DRINK: Joe Breen offers ideas for concoctions that make the sun come out
Summertime and the living can be downright messy, what with our mercurial meteorological patterns. But, with our fondness for barbecues and the life outdoors, our generation has moved bravely out into the garden. Once there, it's nice to have something in your hand to balance that plastic plate in the other. For the purposes of research, we have gone back to the books to assemble a collection of simple drinks recipes to help bring out the sun in our lives, even if the clouds overhead threaten to dampen it.
There are many tomes extolling the virtues of summer drinks but, as one who favours the shortest route to the nicest place, I settled on two slim but excellent tomes from the Ryland Peters stable. Coolers and Summer Cocktails by Else Petersen-Schepelern and Sunshine Cocktails by British barman Ben Reed really provide all the info you need.
But, just to be thorough, we augmented them with a couple of specials culled from the extraordinary and obscure publication, Sauce Guide to Cocktails Vol 4, a softback coffee-table book that delivers page after page of exotic mixes and cocktails. There are more than 1,500 recipes in this publication, which can be ordered from the www.sauceguides.com for about €20. You can order the ingredients for its cocktails at www.drinksdispensary.com.
With that many drinks on offer, where do you start? The Irish section seemed a reasonable bet. Baileys stars in eight of the 10 Irish recipes, which include the bizarre "Irish Flag". In a shot glass, layer equal amounts of Grand Marnier liqueur, green Crème de Menthe and finally Baileys, for a gold, green and beige result. If you want any greater proof of the damage alcohol can do to a state's image, look no further.
Vodka - surprise surprise - is the key ingredient in most of the recipes on offer, which is why Ketel One vodka, the leading premium Dutch brand (www.ketelone.com), is happy to be associated with the publication.
But as we become more aware of the need to drink sensibly and the absolute necessity to end the lethal mix of drinking and driving, there have to be more appealing alternatives for whoever is in charge of the car keys. These could include the provocatively-named Virgin Mary (Ben Reed's vodka-less version of the Bloody Mary) or the beautifully simple thirst-quencher, the Cranberry Cooler (just a high glass filled with ice and equal parts cranberry juice and soda water, with a squeeze of lime to top it off).
Travel is one of the reasons behind the popularity of cocktails. Last year in Cuba we enjoyed the pleasures (and perils) of Mojitos, the mint-and rum-based cocktail that, like so many of its breed, has a nasty habit of inveigling you in with its simple minty freshness before clobbering you with deceptively powerful rum-based kick. The same is true of the Caipirinha, a wonderfully zippy Brazilian concoction. I vaguely recall visiting friends who returned from the South American country armed with a bottle of cachaça, a spirit distilled directly from the juice of sugar cane. This is the core of the drink, and all that I can recall of its contents. Ben Reed provides a recipe in his book, though where you can get a bottle of cachaça is another matter.
I can tell you, however, where you can get a bottle of Jago's Vanilla Vodka Cream Liqueur, a gorgeous concoction made in the Shetland Islands. The Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dawson Street, Dublin (www.celticwhiskeyshop.com), stocks this relatively new competitor for Baileys's worldwide dominance. It was created by Tom Jago, who was also involved in the development of Baileys. There are many cocktails listed in Jago's corporate website at www.blackwooddistillers.com, but as with Baileys, it would be hard to beat it solo over ice.
Ally McAlpine's Celtic Whiskey Shop also stocks the fruit liqueurs of Joseph Cartron, a long-established company in France's Burgundy region. There is a wide range of these available from McAlpine's shop or Le Caveau in Kilkenny (www.lecaveau.ie), who are the importers. We tasted the banana, triple sec and pineapple varieties and their intensity of flavour is mirrored by their rich perfume, a result, we're told, of the real pulped fruit used, as distinct from fruit flavourings. Drink over ice, or mix with a chilled dry white wine or champagne. Check out www.cartron.fr for more ideas.
McAlpine also came up with the most unusual suggestion of all - drop a piece of cucumber into your gin and tonic. Well, not any old gin, but the remarkable Scottish variety, Hendrick's. This gin is certainly unlike any I have tasted. The entertaining website (www.hendricksgin.com), designed in the fashion of Schott's Original Miscellany, promises that the gin includes "traditional botanicals such as juniper, coriander and citrus peel. The 'unexpected' infusion of cucumber and rose petals results in a most iconoclastic gin".
The site adds, with the same puckish tone: "It is not for everyone." But it certainly is for those who welcome a more complex and interesting flavour from gin, both on the nose and in the finish. A real discovery, but not one to bury in a jumble of cocktail flavours. Sip it straight over ice, or follow Ally McAlpine's advice and have a Hendricks and tonic with ice and cucumber.
Finally, summer wouldn't be the same without honey, specifically 42 Below's Manuka Honey Vodka, a beautifully smooth honey-flavoured vodka from this cool New Zealand company. Judging by their wild web site, www.42below.co.nz, these guys would want to lay off their own sauce for a while. 42 Below's products are available from the Celtic Whiskey Shop.