Anteros

Continuing my quest for that authentic AoS drinking experience I've now moved on from rum to gin. Hayman's Royal Dock gin to be precise. (Okay, so I just happened to run out of gin and couldn't resist buying this :) Hayman Distillers have been supplying gin to the Admiralty since 1863 under the name Senior Service Gin, but it's been rebranded as Royal Dock, after Royal Victoria Dock, the largest of the naval victualling yards and headquarters of the Navy Victualling Board. The bottle bears the crest of Royal Victoria Dock and there's a rather gorgeous picture of the dock and a tall ship on the inside of the back label.

The gin itself is rather coyly referrred to as "navy strength" which means it's 57% alcohol or a hundred proof. So if you spill it on gunpowder it will still light. Handy! Depsite its rather alarming strength I can testify that it's very tasty, though slightly sweeter than modern gins owing to the amount of liquorice in the botanicals (apparently). Also you have to be rather careful pouring G&Ts otherwise you'll be three sheets to the wind in no time!

There's a rather fascinating history of Hayman's navy gin here and some utterly riduclous, but really quite accurate, tasting notes here.



PS That's my AoS wall paper in the background. It's a screen print of an original French damask produced in 1783 at St Antoine. I really am not Ms Interior Decor, but I did fall in love with that paper :}

If there's been a theme to this year's Christmas it has undoubtedly been....rum :} Partner bought me a miniature of The Black Tot, the last consignment of Royal Naval rum that I posted about earlier in the year, and my BFF got me a bottle of Sailor Jerry rum and two very extravagant (and huge!) hand blown cocktail glasses. It would have been rude not to christen the glasses so we spent Christmas evening making rum cocktails and playing whist with BFF and her husband. Hornblower would have been proud of us :) Due to lack of obscure ingredients we ended up inventing our own cocktail, so BFF insisted on giving it a name and suggested calling it after "that ship you're writing about". And so The Indy cocktail was born and here for the record is the recipe!

~~The Indy~~ 2.5 parts Sailor Jerry 1 part Cointreau 1 part lime juice 0.5 parts Amaretto Shake with ice and garnish with a twist of orange peel. Enjoy!

Be warned, these things have quite a kick. I was a bit fuzzy round the edges this morning :} In order to work off the fuzziness we went to see John Barrowman strutting his stuff in the panto. He was fabulous as always but was very nearly upstaged by a very beautiful and very clever performing horse!

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a thoroughly lazy boxing day!