A unique discovery was made some time ago in the world of booze; it was found that by mixing alcohol, sugar, and various flavourings of innumerable origin, a delicious concoction would be yours for the partaking. Safe in this knowledge, Edmond Briottet was founded in 1836 and the firm garnered a happy reputation thanks to its great success with Cassis and a variety of liqueurs. In fact, Briottet boasts a tremendous catalogue of liqueurs made with an extraordinary selection of fruits, nuts and even seeds!

We were naturally keen to stock as many as we could, so the other day a shipment arrived at the MoM underground lair. We watched it trundling along the mineshaft from the super-secret helipad and there, before us, was a veritable rainbow of créme de this, and liqueur de le bloomin’ that. More...

Okay, so this was taken a couple of weeks after the jar was filled…

Every good bartender (and home cocktail enthusiast) knows that a cocktail is only as good as its ingredients, and one ingredient that is indispensable in the preparation of a plethora of whisky cocktails is the Maraschino cherry.

Traditionally, Maraschino cherries are prepared by preserving small, light coloured cherries in a brine solution, dyeing them red, and then dousing them in Maraschino Liqueur. This technique, whilst effective, is also time consuming, and impossible to undertake unless the cherries are in season and fresh.

Commercially available ‘cocktail cherries’ (note the conspicuous absence of the word ‘Maraschino’) for sale in supermarkets and on the interweb tend to be of inferior quality, containing no Maraschino Liqueur at all, using cheaper sugar syrup, and artificial flavourings to achieve a poor approximation of the real thing. More...

This Friday will be St George’s Day and, as always, it’s a great excuse for some unabashed celebration of all things blighty. With flights across Europe pretty much written off for some time, we can only employ our trademark stiff upper lip and make the best of this glorious sunshine that’s been sweeping the nation.

It’s important to remember St George’s greatest deed, and so we’ll kick start this with the tale of St George and the dragon…

The story begins - according to medieval bestseller Jaobus de Voragine’s classic The Golden Legend - once upon a time in ancient Libya, in a place called Silene. More...

When we flung open the MoM shutters this morning we were greeted with the sound of birds chirping and children playing as blissful sunshine poured into the room.

We’ve earned this summer, having had the coldest winter for 31 years! Just imagine our chagrin last year, when the Met Office promised us a “barbecue summer” and instead we were given drizzle, and lots of it.

Positive Weather Solutions (who have been a tad more reliable than the Met Office and have a pleasingly optimistic name) have predicted Summer 2010 to be a record breaker, with a good chance of temperatures exceeding 2003’s high of 38.5C. This is good news indeed. More...