I don't typically want to change the names of classic cocktails, especially not ones invented in the 1940s, however, in the current climate, calling this a Black Russian felt somewhat distasteful.  I therefore decided that The Zelensky would be a much better name for it.

An incredibly easy drink to make, it was invented in 1949 by a Belgian bartender called Gustave Tops who was working at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels.  He made this drink for the US Ambassador to Luxembourg and named it due to the use of vodka.

Traditionally garnished with a slice of lemon or a maraschino cherry, this is a delightful "sippy" drink that will make you feel incredibly grown up.  That is until you use it to dip one of my yummy doodles into it... 

Traditionally you would add sugar to this, but I am using vanilla vodka as I think it gives it a wonderfully musky flavour.  If you don't have vanilla vodka, you can make your own in one of 2 ways (I'm always here for the life hacks!).  Firstly, if you have used a vanilla pod for baking or cooking, don't throw away the husk, add it to a bottle of plain vodka and leave it for about a week and it will beautifully permeate into the alcohol.  If you don't have the time, or the pods and you have vanilla extract in your store cupboard (please please please use extract NOT essence), then you will need 1 tsp of extract to every 250ml of vodka you use.  Mix the two together and you have vanilla vodka!  Done!  I use Little Pod vanilla as it is not only real vanilla, it is also superior in flavour.

INGREDIENTS

25ml coffee liqueur (I use Fair, but any other coffee liqueur will be fine, although avoid Kahlua unless you are making the "white" version)
50ml vanilla vodka
ice
slice of lemon or maraschino cherry

METHOD

To a lo-ball glass, add your coffee liqueur and top with the vodka.  Add a small amount of ice and stir this with a bar spoon (if you don't have a bar spoon you can use a teaspoon or just swirl it but a bar spoon really does make all the difference).
Once stirred, top off with ice and garnish.

If you want to make a "white" version of this drink - made popular and incredibly cool by The Dude in The Big Lebowski, you simply need to add some cream.  Yum!

A little while ago, our dear friend Jack (aka our enabler), gifted us quite a special bottle of wine and it feels like it would be remiss of me not to talk about it here.
​
​I had to do a little bit of internet searching to find out a bit more about it, but I always love finding out geeky facts about wine production.

​

The Onannon Pinot Noir 2016 from South Gippsland in Australia.  A blend of two vineyards, with the two parcels being fermented separately (but using the same vinification process)​, then blended prior to bottling.  Fruit is hand-picked and de-stemmed and fermented using wild yeasts.  It undergoes natural malolactic fermentation on the lees (yeast) and spends 10 months in barrel.

On the pour, the wine looked aged - like the colour had been drained from it (red wine loses colour as it ages, white gains colour), but in the centre of the glass the colour was concentrated and beautifully oxygenated.  Like the colour of dried blood and dried fruit.

On the nose, I got wild strawberries, meat and a slight smokiness.

On the palate, structured but subtle tannins, an undercurrent of almost salty acidity, raspberries, sour cherries, a sort of iron-like meatiness and a slight herbaceous quality.

It was a joy to drink, and especially when sometimes pinot noir can be a little one note for me - it's a great example of when a grape is treated right and aged well, it can become more than a sum of its parts.  Thanks Jack.  Keep enabling...

Given what we do for a living, Tony and I don't often get to go out for dinner, but when we do, we try to go big. 

A few weeks ago, we went out for a meal at 1* Club Gascon.  We went for their Taster Menu with wine pairings (which is usually our go to as that way we don't have to make any decisions about what we are eating and I don't have to pore over the tome of a wine list and give myself a headache), luckily they were able to cater for me being gluten intolerant (which as I am getting older seems to be less severe which is quite exciting, though dairy is becoming less of a friend...), and we decided on their mixed taster and vegetarian taster (I am trying to eat less meat, and also, it was so nice to be able to try so many different things).  They cleverly paired the same wine to both menus - something I would like to do more of at Copper & Ink, but equally, I do like to pair to the food in a more concentrated and meaningful way - and we tried some really lovely wines.  I did find, however, that their sommelier, whilst incredibly charming and clearly vastly knowledgable, didn't really give us a lot of information about why he had chosen the wine in question, or much about the wine itself.

I promise I will make a point...

During the meal, we had a really lovely Riesling and that prompted a conversation between Tony and I about dessert wines vs still wines and what makes a dessert wine a dessert wine.  I proceeded to talk to him about straw wines, and noble rot and fortified wines and he said he was fascinated.

I was then wondering if perhaps as I learn more about wine, I share it with you here.  We can basically create a glossary of wine terms and then I can review wines as and when I try them and put those terms into practice.

What do you think?  Would this be interesting?  We can start with the letter A and work our way through both wine terms and types of grapes?

Let me know...

It's been a long-ass time since I posted here.  Life, and work (mainly work), has definitely got in the way and prevented me from spending time blogging about food & drink.

I have been pondering over the last few weeks (where I have had the odd few minutes to let my brain catch up), about what I do with this blog & website.  I love having it and I love having a place to talk about food, wine & cocktails, however, I'm not sure that it is getting enough of my attention, or, that it is being used to its fullest.  My pondering has also been linked to how I feel about food & wine at the moment.  Yes, it's my job and sometimes the passion waxes and wanes (because of doing it all the time and because, naturally, our passion for things does as we are only human), but I feel that since having had COVID in 2020 and utterly losing my sense of taste and smell, my palate has changed irreparably.  It has left me concerned that I am no longer capable of tasting and smelling things properly, and therefore, bereft of a purpose in life.  Yes, this seems incredibly melodramatic, but when you find something you have a passion and interest in, it can feel like losing a limb if you are suddenly unable to participate in it in the same way.  It also feeds into a long-held and deep-set fear that I am really not very good at my job... and as now I am feeling unable to taste things 'properly', that fear is being realised.

The question is, do I continue on this path and talk about wine and food in the same way, or do I retreat and let the "professionals" take over?  And, if I do continue to talk about wine here, how do I do it?  Do I follow the Marissa A. Ross method and just basically write about whatever wine I am drinking at the time, or is that just too much of a copy cat thing?  I'm not even sure that I'm even 'qualified' to talk about it anymore.  

For those of you who do read me (thank you mum, Tony and that other person I don't know), what do you want to see here, or are you kind of over it and think I should just shut the fuck up!?

There are far too many questions in this blog post for my liking.  I need a glass of wine...

This cocktail is nearly as old as me (and that's quite old), but strangely, I don't have the memories that should be conjured up when drinking this one as I didn't grow up anywhere where brambles grew.  I lived on a council estate in Fulham so the nearest thing I could have got to foraging was picking up old tin cans or deflated footballs!

Invented in 1984 by Dick Bradsell at Fred's Club in Soho, the Bramble was his way of bringing back memories of foraging for blackberries (or brambles as they are known - though this isn't quite right as the plant itself is called a bramble and the fruit it produces is a blackberry) on the Isle of Wight.  The bramble is made using gin, lemon juice and creme de mure (blackberry liqueur) and has a wonderful sweetly sour flavour.

I make these regularly at Copper & Ink, and made it recently on stage at Foodies Festival alongside some delicious Bramble muffins!

​Serves 1

INGREDIENTS:
3tsp caster sugar
25ml lemon juice
50ml gin (I use Brockmans)
25ml creme de mure (I love British Mure, but any blackberry liqueur will work)
1 blackberry for garnish








METHOD:

• Fill a lo-ball/water glass with ice
• In your cocktail shaker, add the sugar, lemon juice and gin.
• Fill about halfway with ice, clamp on the lid and shake.  You want to ensure the sugar has dissolved.
• Once shaken, strain into your prepared glass.
• Pour over the 25ml of creme de mure
• Garnish with a blackberry

I've made you a little instructional video below.

Please Bramble responsibly!

Now, I'm not saying I've been drinking forever - there was that period way back when when I was actually sober for 2.5 years following some kidney issues - but it is true to say that I've known about different cocktails for a long time.  I mentioned the cosmopolitan in a previous post, and that was introduced to me by the SATC girls when I was 16.  So too did they introduce me to the Long Island Iced Tea, the Statten Island Iced Tea, the Tartini and many more, but they didn't introduce me to this one.  I came to this one very late in life.  Well, too late in my life anyway for how good of a cocktail this is.

Like most cocktails, there doesn't seem to be a definitive date when it was created, however, it was definitely written about in the late 1920s.  There is also contention as to the origin of the name.  

Some camps say that the name is derived from the small tool used to drill holes and the "drilling" it gives the drinker, some saying it was named after Surgeon Admiral Sir Thomas Gimlette who is purported to be the first person to add lime cordial to a daily tot of gin for those serving in the Navy to stave off scurvy.

I personally love both ideas of this being where the name stemmed from, but more than that I love the drink itself.  Such a popular drink in the 50's; even Raymond Chandler mentioned it (saying it should be equal parts gin and Rose's lime cordial "and nothing else") in his 1953 novel 'The Long Goodbye'.

Whilst there have been and I'm sure will continue to be many different ways of making this classic cocktail, it seems to have fallen out of favour somewhat which makes me sad.  It's insanely easy to make, is refreshing and utterly delicious.  And yes, it has a penetrating effect just like a drilling tool and incidentally I'm scurvy free, so, what's not to love?!

You could channel your inner Betty Draper by wearing a twin-set & pearls and marrying & divorcing an adulterous narcissist, or, make it easier on yourself and make yourself a Gimlet using my recipe below.  I know which one I prefer...

• 50ml gin
• 50ml lime cordial (you can use fresh lime juice and some sugar syrup if you prefer)
• Ice
• Lime wedge / Lime twist

Method:

1. Chill your cocktail glass (you'll thank me later)
2. Add the gin and lime cordial to your cocktail shaker
3. Fill with ice to about half way or just over
4. Shake vigorously 
5. Double strain into your chilled glass
6. Add a lime wedge or a lime twist

I've even made a little old style video for your viewing pleasure...

Please Gimlet responsibly!

Lastly, we head to France for the Roc' Ambulle Pet Nat Negrette.  This is a natural, organic, sparkling pink made from Mauzac & Negrette grapes.  Pet Nat, for those who don't know, is short for pétillant naturel and basically means naturally fizzy.  The wine is bottled before the primary fermentation is complete and without any additional yeasts or sugars, allowing the final throes of fermentation to happen in bottle creating this wonderful tongue tingling sparkle.  This is unlike the champagne method in which the wine undergoes a second fermentation in bottle.  Because it is a natural wine it did contain some sediment, which although doesn't affect the flavour, it did, on the last mouthful, impair my enjoyment of the wine.  It can sometimes be beneficial to decant natural wines, (perhaps through cheesecloth or muslin), to remove this sediment, but I do love a natural wine.  This one was nice; a lovely shade of pink akin to a rose lemonade (mmm, rose lemonade, I quite fancy a glass of that right now actually) and was perfectly pétillant. It had notes of strawberry and a pink grapefruit acidity on the nose and the palate offered up candied strawberries and juicy cherries.  I think I said in my Instagram post that both of these flavours had been subtly kissed by a rose in bloom.  Yes, this is a very wanky thing to say, but I stand by the description as I think it works.  Plus, I'm reviewing wine, and that can definitely be considered a wanky 'profession'!  A lovely example of a Pet Nat, and certainly very quaffable, but can't say it was massively memorable.  7/10 ​

Grape(s): Garnacha (100%)
Year: 2019
Appearance: Very dark purple as to be expected from such a young wine
Nose: The nose had characteristics of dark fruits, marzipan and spice
Palate​: On the palate some very grippy tannins, a touch of acidity, marzipan and dark berries with a medium plus to long finish.
Verdict: The high percentage of alcohol did lead to a bit of alcohol burn at the back of the palate and down the the throat, however, it had quite a rounded mouth feel and some really lovely notes of berries and almonds.  I would definitely drink this wine again, and I also really loved the fact that it was made more traditionally and aged in amphora. ​

Grape(s): Bacchus, Ortega, Faber, Sieberrebe and Huxelrebe
Year: 2018
Appearance: Almost clear, but a very pale lemon colour
Nose: The nose had hints of peach, apricot and elderflower
Palate​: On the palate stone fruits (mainly peach), some citrus (lemon oil) and a slight creaminess on the finish.  Dry, but not overly so.
Verdict:  A really lovely example of an English white wine and very easy to drink.  For me, it wouldn’t work as a food wine as anything too acidic or vinegary would affect the flavour of the wine too much and make it unpalatable.  This is definitely a ‘sit on the balcony in the warmth of a dying summers eve and drink with friends’ kind of wine. ​