Virtual Cocktail Night

Since last March, when I had to start shielding, our super friends have joined us every Saturday night for a video call. We've had great fun, mostly quizzing but recently we had a super night doing a virtual wine tasting.

I have always enjoyed organising events, be that meals at home for just me and Hubby, dinner parties, or wine tasting evenings. It seemed a shame to waste the little bottles from our wine night and as we have an overflowing spirits cupboard I came up with the idea of a cocktails night. 

I made the spirit part of each, put it in the mini wine bottles and cut the garnishes. All in a goodie bag along with the mixers to make four cocktails, Hubby did a 'deliveroo' ready for our evening fun. As it was Valentine's weekend I added some Love Hearts, chocolates hearts, a red rose and to add a bit of fun some cocktail straws. 

Before we started cocktail making we opened some bubbly as we had some news to celebrate. Two of our friends are to become grandparents again so we had a virtual cheers to the happy couple.

We had great fun making up the cocktails, no shaking but lots of stirring. I also made a set of quiz questions based on each one; the questions were about the cocktail name and its ingredients. I found out many interesting things when researching them. 

Our first cocktail was a Sloe Screwdriver. A nice an easy one to start with; Gordon's Sloe Gin and orange juice. It was quite refreshing to drink even of the colour looked a bit off (red and orange made a murky brown). Next time I might add  Southern Comfort to make a Slow Comfortable Screw.

Our second cocktail was made using the last of my Orange Marmalade Vodka made by Chase Distillery. I first had this quite a few years ago at a Majestic Wine tasting in Leicester. 

Orange Moscow Mule is made with orange vodka, lime juice, a dash of Triple Sec and ginger beer. Ours had a slight variation; I used orange essence instead of Triple Sec and Fevertree ginger ale (the last few bottles from a case I won last year), garnished with a wedge of lime.

Staying with vodka our third cocktail was Black Magic. We were all surprised to discover Eristoff is made in France, perfect as I used French framboise liqueur along with 7up to make this dark cocktail.

It was very different in taste to expectation to its visual appearance. Black Vodka is flavoured with wild berries and with the addition of raspberry it made a lovely fruity drink, it was the favourite of the night, especially as the garnish was a cocktail cherry (I've not had one of those in years). 

Our final cocktail was one of Hubby's favourites. It's quite strong as there is no mixer although you can add soda water if you really must! A Manhattan is made from bourbon and vermouth served in a Martini glass with a twist of lemon. 

This cocktail has quite a few variations, how would you make yours?

Manhattan - 2 parts bourbon, 1 part dry vermouth

Sweet Manhattan - as the original but with sweet vermouth

Perfect Manhattan - 2 parts bourbon, 1 part made of equal amounts sweet & dry vermouth  

Reverse Manhattan - switch the ratios in any of the above combinations so vermouth is the main ingredient 

Rob Roy - 2 parts whisky, 1 part dry vermouth

The downside of having a cocktail night is all the glassware we used - our three kitchens had a full sides of washing up .... a Sunday morning job! 

I'm sure of little bottles will be used again, although we would all much rather be sharing a large sized bottle in person .... it will soon be a whole year since we started our quiz nights .... unbelievable..... virtual party it is then 🎉