I don’t really own many books on boozing. I do have a copy of Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, and a few books by the god of home-brew, C J J Berry himself, but on the whole, my bookshelves are mostly dominated by sci-fi and pop-science.

When I was contacted asking if I would like a copy of How to Drink at Christmas by Victoria Moore, I was a little hesitant, simply because I had visions of it being one of these niche books that simply gathers dust on the shelf forever more. However, I did a little research on the title and though I would give it a go.

Victoria Moore is currently the Telegraph’s wine writer and has written for the BBC, Daily Mail and Guardian.

How to Drink at Christmas

The book is presented in traditional festive colours (red white and gold) and is a small-format hardback that will fit in a large pocket. It may be a cliché, but let’s not judge a book by its cover.

With section headings like “Ice Freakery”, “Drinks for Drivers” and “A Sip of Something by the Fire”, there are some intriguing entries.

The various sections relevant to making a G&T (not only a part on making the G&T, but choice of tonic, choice of gin and getting the best from your ice and fruit) are succinct and well constructed. There is no preaching about your gin:tonic ratios or other dogmatic tripe that you sometimes find thrown around; there seems to be an underlying recognition that everyone’s tastes vary and this is a pattern that is reflected throughout the whole book.

There is also a refreshing pragmatism threading the book that opines things like supermarket own-label bottles where the quality of a spirit isn’t going to be a big factor, and packets of frozen fruit from the supermarket freezer shelves.

The book is dotted with fascinating facts and I certainly learned a thing or two in the reading; I now know more about champagne and brandy, and have an appreciation of the frightening toll that counterfeit vodka has on the poorer populace of Russia (an estimated 42,000 deaths per year!).

The presented spectrum of winter cocktails is a good mix of the traditionally clichéd (the snowball and eggnog) right through to off-beat pick-me-ups for those moments when you need a break from the feasting (for example, the Rosemary and Lemon Infusion).

Many of the cocktail recipes are broken down into drinks for “small numbers” and “larger parties” in an elegant recognition that the number of guests can often dictate how much effort you can put into serving drinks. There is also a section on “drinks for drivers” which not only focuses on keeping them sober, but also not making them stand out like sore thumbs.

The section on Christmas Day not only presents some great advice about choosing the right beverage for your food, but challenges some of the traditional pairings, like port & stilton, and smoked salmon & champagne.

All-in-all, I am a pleased that I accepted a copy of How to Drink at Christmas and I can definitely see it influencing my choice of beverages in the run-up to Christmas.

Libbey Martini Chiller

Having started experimenting with martinis, I thought I should invest in a proper martini glass.

Now, a martini needs to be cold, and it needs to stay cold, but I am a fairly slow drinker. So, having a look around I found what looked to be the ideal solution; the Libbey Martini Chiller.

With no stem, making it harder to break, and an ice bowl for the glass to sit in, this seemed like the ideal choice. It also goes in the dishwasher, which is an “absolute must” in our house.

At first, I was a little worried that this is more gimmick than useful glassware, but having quaffed a few martinis in this glass now, I am a convert. I have found that putting a combination of ice and water in the bowl keeps the drink cooler. I should imagine crushed ice would work well too, but I haven’t got around to trying this.

After a good long session on various martinis, drinks toward the end of the evening were taking up to an hour to go down, and the last sip was as cool as the first. Very nice. Drinking from the glass is a pleasing blend of drinking from a martini glass and a bowl (I like drinking bowls) and, while it could be my ego filling in the gaps, it felt somewhat sophisticated. Okay, okay, it is just a glass, let’s not go over the top.

The only real downside is that the bowl attracts a great deal of condensation and you need an absorbent pad for it to sit on. I ruined a cheap coaster by leaving the bowl on it overnight with ice and water in. The condensation pooled on the coaster (and under it), soaking in to it and causing it to swell.

Still, quirky drawbacks aside, I am pretty pleased with this.

It has been two months since I combined sloes, gin, sugar, almonds and a little ginger into a demijohn in order to kick-off my own bumper batch of sloe gin. If you missed it the first time, go and read about the making of sloe gin in my prior post.

Anyway, with Christmas only a week away, I thought it was high time that I bottled this stuff.

First, I strained the whole mix through a muslin bag to catch the sloes, almonds, ginger and the coarser bits of detritus.

Second, I shoved it in the bottles that the gin came in.

There you have it, not the most exciting process, but a faithful account.

Before you think that this is the shortest washout post on this whole blog, don’t worry, there is a little more to tell.

I tried a few sloes, thinking that they might have lost their bitter edge and be quite sweet and tasty. Bleagh, how wrong was I? They were still as bitter as anything I have ever tasted and were underpinned by a harsh alcoholic taste.

This didn’t really bode well for the finished product. I threw that muck in the compost bin (which might set the microbial ecosystem back a few weeks with the alcohol content) and set about trying the drink instead of the waste-product.

The sloe gin itself was rather tasty;  it was sweet with a slightly tart tail and has a warming medicinal quality to it. The flavour was dripping with that almond-like cherry quality with a subtle foundation of juniper. The ginger wasn’t really that evident, but it must contribute in some subtle way.

I have three full litre bottles of sloe gin now and it is supposed to improve significantly with age as well. I will likely lay a couple down under the stairs for next Christmas and guzzle the other over this festive period. I will also, in a subsequent post be comparing it to Sipsmith Sloe Gin and maybe Plymouth (if I can get some in time).

Gin gin.

Edit – 19/01/11: A quick note of thanks to my Dad for pointing out one instance of me using the word “slow” instead of “sloe”. Oops.

The more gin I drink, and the more comparisons I try to draw, the more I realise it isn’t quite that simple. Every gin is different and there is a wild degree of variation across the market.

Pigeon Holes

Every gin-drinker will have their own particular taxonomy; mine is somewhat embryonic and still developing, but as it is taking shape, I thought I would start to try to define it.

Gin-gins

Okay, this sounds a bit basic, but there are plenty of gins on the market that are just gin. They pretty much hit the spot when one is hankering for gin, but there is nothing that makes them deviate far from the traditional definition of a gin.

There are of course good examples and bad examples of a gin gin; most supermarket brands fall into this category along with Gordon’s, as do some stalwart brands that I adore – Juniper Green and Sipsmith for example are two very good gins, but beyond their quality, there is little else to say other than they are both cracking gins.

Flavoured gins

Yes, yes, all gins are flavoured, but some have one botanical (or more) that dominates the flavour beyond the traditional gin flavours. Another name might be USP (unique selling point) gins rather than flavoured gins.

In this category we have the rose and cucumber of Hendrick’s, we have the African citrus of Whitley Neill and the chamomile of the Tanqueray No Ten.

It is hard to compare these against gin-gins as they are so different and your enjoyment of them is likely to be defined by your acceptance of the USP flavour. There are some great gins in this category but they cannot really be compared to the likes of Sipsmith without clouding the waters somewhat.

Vodka-gins

This seems to be a common categorisation amongst gin drinkers. Some question whether these can be called a gin as the juniper is not seen as being dominant enough. Somewhere between a gin and a vodka, these subtle drinks are likely to be a good introduction to the non-gin-drinker. Some gin drinkers deride them, but they do have their place (just not in my glass).

This is a category that is likely to cause a little argument between gin-drinkers. Where is the line between a proper gin and a vodka-gin? I would personally put Bombay Sapphire into the vodka-gin category, but many wouldn’t.

That’s it really. Every gin I have tried falls loosely into one of these categories. There are plenty of other ways to categorise gins; Imbibe did a fantastic tasting of London gins (here) where the gins were placed on axes of citrus/floral and savoury/sweet. Part of me wonders if they missed something with their axes, but by far the greater part thinks that these people know a lot more about gin than I.

It is a rare thing when I post something that isn’t directly about gin, but I feel the need; I have a few minor updates and a burning need to share them, so here it is,

1) Gin Journey is now on a new domain. I hadn’t really named the blog when I bought gin-online.co.uk, it was bought on a whim really. Gin Journey now sits on ginjourney.co.uk – a lot more sensible. Hopefully everything redirects properly from one domain to the other, but if you do spot any issues, please let me know.

2) I have added a feed of my Twitter list that includes all the tweets from the gin brands I am aware of; hopefully some people will find this interesting. If you come across any gin brands that aren’t on the list, please do let me know and I will add them forthwith.

3) Last and certainly not least, I am officially on the map. The guys over at Sipsmith contacted me to see if I would like to try some of their gin. Sipsmith is certainly one of the gins that is firmly on my radar so I am delighted to be contacted directly like this and I certainly have high hopes for it – I can’t wait to review it. Watch this space.

There it is, a little site news for you. Exciting for me, maybe not so exciting for you.

I thought the old theme was a little dark and moody for a blog that focusses on gin; so, out with the old and in with the new.

So, a new look and a new domain. Hopefully my readership is so small at this point, nobody will actually notice. With a bit of luck everything is redirecting from the old domain, but if there are problems, please do let me know.