I came across the idea for this recipe whilst reading a book on the origins (and myths) of poplar words and phrases.

The phrase “The Bee’s Knees” originated during Prohibition – it’s use is first recorded in a flappers dictionary in the Appleton Post-Crescent of Appleton, Missouri on 28th April 1922 and it was defined and meaning ‘peachy, very nice’ – well that gave me the foundations for my twist.

The cocktail of the same name is known to have emerged during Prohibition too – it was obviously named for the new phrase and compared to a lot of the rough drinks being bandied around at the time, probably did taste like the Bee’s Knees, or indeed the Cat’s Pyjamas or yes, the clam’s garter.

Once the hangover of the ‘noble experiment’ had eased, the drink was perhaps not as good when made with professionally distilled spirit and consumed without the cloud of illegality overhead. In his 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury proclaimed Prohibition had birthed “such pernicious recipes as the Alexander – equal parts of gin, crème de cacao, and sweet cream; the Orange Blossom – equal parts of gin and orange juice, with or without the white of an egg; the Bee’s Knees – equal parts gin, lemon juice and honey; and so on ad nauseam”

The drinks was described as such in it’s original format of equal parts gin, honey and lemon but later in the book, concedes that when made in the ratio of a classic Gin Sour “merely substituting honey for the sugar syrup, it is acceptable.”

He also goes on to say that “the addition of a small amount of orange juice… Makes an interesting variation.”

This is the recipe that Ted Haigh pick up in his Vintage Cocktails and Spirits but at some point it has been given a name – The Bebbo Cocktail.

In the book, Dr Cocktail scoffs that despite the stupid name, the Bebbo Cocktail has at least merited a page therein whereas the Bee’s Knees “remains justly, nowhere to be found.”

I guess no-one is a fan of the original Bee’s Knees then?!

Don’t you believe it – the rise of the throwback to Prohibition-era drinks and the increasing use of honey as an ingredient has seen the Bee’s Knees actually become quite a common drink albeit in the Gin Sour ratio that Embury recommends. The use of different honeys and other herbs as modifiers (try using clover honey and a pinch of fresh thyme!) has created delicious variations found on drinks lists all around the world.

My own version is a slight modification of the Bebbo simply using peach juice instead of the orange (a nod to that first definition of Bee’s Knees meaning peachy)

Pernicious Peach

50 ml The king of Soho Gin

30ml Lemon Juice

15ml Honey Water*

10ml Peach Juice

Shake well and double strain into a chilled coupette

Garnish with a twist of lemon (and maybe some honeycomb if you have it)

*Whenever you use honey in a drink, when you put it in the shaker, once you’ve added all the liquid ingredients, give it a stir until it has fully dissolved before adding ice and shaking otherwise it won’t become a part of the drink. Better still, you can dissolve the honey in hot water first and add it to the drink already in liquid form.

I was recently working at Imbibe, the drinks industry trade show at Olympia. As well as being able to promote my own brand, I was able to take advantage of the valuable networking opportunities it presented. There were so many people there, lots of whom I hadn’t seen for years and it was nice to see how many of the ‘old’ faces are still actively involved in the industry.

It was on one of the stands where I came across a couple of familiar faces and I was introduced to this divine liqueur.

Haycocks has been devised according to old Gin recipes which were never meant to be drunk mixed with anything – just neat as a medicine. In this case the Juniper as been taken out (thus removing itself firmly away from the Gin camp) instead focusing on the Coriander seed.

Coriander seed is probably the second most important botanical in any Gin recipe – it is that which provides many of the citrus and spice flavours depending on the origin of the seed and is one of the ‘amalgamating’ spices which make all the combined flavours work together and harmonise.

I first tried it in a London Mule which obviously has the liqueur as a base and is topped with ginger beer and fresh lime. It was the perfect drink for a hot day stuck inside what is effectively a large greenhouse. Their other serves are variations of other classic cocktails and demonstrates it’s versatility perfectly.

Their website is pretty sleek too with gorgeous imagery from Karin Taylor (http://www.karintaylor.co.uk/) pure drinkporn which ticks all my boxes!

I’ve got a bottle now at the bar at Iscoyd Park and I’m looking forward to getting it into some of my creations henceforth.

I wonder how many blog/social media posts are going to quote Rupert Holmes’ song today? Apparently though, when he wrote the song, Holmes hadn’t actually tried a Piña Colada he was going to sing ‘If you like Humphrey Bogart’ but thought he’d used too many film references already.

Today is Piña Colada day in Puerto Rico. It celebrates the fact that in 1978, the cocktail was made their National Drink.

Like all classic cocktails, there are a couple of contested originators of the drink but at least, in this case, they are from the same town – San Juan.

The most likely birthplace is the Caribe Hilton Hotel’s Beachcomber Bar and first-hand accounts name Ramón “Monchito” Marrero Pérez as the bartender who put everything in place though all the bartenders were very passionate about promoting ‘their’ drink. Monchito is said to have spent 3 months perfecting the drink and presented it on August 15th 1954 having captured “the sunny, tropical flavor of Puerto Rico in a glass”.

Though the name Piña Colada may have been used much earlier (there are recipes with this name dating back to Cuba in the 1920’s at least!) The drink as most people recognise it became intrinsically linked to both the Waring Electric Blender and Coco López Coconut Cream

Coco López was founded in San Juan in 1954 by Don Ramón López-Irizarry and it has been claimed that during the infancy of the company, Irizarry would spend time at the Caribe Hilton getting the bartenders to experiment with his product.

Initially the majority of the Piña Coladas made at the Caribe Hilton were shaken but Monchito preferred them blended and two nights per week, Coco López sponsored a singer in the hotel and the bartenders made sample Pina Coladas to hand out to the guests but their blenders kept breaking so Coco Lopez bought commercial blenders and loaned them to the hotel.

The drink has definitely been added to and refined since then and nowadays at the Caribe Hilton, they even add cream to the drink which certainly wasn’t in the original recipe. I think it’s fair to say that there are many variations on the theme and adding banana or strawberry flavours to the drink work well too.

My own hint for success is a pinch of salt in the drink – it really brings out all the flavours of the drink . Just a tiny pinch, not enough to make the mix salty and you will have a drink that zings.

My Piña Colada Recipe

50ml White Rum (Something like Banks 5 Island is perfect)

35ml Coco López Coconut Cream

125ml Unsweetened Pineapple Juice

Pinch Salt

Cup of crushed ice

Blend all ingredients until smooth and garnish with pineapple and a cherry.

I decided to make some elderflower cordial for the first time this year. There has been no real reason why I’ve not done it before other than the fact that it hasn’t actually crossed my mind when the elder in blossom. I think I was more prepared this year because I was watching for the May flowers for my previous post and saw that the elder was later to bloom.

Anyway, one afternoon I decided to have a stroll around the gardens at Iscoyd Park where I’m the bar manager and pick some flowers to use. I took a clean bin liner and picked a fair few heads to be on the safe side.

I got around to making the cordial after 2 days, I filled a pan with the flowers and poured boiling water over them until they were completely submerged. I then put the lid on and left them to steep for 12 hours.

The next morning I set the gas and brought the liquid up to boil along with the zest of 2 oranges, 2 lemons and 2 limes as well as the juice of the oranges and limes. I then added 2 kilos of caster sugar, stirred it in and let it boil for 10 minutes.

Ably assisted by my apprentice, the cordial was left to cool and a spoonful of citric acid was added before being bottled. I managed to yield 2 large bottles of cordial and with the rest, I married it with some gin to make an Elderflower Gin Liqueur (I used The king of Soho Gin and it is amazing!) as well as a liqueur based on triple sec which I’m looking forward to incorporating into some cocktails.

One of my favourite cocktails I’ve created was made using Elderflower Cordial and used a very strong flavour combination of Elderflower, Cucumber and Sauvignon.

The drink has had a couple of revisions since I first came up with the idea. It originally featured on the Harvey Nichols menu and was named for a Playboy Playmate who was being used in the advertorials for Patron, the original choice of Tequila.

I then discovered the drink worked better with Porfidio Tequila and because there was no longer the link with Patron another name was needed so I chose Mayahuel. The drink went on to be named ‘Best Aperitif’ at the Drinks international Bartender’s Challenge that year (2004)

Mayahuel was the Aztec goddess of Mother Earth whose earthly representation was the Maguay – the plant from which pulque and later, Mezcal was made. She had 400 children who were represented as rabbits and she had many breasts with which to feed them. The rabbits signify drunkenness and in many latin cultures, where we in Britain would say we can see pink elephants, they claim to be seeing rabbits. The more rabbits you can see, the drunker you are (obviously!)

More recently, the Tequila has had another change to Altos Blanco quite simply because it is the best Tequila I’ve ever tasted and it suits the flavour profile for this drink perfectly with the vegetal and pepper notes just peaking at the right points in the drink. I’ve also just changed the wine from the original Champagne to Freeman’s Bay Marlborough Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc from Aldi. There’s a good chance that for many people the original choice may have to stay but today I tried it with the Freeman’s and it works so well.

Mayahuel Martini

5mm slice of cucumber

15ml Elderflower cordial (I highly recommend my own home-made version)

45ml Olmeca Altos Blanco Tequila

15ml Lemon Juice

50ml Freeman’s Marlborough Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc

In a mixing glass, muddle the cucumber in the elderflower cordial. Add the other ingredients except sparkling wine and double-strain into a chilled Martini glass.

Add the wine and stir gently.

Garnish with cucumber.

This is such a delicious and refreshing drink, it is absolutely perfect for the hot and humid weather we are experiencing at the moment – especially whilst the elderflowers are still in bloom.

One of the most difficult questions to answer has to be “Why do I like Gin?” after all, what’s not to like? It’s boozy, aromatic, versatile, clean, complex and at the same time simple. As I said, what’s not to like?

However, the answer could go deeper than that, way back into my subconscious – It could well be down to my childhood holidays!

Juniper is the primary flavouring ingredient in Gin. It is the only botanical which must be present by law and although it’s presence varies in concentration from one brand to another, it is there in one way, shape or form. Juniper contains many aroma compounds but the main one is Alpha-pinene. It is this hydrocarbon which is responsible for the pine-green and tangy aromas you find in Gin. They can also be described as resinous, woody and earthy.

I have a particular association with these aromas and that is of my childhood holidays. We used to go to the South of France every year and I used to love the warm air with the presence of pine and cypress trees. sometimes you forget these aromas but it doesn’t take much for them to be brought back as a vivid memory.

I hadn’t been to the South of France for many years but my fairly recent trip to Marseille brought back a lot of feelings as soon as I smelled the air, and, I’m certain it made my recollection of the language easier too.

So how does this happen?

Quite simply, the sense of smell is the sense most closely linked to memory and recall.

The olfactory bulb is a part of the brain’s limbic system which deals with both memories and feelings so smells can call up powerful responses almost immediately. The olfactory bulb accesses both the amygdala and the hippocampus. The former processes emotion, the latter conditioned responses. When you come across an aroma for the first time, your brain forges a link between that smell and a memory so it could be a place, a person, a thing or even a moment in time, this will become a triggered response and the next time you are subjected o the aroma, it will affect your mood – even if you don’t notice it consciously.

This effect is often noticeable when offered a drink of something you’ve once overindulged in at sometime in the past. I hear it over the bar a lot about Tequila. Someone drinks a lot of Tequila, spends the majority of the night talking to God on the big porcelain telephone and the next time they smell Tequila they feel queasy because they now have an association with the smell of Tequila and being sick (Funnily enough, another common culprit here, Malibu I have an aversion to because on these same holidays I have bad memories of suntan lotion being vigorously slapped on already-suntanned skin and the smell of coconut brings back those memories.)

One way to ease people back into liking things which they’ve gone off is to alter the headspace of the drink. Using the zest of an orange or grapefruit over a tequila shot will subdue the associative emotion and give the imbiber the ability to overindulge all over again.

So thank you Mom and Dad, for I feel it is at your feet I can lay my love of Gin but don’t worry, I shan’t let the Malibu people hold it against you!

And to answer the post title, I really do find I can remember my French far easier as soon as I’m there. I really have to try hard to speak since it is a long time without practice since I was fluent. I think I may have to indulge in some Gin training to see if my French recall improves.

NB I ALWAYS think my fluency improves after a couple of drinks anyway. Whether the language I am speaking is indeed French I know not but I usually manage to get my point across.

The Negroni was created in Florence, Italy sometime in the late teens or early twenties of the Twentieth Century at Caffè Casoni by a bartender called Fosco Scarselli. It was made for Count Cammillo Negroni.