We asked our writers to write about their favourite cocktails, from aperitifs to nightcaps, all the way through to the hangover cures. Here’s what they said.
Matthew Parris
The Iron Lady
For years in the 1980s I tried to develop a cocktail to be called the Iron Lady. There were problems: the signifier for iron is really red, while she was clearly blue; and the only blue liqueur I could find was Blue Curaçao. My final prototype consisted in vodka and Blue Curaçao, with a cube of ice impaled by a steel nail (freeze with nail in place, or heat the nail and push it through). It was OK — but the Curaçao was so sweet that you could only use a little, and the whole thing lacked the kick or bite that I think she would have wanted. I feel this is still work-in-progress and would welcome readers’ own proposals. The other way forward is, I suppose, a Bloody Margaret, but she wasn’t a tomato-juice or Tabasco person, and — outside the territories of the Masai — real cattle blood for drinking is hard to procure.
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