Eight: Santa Rosita

Yesterday was National Margarita Day in the US, which is as good a reason as any to play around with a bit of tequila. Edinburgh at the tail-end of February might be some way from ideal Margarita-drinking conditions, but we had a rummage around our pile o' stuff regardless.

Santa Rosita

30ml José Cuervo Tradicional
15ml Cointreau
15ml Rose syrup
60ml lime juice

Rim a martini glass with vanilla sugar. Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into the chilled, rimmed glass.

Seven: Abelinha

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a lot of the recipes I post use honey as a sweetening agent in cocktails. It has become something of a hallmark of my recipes, like the guy who always uses sherbet in his drinks, or the guy who can't not use a foam. One of the things I love about honey is its versatility. As with anything, different kinds of honey have different characteristics, from lighter varieties such as Acacia through to darker, more pungently flavoured ones like Manuka. Choosing the right one to complement the other flavours in a drink can be tougher than you think it's going to be.

Honey also has a great heritage - it is, after all, the original sweetener. In Europe, man was using honey to add flavour to food and drink long before sugar cane was discovered. Since then, sugar spread like wildfire, inspiring creativity, commerce - not to mention war, slavery and cruelty on an industrial scale. Honey, on the other hand, stayed sweet.

Abelinha

50ml Cachaca
1 barspoon honey (works better with a lighter variety)
25ml pink grapefruit juice
25ml cranberry juice
25ml pineapple juice

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled highball. Garnish with a long grapefruit zest.

MxMo: hard drinks for hard times

This month's Mixology Monday is worried. It worries about its job, its mortgage and, above all, it worries about its future. It's not easy being the internet's premier monthly mixological get-together, but this month's theme proposed by Matt at Rowley's Whiskey Forge could give it a few tips for getting through the crunch. Drinking has seen of tough times before, of course. If outright prohibition couldn't kill hard spirits, then lacking a bit of cash won't either. However, to my mind, when money gets tight it's the fancy imported stuff that ends up first in the firing line and you aim to make do with what's local. Luckily, this means I get to play with Scotch whisky.

(Whisky Galore! by foxypar4, licenced under Creative Commons.)

Much like the global economy, Scotch hasn't had the best of luck over the past few years. 2008 saw blended Scotch overtaken by vodka in UK off-licence (liquor store) sales for the first time and while the category as a whole is still ahead, it seems likely to be caught within the year. But - unlike the economy - some green shoots can be seen, with Diageo building Scotland's first new whisky distillery in 30 years and Glenmorangie investing £45m in new headquarters and bottling site in the Central Belt. Looking back, whisky producers haven't always been that keen on contributing to the economy anyway. As tradition would have it, distilleries were often established in inaccessible glens to confound excisemen sent to tax the stills.

One of the great strengths of a good blended Scotch is its versatility. Quality brands will mix well with dark fruit flavours and heavier notes, but they'll also play with lighter herbal, more aromatic tastes. One thing you can guarantee is that is price will be roughly proportionate to malt content. Dropping less cash will net you a higher percentage of grain whisky in the blend; these will tend toward younger, less flavourful whiskies column-distilled from mixed grains. If economics demand that you stick to a budget, there are gems to be found - Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Black Bottle spring immediately to mind - but if you're planning on spending less than $20/£12 on a blended Scotch, you may be better off pouring some vodka into a barrel and leaving it in the garage for a couple of years.

There's another quality of Scotch that makes it perfect for post-austerity drinking: you don't need to mix it with anything. Sure, you can use it in cocktails and the like, but there's many a purist who will tell anyone with ears that adding anything other than water - maybe, just maybe an ice cube or two, possibly - is heresy of the first order. That said, it feels a little too much like cheating not to include a recipe beyond a Scotch on the rocks. Of course, given no-one anywhere has any money, it would seem foolish to start throwing starfruit and other exotica into a shaker. This month, we're keeping it simple and local. And cheap, hopefully.

Highland Bramble

45ml blended Scotch whisky
30ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 barspoon honey
1 dash egg white (optional, I just like the look and the texture)
15ml Crème de Mure

Shake the first four ingredients with ice. Strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass and drizzle the Crème de Mure over the top. Garnish with a handful of blackberries and/or raspberries.

Six: La Spirale

(Spiral Staircase by sjdunphy, licensed under Creative Commons.)

Vodka has been described as the most difficult spirit to use creatively. Possibly by me when I was lacking inspiration, but the point stands. After all, vodka comes off the still somewhere north of 95% ABV before being diluted to bottling strength which means that a 70cl bottle is going to contain roughly 60% water by volume and maybe 2% of things that aren't alcohol or water. That's not a lot of flavour to work with.

Think of a popular vodka cocktail - don't pick a vodka Martini, that's cheating - and then ask yourself, "what does this taste off?" The chances are that your answer won't be vodka. Compared to the classic gin, whiskey or rum drinks, vodka cocktails tend to leave their main ingredient in the background.

Then again, there are always flavoured vodkas. They certainly allow you to bring the base ingredient into focus, but that still won't emphasize a "vodka-ish" flavour. It's a tough beat, vodka.

...Yes, I am prepping ideas for a vodka-sponsored competition.

La Spirale

25ml Absolut Pears
25ml Teichenné Apple Schnapps
1 barspoon Campari
25ml pressed apple juice
1 dash egg white

Shake all the ingredients with ice and fine-strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Garnish with an apple fan.

Five: Tokyo Blossom

There are some products that get a hard time from bartenders. Whenever they're mentioned in conversation, we wrinkle our noses and shake our heads for whatever reason, if we've given it enough thought to come up with a reason. Take - for example - Midori. The fact that it was launched in Studio 54 at the Saturday Night Fever wrap party in 1978 has left the liqueur with a cheesy disco tag it may never shake off, and its popularity among young girls with a sweet tooth and drinkers of the saccharine, unbalanced, fruit concoctions the 80's were famed for are not helping its reputation with old-school cocktail revivalists. Midori does a couple of things very well. It brings an instant hit of fruit to a drink, along with a stand-out colour and a good degree of sweetness. These can all be helpful characteristics, so long as they're not allowed to overpower the whole drink. It might have an image problem, but Midori can be a useful ingredient when it comes to start thinking about summer cocktails.

Tokyo Blossom

30ml Absolut Citron
15ml Midori
5ml Kwai Feh lychee liqueur
30ml White Grape juice

Stir all ingredients with ice. Snap an orange zest over the top, but don't drop it in. Garnish with a cherry.