You can go bigger in any direction. If you go with drinkable summer beers, you really run out of styles.”

Jack McQuade, owner of The Swiss Pub in Tacoma, said winter beers arrived earlier this year. “I tried to hold off until October,” said McQuade, who features a half-dozen rotating taps of Northwest winter beers. “A lot of brewers are bypassing the whole Oktoberfest and just making winter beers. It’s pretty tough to sell Oktoberfest beers come November 1.”

But it won’t be hard for McQuade to sell winter beers come summertime, when The Swiss, along with other Tacoma pubs, rolls out several kegs it stashes every winter for Christmas in July, an event that heats up summer with cold winter warmers.

Grappa is now a versatile drink suitable for all types of establishment. Grappa is trendy. New ways of consuming it are being invented and it is featured in cocktail bars and discos, proving its versatility in mixed drinks. Now it is available in many varieties because of the different regions of origin, vineyards, characteristics of the pomace, pressed skin and seed of the grapes, types of stills, distillation styles, harvests, ageing, etc. These are a group of factors that contribute to create an infinite number of quality grappa, each one unique. Salute!

2cl Grappa di Moscato
3cl peach flavored vodka
2cl peach nectar
1cl fresh single cream

Pour all the ingredients into a shaker with ice. Shake sharply. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a phisallis.

Over the coming weeks everyone will be enjoying Christmas and New Year parties. And what better way to celebrate than with a cocktail or two.

Bourbon Cookie
50ml Buffalo Trace bourbon, 10ml Frangelico Hazelnut liqueur, 10ml Amaretto, 10ml gomme syrup (sugar syrup), 5ml cinammon syrup, 50ml half’n'half (milk and cream mix). Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice, shake, and strain over ice into a martini glass.

Rum and Raisin Old Fashioned
75ml Matusalem Gran Reserva Rum, 1 sugar cube, a dash of Angostura Bitters, and raisins. Muddle the raisins in an old fashioned glass. Add ice, sugar and bitters. Stir slowly as you add the rum. Garnish with an orange peel.

Watermelon Martini
Muddle a slice of fresh watermelon. Add 15ml Ketel One Vodka, 15ml Teichenne Melon Schnapps and shake all the ingredients with ice. Strain into a martini glass.

Chocolate Nut Martini
Add 50ml Ketel One vodka, 10ml Frangelico Hazelnut liqueur and 10ml chocolate Teichenne Schapps. Shake with ice and strain into a martini glass with a chocolate rim.

Toast the Holidays > Tips

When serving holiday drinks, dress them up by using a silver tray and a variety of fruity garnishes. Cherries, lemon slices, grapefruit wedges, raspberries, cranberries, and lime twists all add color and sparkle to the occasion.

See individual drink ideas on our XMAS FESTIVE DRINKS category.

1/2 cup chilled champagne
1/2 cup cranberry juice
Fresh cranberries threaded on a skewer

In a champagne glass combine chilled champagne and cranberry juice. Garnish with cranberry skewer. Makes: 1 serving.