A trio of cocktails for Valentine's Day
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More than six centuries ago, Geoffrey Chaucer described nature as the ultimate matchmaker, pairing birds off mid-February: ‘For this was on seynt Volantynys day, Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make...’
Poets worth their prose partake in alcoholic persuasions, including the Poet Laureate, who receives a ‘butt of sack’ (barrel of sherry) as part-payment for entertaining the nation with: ‘kisses sucked’ (Hughes), ‘Late-Flowering Lust’ (Betjeman), and ‘the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes’ (Larkin).
Love for one’s Valentine demands at minimum a greeting card of clichéd verse — and the gift of upgraded alcohol (often sparkling), whether in toast of a perpetual romance or as solace in bleaker periods.
I called on two barkeeps, Phil Cooke and Fabrizio Cino at Berners Tavern, to create a trio of cocktails for readers to celebrate the yearly love-in. Named after sons of Aphrodite — ‘Anteros’ and ‘Eros’ — the first cocktails inhabit tall cognac glasses, the curves of which evoke dressmakers’ dummies (£13.50 apiece).
Anteros fuses dark cocoa nib vodka with the exaggerated fragrance of freeze-dried raspberries. A candyfloss veil adornment, referencing a wedding veil, is edible. Eros, meanwhile, sees bourbon crisped by bitter chocolate, with a liquorice ‘rope’ signifying the conjugal knot. For sharing, Cooke and Cino brew Yin and Yang!, a gin ‘tea’ of vanilla-spiced oolong poured into teacups bearing butterflies (£20).
‘We get to be creative come Valentine’s,’ says Cooke, while poetic Cino, ‘born in Italy’s Garden of the Serenissima’, adds: ‘I love the backstory of Greek gods, tragedy and the different sides of love.’ Drink their work deeply, 11-17 February (bernerstavern.com).
If a saccharine flick and the sofa are more your lure, settle into Me & Monsieur Jones, the wine-child of two winemakers: Leicester expat Katy Jones and husband Jean-Marc. Old-vine Carignan from her vineyard sumptuously dovetails his vital Grenache (£15.99; nakedwines.com).
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