Back to blog
All of us have no doubt spent a large part of our holiday season nights out waiting for what feels like an eternity before we were served our cocktail – with an added price premium for the occasion, obviously. So why not take matters into your own hands this year and mix up your favourite Christmas cocktails at home?
Make your festive evenings and New Year’s Eve home party extra special with our easy to make Christmas cocktail recipes. Whether you like a gin, rum, or sparkling wine base for your cocktails, we’ve got a cocktail that will get you and your guests right into the festive spirit.
Buttered Rum Old Fashioned
Traditionally made with Irish, bourbon or rye whiskey, the Old Fashioned dates back to the 19th century and was one of the first cocktails (the first reference to it came with the first-ever published definition of the word cocktail in 1806), before the development of advanced bartending techniques and recipes in the later part of the 19th century.
But it also works wonderfully well with rum. After all, the Old Fashioned is more of a template than an exact recipe. This one does require a bit of prep work to make the brown butter rum, but once you have that on hand, it is the perfect cocktail for a festive evening.
Ingredients
60ml brown butter rum (see below)
1 dash vanilla essence
3 dashes chocolate bitters
1 tablespoon soft demerara sugar
Garnish: orange peel
For the brown butter rum, you’re going to need:
1 x 70cl bottle of Lugger Rum
125g butter
For making the brown butter rum, melt the butter in a pan on the hob. Keep warming the butter to remove any water, which will result in sizzle and pop (tilt pan to avoid the butter burning).
When the butter turns amber and has a nutty aroma, remove from the heat, and leave to cool until lukewarm.
Pour the rum into an airtight jar and add the butter. Close the jar and shake to mix the rum and butter, then leave to chill in the fridge for three days.
After three days in the fridge, the mixture in the jar will have solidified, so simply place the jar in a bowl of warm water to separate the butter and rum.
Strain the buttered rum through a muslin cloth and discard the butter solids. Pour the rum into a bottle and store it in the fridge until needed.
Method
First, place the sugar in an old fashioned glass or a small tumbler and add a dash of water.
Add in the vanilla essence, chocolate bitters and sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
Fill the glass with ice, add the buttered rum and gently stir to combine.
Express the oil of an orange peel over the glass and then drop it in the glass.
Kir Royale
A classic celebratory cocktail, perfect for New Year’s Eve. It contains sparkling wine and Crème de cassis (a sweet, dark red liqueur made from blackcurrants), and it’s typically served in a flute glass. The Kir Royale is a fancier take on the Kir, a popular French drink made by combining dry white wine and crème de cassis that dates back to the 19th century.
It sounds pretty simple, but trust me, it tastes more complex than its constituent parts. For best results, chill the sparkling wine until very cold and place the flute glasses into the freezer a few minutes before making them.
Ingredients
1 tbsp crème de cassis
Lyme Bay Winery Brut Reserve English Sparkling Wine
Garnish: one fresh or frozen blackberry or raspberry
Method
Pour the crème de cassis into the bottom of a champagne flute.
Top with chilled sparkling wine and garnish with the fresh or frozen blackberry or raspberry.
Christmas Negroni
A Negroni is an Italian cocktail, originally made of one part gin, one part red, semi-sweet vermouth, and one part Campari, garnished with an orange peel. The Negroni is said to have been invented in Florence by the infamous Italian count Camillo Negroni in the early 20th century and is one of the most popular stirred drinks in history.
Few cocktails have encouraged more experimentation than the Negroni, and today it can be found in myriad iterations at restaurants and cocktail bars around the world. For example, replace your usual gin with Lyme Bay’s Winter gin, which has lingering notes of black pepper and nutmeg combined with blackberry and elderberry and a hint of burnt orange, add a cinnamon stick as a garnish alongside the typical orange peel and give this classic Italian cocktail an instant festive feel.
Ingredients
25ml Lyme Bay Winter Gin
25ml sweet or semi-sweet red vermouth
25ml Campari or a bitter of your choice
Garnish: orange peel, cinnamon stick
Method
Pour the gin, vermouth and Campari into a mixing glass or jug with ice and gently stir to combine.
Strain into a tumbler, add some fresh ice and garnish with the orange slice and cinnamon stick.
Order your Christmas drinks
If you’d like to place an order for any of our award-winning drinks to use as a base for your Christmas cocktails or enjoy them on their own, give a look at our Christmas drinks page. We offer free delivery for every order over £45, and on top of that, you get 5% off if you spend more than £150.
Alternatively, you can always contact our friendly team at the winery via email at [email protected]. You can call us on 01297 551355 if you’d like to place an order by phone or simply pop in at our winery shop near Axminster in Devon. You can also find Lyme Bay on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for updates, offers and giveaways.
Lyme Bay Winery’s Christmas drinks are the best way to start the festive season!
