Guilty pleasures

Thursday, 19th November 2009

Johnny Ray thinks it’s time liqueurs were brought out from the back of the cabinet…

I must be getting old. I’ve recently developed quite a taste for after-dinner liqueurs. Years ago when dining out, I used to shudder at the sight of elderly sommeliers shuffling in huffing and puffing behind clinking liqueur trolleys. The offerings were invariably the same, Drambuie, Tia Maria, Crème de Menthe and Cointreau, their capsules and corks encrusted in dried sugar. ‘And something for the lady?’ was the inevitable refrain.

Now, though, I crave them, either because I’m gaining a sweet tooth or simply because there are increasingly delicious examples on the market. I console myself that they must be less fattening than puddings. Here, in price order, is my current top ten:

1. Baileys Original Irish Cream Liqueur, 20% vol, Ireland (from £12.49 per 70cl; widely available). I know, I know, naff as anything! The most publicly derided and privately adored of liqueurs. Well someone
must be drinking it, for with sales of around seven million cases a year, it’s the best-selling liqueur brand in the world. Invented in 1974 and based on the Brandy Alexander, its only ingredients are fresh
cream, triple pot-still distilled Irish whiskey, neutral white spirit, vanilla, chocolate and sugar. Don’t be a snob: it’s delicious sloshed over homemade vanilla ice cream.

2. Gabriel Boudier ‘Bartender Range’ Apricot Brandy, 24% vol, France (£14.85 per 50cl; Arthur Rackham Emporia). The Dijon-based micro-distiller Gabriel Boudier is best-known for its classic Crème de Cassis as well as for its more recent innovations such as the quirky Saffron Gin. Although I love Boudier’s Cherry Brandy, this for me is the tops, an Apricot Brandy that really smells and tastes of, well, apricots. It is sweet and luscious and hopelessly moreish and the ideal post-prandial liqueur when craving something sugary and none-too alcoholic.

3. Hayman’s 1820 Gin Liqueur, 40% vol, England (£14.99 per 50cl; Selected Booths, www.thedrinkshop.com). It took an age for me to realise that the reason I didn’t like gin was because I didn’t like tonic. The trouble is that apart from the odd Dutch genever, few gins taste that good neat either. This, though, does: the world’s first gin liqueur, created by the descendants of James Burrough, the founder of Beefeater Gin. Serve a generous measure over ice in a tumbler and savour the juniper and five-times-distilled pure grain spirit, or simply use as a characterful base for cocktails.

1 | 2 | 3 Next page