Summer approaches, but we may not be approaching that runway to reach some much-loved holiday destination. So, perhaps it’s time to mix a staycation cocktail or two, and dream.
Brockmans Gin, with its 11 botanicals sourced from around the world, offers style, sophistication, and a promise of better times to come. The heady mix of blueberry, blackberry and Valencian orange-peel notes combine with angelica, coriander seeds, orris root, and other woody notes to create cocktails that will help you imagine that exotic destination.
Travel
First up is the flight, so it has to be the Brockmans Aviation cocktail. Take a cocktail shaker filled with ice and simply add 50ml Brockmans Gin, 10ml of Crème de Violette, 15ml of fresh lemon juice; and 10ml of Maraschino Liqueur. Hard shake together; strain into your most elegant, chilled martini glass; and decorate with an edible ball of ice embedded with purple fruits or edible flowers.
Arrive
Perhaps your dream is to overlook a palm-fringed beach on a long, warm, starlit summer night; perhaps to sit by a passionfruit tree watching a glorious red sunset; or to wander along romantic, moonlit cobbled streets of some quaint village… You’ll need something refreshing to cool down at the end of that (imagined) hot day. Try a Floradora (Passionate) Dame.
Muddle 8-10 large chunks of cantaloupe melon in a cocktail shaker. Half fill the shaker with ice. Add 50ml Brockmans Gin, 15 ml of passion fruit puree, 5ml of agave syrup. Shake; fill a highball glass with ice; and then strain the cocktail into the glass. Top with ginger ale to taste. Add the juice and a few seeds from a fresh passion fruit, and stir. Garnish with a thin sliver of melon.
Relax
It’s time to relax as those warm, summer evenings stretch out before you so now is the time for an elegant cocktail that is light on work and big on style and taste. The Brockmans Gin Kir ticks that box. Half fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add equal measures (50ml) of Brockmans Gin and of Sauvignon Blanc along with 25ml of Crème de cassis. Stir; strain into a flute glass; and garnish with a skewered blueberry and a grape.
Raise a glass to staycations, celebrate the easing of lockdown, and travel wherever the mind transports you to darkly romantic evenings.
You can buy Brockmans Gin (RRP £34) and ice ball moulds (£5.95 for four) at https://www.brockmansgin.com/shop/ P+P is extra. Brockmans is also stocked by ASDA, Booths, Co-Op, M&S, Morrisons, Ocado, Tesco and selected speciality retailers and online retailers.