With World Gin Day upon us it's time to celebrate the only decent spirit that
the English have contributed to the bar shelf behind me, that juniper infused
elixir of life, gin. With the appropriately named cocktail London Calling.
This drink was invented by a bartender named Chris Jepson for a
cocktail competition in 2002, so it doesn't have quite the rich history that
some other cocktails do but it has quickly become a modern classic because
of how delicious and complex it is. Of course gin plays a massive part
in that and so does the dry sherry. Sherry fell out of fashion for a while
but has been rediscovered by bartenders recently, which obviously running a
Spanish bar I am very happy about.
So the hero if this cocktail appropriately for
World Gin Day is our gin, it's always difficult to know which gin to choose
for cocktails and each cocktail will lend itself to a
different style, this one because we really want the gin to shine through
it's good to use what's known as a Navy Strength gin, this just means that it has
a higher alcohol content than your regular gins and the name that comes
from back in the day when the Navy would have gin rations aboard the ship, they
would be worried about them leaking onto the gunpowder and also probably a bit
more worried about whether or not their gin was weaker than they wanted it to
be so there was mix in the gin with some gunpowder and set it on fire it had to
be a certain alcohol level for the gunpowder to still light and that's how
they knew that the naughty distillers weren't giving them weaker gin than
they'd asked for. So Navy Strength doesn't really denote a particular flavour profile
but what it does mean with that higher alcohol content is that whatever
botanicals are used in the gin are really amplified and the length is amazing and
long and that's why it works so well in the London Calling. The original London
Calling recipe was using Beefeater 24 but I've gone for something
a bit more local so this is Never Never they call it a Southern Strength gin
that sits at 52% so a good sort of 10 to 12 percent more than your average gin
and it did just when the best gin in the world so we can't really go wrong.
Otherwise most Navy Strength gins will work or if you can't get your hands on
one of those then just a ballsy London Dry style gin like Tanqueray or Four
Pillars would also work. Our next ingredient is Sherry, I do have a bit of
a thing for Sherry, but rest assured this is not the kind of Sherry that you would
find at the back of your grandma's cupboard. The base wine that makes sherry
is actually quite bland and all of the flavor and complexity comes from the
aging process. This one is a Fino Sherry and that means that it's aged
entirely under a protective layer of yeast which is known as flor and that
means that the oxygen doesn't get in to change the flavor of the wine so you
don't get any of those oxidative notes like nuts or raisins or mushrooms it
stays really fresh and clean, citrusy, floral, herbal, mineral. It's amazingly
complex so absolutely lovely to sip by itself but also an absolute secret
weapon for cocktails. This one is Lustau, it's one of the bigger
bodegas so it's not that expensive that you feel bad about using it in a
cocktail, but still a really lovely wine. Finally we'll be adding a couple of
dashes of orange bitters, they are a really handy thing to have on your back
bar or at home the lift basically any cocktail from an old
fashioned to a martini to something like this, a Sour. Fees is a good brand
so it's Regan's and they're both pretty easy to get a hold off.
To start off with you want to always have your garnish ready to go before you make the drink so
that the drink doesn't end up sitting on the ice once you've shaken it for too
long while your faffing about with peels and things. You're just gonna get your
grapefruit, cut a thin slice of the rind, you can go a little bit thicker if it
makes it easier for you to cut it and then just go back and slice off any of
the excess white bit of pith because that one's quite bitter.
Next we'll squeeze the lemon juice you want it to be fresh because
this is a really nice light fresh zingy cocktail as you don't want to be
using any old citrus in there. And now we can start building the cocktail, you'll
need 40 mils of Never Never Southern strength gin 15 mils of our freshly
squeezed lemon juice, 15 mils of sugar syrup and 15 mils of
Lustau Fino Sherry, and finish off with 2 dashes of orange bitters.
Next we'll fill the smaller part of our shaker tin full with ice, you want to be
shaking on as much ice as possible so that it's gonna be lovely and cold and
refreshing, pop the tins together and shake as hard as you can.
When the tins all nice and frosted and so cold that you can hardly hold it that's when it's
ready so you just pop it open, give it a little taste to make sure it's all
nicely balanced, delicious. This is a very elegant and stylish drink so if you can
find yourself a nice coupe that's how it looks best, pop your Hawthorne strainer
in so that holds the ice back and then pour the drink out through your fine
strainer into your chilled coupe and finally the last little twist
grab your grapefruit garnish give it a sharp flick over the top of the glass so
that all of the grapefruit oils are getting expressed over the cocktail and
you'll get a really lovely grapefruit aroma when you lift a drink up to your mouth.
To place the garnish in the drink if you can give it a little curl so that
it can hook on to the side of the glass and stay there rather than bobbing about
in the drink and in your face when you're trying to drink it.
So right in time for World Gin Day, a London Calling. So now you know.
Thank you very much for watching, don't forget to subscribe, give us a like and
why don't you comment below and let us know what you did for World Gin Day or
what your favorite gin is.
Gin and sherry are a match made in heaven and work in all sorts of styles of cocktail
so if you're not sure about the shaken up sour
that we just made then you could try it in a stirred down martini style drink
called the Tuxedo, so you just switch in dry sherry instead of your ver mix and
it adds a really lovely amount of aromatics and savory notes otherwise if
you're not sure that sherry is your thing although I have no idea why you
would feel that, way you could try the White Lady which is basically the exact
same as the London Calling that we just made
but you switch in some triple sec or Curacao instead of the sherry and also
add some egg white for a lovely fluffy texture.