Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [78]
Saying and perhaps thinking you like dry drinks, when, in fact, you prefer sweet or sweetish ones, is probably the result of a confused feeling that sweet drinks are ladies’ drinks, perhaps even old ladies’ drinks. Permit me to say that this is rubbish. More important, those who believe it, or act on it, are missing something substantial. One of the good things about the literature of wine, and you may well think that there aren’t that many, is that sweet wines, dessert wines, after-dinner wines are always given their due there as an outstanding part of the drinks scene.
Port, of course, has never needed much in the way of defence, and all I’ll say of it for now is that while vintage port is the really marvellous and singular thing, the variety called late-bottled vintage port, or just late-bottled port, is by no means bad in comparison, and can be poured straight from bottle to glass, saving you the fuss of decanting as well as a good deal of cash.
As for what to drink with puddings and sweets and such, the white wines of Bordeaux and from Germany are the greatest, also the cruellest on the pocket—you can pay £35 a bottle if you feel like it. The best value in this department will be stuff labelled simply Barsac, the name of a village in the Sauternes area and of a fine fruity drink.
Possibly the most delicious of all sweet French wines, and one that has had a tremendous success over here in the last couple of years, is Muscat de Beaumes de Venise from the Rhône, buffed up with grape spirit to a formidable 21.5 per cent alcohol, stronger than port, splendid with a fruit course, also with a melon starter, also on its own.
For something that’s still unusual in this country even after three centuries of importation, go for Tokay from Hungary, not so strong, golden brown, sweet as hell, supposedly tasting of the volcanic soil it’s grown in. If you want a wine to talk about, this might as well be it.
The world of booze is rent by little controversies that are never settled—the rights and wrongs of putting ice in dry sherry, the stirrers of the Dry Martini versus the shakers, and so on. One of the fiercest of these differences of opinion concerns what you should do with the mint in making a Mint Julep. I’d better give my ruling fast, because the Julep is the very thing for a sunny day, and we might be getting one of those any month now. But first the preliminaries.
Get a bottle of bourbon whiskey, the only suitable sort; Scotch is hopeless for this job. Put into a highball glass—a long tumbler—half a dozen or more fresh mint leaves, the small ones from the top of the sprig. All are agreed so far—no one recommends old, slug-nibbled mint leaves. Add a dessertspoon or more of sugar and about as much water. Right. Crush the mint, sugar and water together, says the UK Bartenders Guild. Don’t crush the mint, says Trader Vic, or you’ll get the bitter taste as well as the pleasant, and he goes on to allege that he claps the leaves between his hands to “loosen” the oils in them. There you have the stark choice—to crush or not to crush?
Don’t crush, say I. But I also say, dissolve the sugar in warm water, stir the mint up in the result and leave the whole thing to infuse for an hour or so; that’s if you want to taste the mint. Then add a generous slug of bourbon, like a pub double or treble, stir vigorously, take out the mint leaves, which will be bedraggled by this time, add a lot of crushed ice, or ordinary ice if you can’t face the crushing, stir again, garnish with fresh mint leaves and serve with straws. It’s a bit of trouble, sure, but, as I always say, a non-professional who wants to make a good mixed drink has to take trouble.
Now, yet another Amis original, the Antiquato, easy to make for a change and (though I say it) delicious. Pour over ice cubes four parts Scotch or other whisky and one part Amaretto liqueur from Italy. Add a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters, stir thoroughly and there you have it. Those who notice such things will have noticed that the whisky-plus-sweet-plus-bitter