In this country we live under a partly sensible law that forbids us to distil alcohol. But while homemade whisky, vodka, gin and rum are off the home-brew menu there is really nothing to stop us modifying the flavour of shop-bought spirits in whatever way we choose. Enter, if you please, the wonderful world of infusions.
I am a big infusion enthusiast and few items of vegetable matter have escaped my infuser’s hand. That is the exciting thing about it – if you like the taste of a plant, fruit, nut, or just about anything that is at least partly soluble in water or alcohol and not poisonous, then you can make an infusion out of it. Endless experimentation is possible as the process is always easy, often very quick indeed and, unlike beers and wines, infusions can be made in tiny quantities. If you like melons or kumquats, fennel or bay, chestnuts or walnuts, just drop them in alcohol for a while to see if you like the resulting liquor.
Types of infusion
There are four kinds of infusions: fruit, nut, floral and plant.
Fruit infusions As a dedicated forager I come across endless amounts of fruit from the hedgerow every year. Some, like raspberries and blackberries, find ready use in the kitchen but many are a trial for the cook. I cannot, however, think of any edible wild fruit that does not make a good infusion and otherwise intractable fruits, such as sloes, elderberries and rosehips, make themselves useful at last.
Of course the hedgerow is not for everyone, but fruits from the garden, shop or market are just as infusible, although even the most reluctant forager might find it depressing to buy blackberries. Like hedgerow fruits, nearly any small shop-bought or home-grown fruit will work in an infusion. Whichever fruit you use, do select only those that are in perfect condition and choose fruit which is under-ripe rather than over-ripe to ensure a sharp fruitiness.
Not everything works though. Strawberry vodka, for example, is sickly, syrupy stuff and one is not encouraged by the fact that the colour leaches from the strawberries, leaving them pale, pink and looking like a bottle of shaved rats.
There is one enormous bonus with fruit infusions – you can, usually, eat the fruit after the drink is decanted off. Raspberries, damsons, cherries and many more fruits that have been gently soaking in sugar and alcohol for half a year make wonderful additions to fruit salads or trifles.
The process for making fruit infusions is so simple that the word ‘process’ is overstating the matter. You simply put all the ingredients into a jar, leave them, then strain out the fruit.
Nut infusions These are very popular, with several brands commercially available. It can take several months for the flavour to leave the nut and enter the alcohol, but it is worth the wait if you like nut liqueurs. Heat, however, does speed things up a little and I have occasionally resorted to standing jars of hazelnuts or macadamia nuts in warm water for a few hours to get things going.
Since the principle is very straightforward I have included only one recipe – chestnut liqueur. There is no reason why hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, pecans and so on could not be used, although I would draw the line at peanuts. Hazelnut liqueur is the most successful as it has a good, strong flavour, almonds less so. While chestnuts are best left whole, the other nuts should be crushed. Crushed nuts produce a murky concoction, but it will clear completely if left peacefully on a shelf for a month or two before decanting into a bottle.
Floral infusions These lovely infusions are very quick and very easy. Drinking them straight can be like downing a bottle of eau de cologne, but in a mix they work very well and are certainly worth the small effort they take to make. They are also the quickest of all home brews, the bouquet of any petal being absorbed by the alcohol in a matter of hours. Not all flowers smell nice and many, such as foxglove and aconite, are actually deadly so I stick with a handful of fragrant flowers which I know are safe.
There is no need to add sugar to a floral infusion unless you want to, or you are using a very large quantity of petals that will contain sufficient water to dilute the alcohol. For this reason I have provided no proper recipes – you simply pack a Kilner jar about half-full with petals and top up with a spirit; 2 tsp sugar may be added if you want it sweetened slightly. Decanting can usually be done the next day and certainly within a week and there should be no need to filter.
Plant infusions By plant infusions, I mean everything apart from the flower, fruit or nut which is actually edible, or at least not poisonous. When picking wild plants always check with a plant book if you are unsure exactly what a plant looks like as some look-alikes are famously poisonous. Generally speaking, you will not need to add sugar to plants as their water content is unlikely to be great enough to seriously dilute the alcohol. Like flower infusions, most are ready very quickly, requiring only 3 or 4 days in the cupboard prior to decanting.
Since there are several hundred thousand species of plants there is an awful lot to explore – several can be bought or grown, but many are available in the hedgerow, field and wood. I have also included two recipes for which the term ‘plant infusion’ is stretching the definition of plant a little too far; one is made from a lichen, the other from amber. In an act of charity I have not included my recipe for seaweed gin.
Ingredients
There are only three main ingredients needed for infusions – and often you will get away with just two:
•The fruit, nut, flower or plant you wish to infuse
•A spirit, such as whisky, gin or vodka
•Sugar (sometimes optional)
Spirit Which spirit you choose to use for an infusion is entirely up to you, though vodka is the most reliable because of its neutral flavour, followed by gin, white rum and brandy. Whisky is harder to use, although there is at least one first-class drink that can be made with it; see Blackberry whisky. For the purist the spirit should, perhaps, be an eau de vie. These are unmatured distillations from grain, grape or apple fermentations.
How good a quality should your spirit be? This really depends on the strength of flavour of the infused plant material and the depth of your pocket. With fruits you can get away with supermarket own brand if you want, but for delicate flavours such as those of flowers I suggest splashing out on something a little better as the harsh qualities found in cheap liquor can overwhelm them.
Sugar Adding sugar to an infusion is not always necessary, but with most fruits, and some plants and nuts, the amount of water they will add to the liquor can dilute it to the point where things start to ferment and go bad. Sugar restores the preservative balance (osmotic pressure and stuff) and bugs will not grow. Soft fruits such as raspberries need a lot of sugar, while firmer fruits like crab apples and sloes need less. I always use granulated sugar for my infusions.
If you add sugar to an infusion the result will be a liqueur; if you do not it will remain a liquor or spirit.
Before we proceed I must come clean about my own opinion on liqueurs, if not flavoured liquors. I was brought up in Portsmouth (correctly pronounced ‘paws-muff’), an interesting town but not one known for its sophistication. Should I ever have asked for a Drambuie or a Cointreau in the Fawcett Inn (seriously) eyebrows would have been raised and there would have been a very good chance I would have had to defend my masculinity in the street outside. Perhaps it is for this reason or perhaps just a general dislike of too much sweetness in alcoholic beverages that I have never had much time for certain liqueurs. But I still make them because my friends like them and some fruit liqueurs are perfectly pleasant by virtue of their intense fruitiness. And they do not always have to be sickly sweet. In addition, and this is important, sweet infusions can form the basis of a good cocktail.
Equipment
Very little equipment is required to make infusions. It all needs to be clean but nothing needs to be sterilised:
•Kitchen scales
•A 1-litre measuring jug
•Funnel
•Glass containers to infuse in. Kilner jars are the favourite, but old jam jars are also fine.
•Glass bottles to store the finished drink. Swing-top bottles are the obvious option but it is sometimes more interesting to use corked bottles. I scour junk shops and antique markets for ancient or unusual bottles and have an APB out among my friends for such treasures.
That’s it, though the following may also be useful:
•Sieve
•Muslin
•Wine filter for infusions that come out cloudy
Things to consider
There is really nothing that can go wrong with infusions, even if you try. The only problem I have encountered (it was someone else, not me!) was when a cherry plum brandy started to ferment and go a little mouldy. The liquor had absorbed water from the fruit, lowering its alcohol and sugar content to levels that allowed yeasts and other micro-organisms to grow. The answer is to use relatively high levels of alcohol and sugar, or to put it another way, a relatively small amount of fruit.
Sunlight is never beneficial to alcoholic drinks; the bright attractive colours of many infusions are quickly lost and the flavour too can suffer. Always keep your infusions in a cupboard or dark corner of the kitchen.
Although it makes little difference with many infusions, leaving something to infuse for a very long time can cause cloudiness and extract some of the more unpleasant flavours. This is the voice of sad experience as I am a forgetful infuser who occasionally comes across murky bottles of orange peel that have been infusing for years rather than the required few days.
Filtering using specialist wine filter paper can reduce cloudiness. My answer to anyone who complains is to say that it is supposed to be like that.
Sloe gin (or vodka)
| SEASON | September–December |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months–1 year |
This recipe is the basis for most infusions so it is well worth reading through even if sloe gin is not for you (though why that would be so I cannot imagine). Sugar quantities and timings vary between recipes.
This famous drink is made in startlingly large quantities in the countryside. Indeed the very mention of home brewing in West Dorset during a dinner party will result in the appearance from a distant cupboard of some of this year’s, last year’s or autumn 1982’s vintage. Opinions are sought and recipes swapped. Arguments sometimes ensue.
What is seldom discussed is where the sloes were found. This would be as socially unacceptable as discussing bank balances or marital details – foraging locations are always kept a secret. Such secrecy in most parts of the countryside is rather misplaced when it comes to sloes, as the blackthorn on which they grow is extremely common; it is just a matter of form I suppose. In town, however, blackthorn bushes are thinly distributed and a trip to the country (to steal some of ours) may be necessary.
When a blackthorn is found in fruit it tends to be in fruit a lot – the sloes cluster around the branches like long, thin bunches of grapes and a single bush will often supply the needs of a whole year. They are easy enough to pick provided you avoid the astonishingly nasty spines (it is not called Prunus spinosa – the ‘spiny plum’ – for nothing). These frequently leave you with a wound that turns septic.
If you’ve never tasted a raw sloe I do recommend trying one (few will wish to try more). These are among the most astringent of all fruits, resulting in comical facial distortions and un-ladylike spitting. A warm autumn and a mild early winter will often produce relatively large fruit which have turned at least some of their astringency to sweetness, but not so much that you would want to eat them for dessert.
Sloes have a chequered alcoholic history and sloe gin has only fairly recently achieved respectability as a bona-fide beverage. A few lines from a lengthy polemical poem on British ills from 1717 sums up the situation:
White, Claret, Sherry, Mountain, Tort,
Tho’ none oft e’er had cross’d the Seas,
Or from the Grape deriv’d its Lees,
But made at Home, ’twixt Chip and Dash,
Of Sugar, Sloes, and Grocer’s Trash
In an 1838 novel by one Edward L. Joseph, sloe juice and gin was described, scathingly, as a mixture ‘which the inhabitants of London swallow for port’. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that sloe gin became a respectable drink. Now everyone – well, pretty much everyone in West Dorset at least – makes it and is proud.
There seems to be a fundamental law of nature that the number of possible recipes and opportunities for argument is inversely proportional to the number of ingredients. With only three, sloe gin has accrued more recipes and opinions than any other drink I know. One of the several matters over which there is endless discussion is when the sloes should be picked.
Some pick their sloes early in the autumn but many insist on waiting until after the first frost when they become a little sweeter and the skins become softer; thus permitting the infusion, it is thought, to proceed faster. I just pick them when they are big enough. The sweetness of the fruit is immaterial in sloe gin as so much sugar is added in the making.
My advice is to just pick any sloe you find which is actually ripe, which can be from September through until Christmas. I frequently hear the suggestion that sloes should be put in the freezer for a day or two to replicate the effects of frost, but this, like the habit of pricking the fruit, just adds an extra step with little effect on the finished product.
What truly makes a difference with sloe gin is how long you leave the sloes in the gin before bottling and (the hardest part) how long you leave the bottle on the shelf before you drink it. While sloe gin is perfectly palatable after 3 months, a further year of maturity helps enormously. By a very long way the best sloe gin I have ever tasted was one made by my friend David who found a seventeen-year-old bottle in his cupboard. It was like the finest Malmsey Madeira and, crucially, tasted nothing like sloes or indeed gin. Since that happy discovery we have taken a tiny glass together every Christmas.
Why sloe gin in the bottle improves with age is a matter for the chemist but the effect on flavour from lengthening the period of infusion is easily explained. At the heart of every sloe is a stone and at the heart of every stone is a nut. The nut is a tiny version of a related but larger-fruited species, the almond. When sloes are left in the gin for 4 months to a year the flavour of almonds is extracted from the nut and permeates the drink. Of course it is all a matter of taste and it was certainly not to the taste of a country-show judge who disgracefully marked down another friend’s sloe gin to second place in a competition because it tasted of almonds. If, for reasons best known to yourself, you agree with the judge then take out the sloes at around 3 months.
My basic sloe gin recipe is extremely simple; no added flavourings such as juniper berries or almonds, just straight in the jar with all three basic ingredients. Actually there is one very big thing I do differently – I prefer to use vodka. It gives a cleaner flavour and is palatable sooner than when using gin.
Makes about 600ml
280g ripe sloes, washed
140g sugar
About 600ml gin or vodka
Put the sloes in a 1-litre Kilner jar, pour over the sugar and the gin, close the lid and shake. Store the jar in a dark cupboard, shaking once every day until the sugar has all dissolved.
After 3 months – or 6 months or a year – strain out the sloes, using a muslin-lined funnel placed in a bottle. Cork or seal your bottle and store in a dark cupboard. Wait for at least a year before drinking... if you can.
If your sloe gin is a little murky it is possible to filter out the offending particles using filter paper placed in a funnel. Buy some good-quality wine filter papers (coffee filter paper does not work) and fold them repeatedly to form a pleated cone.
Slider
I cannot leave sloe gin without mentioning the dark subject of slider. This is a drink devised to avoid the unhappy experience of having to throw away used sloes, which people know in their hearts to still contain a certain amount of flavour, sugar, and most importantly, alcohol.
Attempts have been made to remove the stones from sloes and dip the flesh in chocolate, something I have tried myself. You might as well dip little bits of softened leather in chocolate, it will taste better.
Much more sensible is to chuck the whole lot into some dry cider to make what is in effect a reverse infusion. The resulting, somewhat strangely coloured, liquor (it looks like a slightly brown rosé) has the flavour that one would expect – fruity, almondy and cidery. Slider acquired its name partly from a rather obvious play on words, but mostly from making people slide down the wall they find themselves leaning against.
The easiest way to make slider is to simply top up your Kilner jar of sloes with dry still cider after you have decanted off the sloe gin. It is worth drinking within a couple of weeks as the exposure to the air can spoil the cider and even start it fermenting again. A variation is to use a dry wine (white or red) instead of cider but it is difficult to know what to call it. ‘Sline’ is not an appealing name for anything you would want to drink.
Sloe gin
Smoked sloe gin (or vodka)
| SEASON | All year |
| INFUSION TIME | Not applicable |
This is a silly idea but I have had an enormous amount of fun with it. We are used to eating smoked foods and some of us even smoke food at home. In fact hot-smoking fish on a grid over a frying pan of oak chips, cinnamon, cloves, etc. is easy and I highly recommend it. But what of smoked sloe gin or smoked drinks in general? Is it easy to smoke alcoholic drinks, and why would you want to?
Well, it is very easy; I have been experimenting and have devised a set-up you can cobble together in 10 minutes from stuff lying around the kitchen. As to ‘why’, I must really leave that for you to answer when you try it, but there is a noticeable effect on flavour and it looks so very cool.
Smoking drinks is simply a matter of squirting smoke through a drink, any drink, and serving immediately. If you get it just right there is a little bit of smoke floating above the liquor in the glass. For this you will need a saucepan you do not think too highly of and a scrupulously clean, used squirty washing-up-liquid bottle, with a small plastic or metal tube pushed into the nozzle.
Smoking is a worthwhile excursion for some drinks but certainly not for others. It goes well with highly flavoured, rather heavy tipples – I certainly would not recommend trying it with elderflower sparkly or cowslip wine, but with sloe gin, whisky and seriously heavy beers such as my Rauchbier it does work.
Makes 2 glasses
2 glasses of sloe gin or vodka (here)
½ cup of oak chips
Pared zest of ½ orange
1 cinnamon stick
About 6 cloves
Have your glasses of sloe gin ready. Place all the other ingredients in your oldest saucepan and fashion a foil tent with a little closed chimney over the top. Set it over a medium heat. Once smoke starts to creep under the edge of the tent, just snip the point of the chimney off with scissors, quickly suck out some of the smoke with the washing-up-liquid bottle and immediately inject it into the glasses of sloe gin. One squirt usually does the trick though you can do it again if you like. Serve absolutely immediately.
Smoked sloe gin
Damson vodka
| SEASON | September–October; July–August for cherry plums |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
Large plums are difficult to use for infusions because they tend to rot before they are permeated with sufficient sugar and alcohol to preserve them, and cutting plums in half will just make the drink cloudy. But small plums, particularly damsons, work extremely well in an infusion, like their sloe relatives.
Damsons are naturally palatable and damson gin or vodka is likewise palatable and much more quickly so than the sloe equivalent, as the fruit lacks the tannin that gives the latter its astringency. Wild damsons are found in late summer/early autumn but since the fruit is only locally abundant most people will rely on home-grown or the shop for their supply.
If you are a keen forager you should consider the cherry plum. These, as their name suggests, are plums that look like cherries (not the other way round). They are increasingly common these days, as beneficent highway authorities have taken to planting them along roadsides. They are highly conspicuous because of the enormous number of colourful fruit they produce for several weeks during high summer.
Both red and yellow varieties are found, with orange fruit seen on rare occasions. Nevertheless people often pass them by as unknowns, to fall on the pavement in a squashy mess. Like all plums, the quality of the fruit varies from tree to tree and year to year with no clue as to what one will taste like from appearance alone. Sometimes they are quite bland so make sure you select those which are fruity or even a little under-ripe.
Makes about 600ml
280g damsons or cherry plums
140g sugar
About 600ml vodka
Put the damsons or cherry plums and sugar in a 1-litre Kilner jar, top up with vodka nearly to the brim, close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard, shaking once every day until the sugar has all dissolved.
Decant the liqueur from the plums after 3 months and bottle. Allow to mature for a year or so before drinking. Eat the plums with ice cream.
Damson vodka
Sea buckthorn vodka
| SEASON | Late July–November |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
Like cherry plums, sea buckthorn is frequently planted along roadsides as a hardy small tree. This willow-like plant is native to Britain; at least it is native to the south-eastern coasts. As well as roadsides, it has frequently been planted in coastal locations to fix dunes. Unfortunately it likes sand dunes a little too much and will quickly engulf existing vegetation with a dense thicket of sea buckthorn, much to the consternation of conservationists. Where it is growing as an invasive species it is a gift to the forager who can take whatever he or she wants with a clear conscience.
But what is it that grows on sea buckthorn that should so interest the home brewer? It is the densely packed, bright orange berries. These have a flavour halfway between orange juice and battery acid, but you must not let this put you off. In an infusion the acidity is kept to moderate levels and it makes a fruity, sweet drink which is great in mixes.
The berries form in late July/early August and can be picked from then until November. The main problem is picking them intact, as they are little balloons of juice which pop with the slightest squeeze. The answer I am afraid is to just pick very carefully and, if you feel justified in doing so, cutting off a complete branch and dealing with them at home. Be warned, however: the branches have vicious spines which, like blackthorn, inflict septic wounds.
The recipe is the same as for sloe gin except, of course, you should use vodka. It is extremely fruity, nicely offsetting the sweetness. I like it with soda water and ice or, best of all, in a sparkling elderflower cocktail.
Makes about 250ml
170g sea buckthorn berries
100g sugar
About 250ml vodka
Put the sea buckthorn berries and sugar in a 500ml Kilner jar, top up with vodka, close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard, shaking once every day until the sugar has all dissolved.
Strain the infused vodka from the berries after 3 months and bottle. Leave to mature for 3 months before drinking.
Rosehip vodka
| SEASON | August–November |
| INFUSION TIME | 4 months |
Foragers hate to let anything go to waste and the abundant rosehip is a temptation not to be resisted. It is not the easiest of fruits to use in the kitchen because of the dangerously hairy seeds nestling inside, but rosehip vodka avoids such perils, as the stomach-irritating seeds remain safely where they are. Like most other children of my generation I was brought up on a daily spoonful of rosehip syrup by way of apology for the daily dose of cod liver oil. What my mother never gave me was rosehip vodka; I guess she kept that for herself.
Any rosehip from any rose – garden or wild – will work, though the gigantic hips of the Japanese rose are likely to rot before they make a good infusion unless you pick them while they are still very firm. Rosehips come in two varieties – under-ripe and over-ripe but never, it seems, ripe. With small hips it does not matter which you use. Made to the same recipe as sloe gin, but with a little less sugar, the flavour is surprisingly fruity with a distinct note of vanilla.
Makes about 600ml
300g firm rosehips
120g sugar
About 600ml vodka
Place the rosehips and sugar in a 1-litre Kilner jar, top up with the vodka, close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard, shaking once a day until the sugar has dissolved.
Decant the infused vodka from the rosehips after 4 months and bottle. Allow to mature for 3 months before drinking.
Rosehip vodka
Blackberry whisky
| SEASON | Late July–October |
| INFUSION TIME | 6 months |
While most people are wary of picking wild berries, no one is the least concerned about picking blackberries. The fruit is super-abundant in all but the most urban of locations and even in the city it can often be found in overgrown parks and gardens and on wasteland. It is the first foraged food we ever learn about and sadly often the only one.
Endless quantities are available from late July to the end of October – I must have picked nearly a ton in my lifetime. Do not worry about the ancient advice to not pick blackberries after Michaelmas (11th October) when the Devil spits on them. This is a reference to the grey mould that infects the fruit, which is more common as the year progresses. Provided they look good they are perfectly edible.
Blackberry whisky is one of the finest of all infusions, a rival even to sloe gin. Do use cheap whisky for this recipe as there is a special pit in hell for those who drink good whisky in any way other than on its own.
For those few who do not like blackberries and the many more who do not like whisky I have some good news. Given time – about a year, but two is better – the flavour mellows into something quite its own, not dissimilar from port, and with never a hint of peat bogs and barely a trace of blackberry crumble.
I have dispensed with weights here as volumes guide this recipe.
Blackberries
Sugar
Whisky
Two-thirds fill a Kilner jar with blackberries, then sprinkle sugar over them until it covers the bottom half of the fruit. The blackberries should be dry for this operation otherwise the sugar will not flow. Top up the jar with whisky, close the lid and shake gently. Store in a dark cupboard and shake once a day until the sugar has dissolved.
After 6 months, decant the infused whisky into a bottle and store for at least a year to mature. The sweet whisky-soaked blackberries are quite delicious so do not throw them away!
Blackberry whisky
Raspberry vodka
| SEASON | July–September |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
Few foraging pleasures are more intense than standing in a woodland glade picking a handful of raspberries and popping the lot into your mouth. It is as unfussy a dining experience as you could imagine and difficult to beat. Since this is the only sensible way to eat wild raspberries, cultivated varieties will be required to make an infusion.
Raspberries are the ideal infusible fruit, possessing a perfect balance of subtle flavours and acidity. An eau de vie could be used instead of vodka and I suggest for once that if vodka is used it should not be of the cheap, harsh variety as this will compromise the delicate flavour of the fruit.
Makes about 600ml
280g raspberries
140g sugar
About 600ml vodka or eau de vie
Place the raspberries in a 1-litre Kilner jar and add the sugar. Top up with vodka, close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard, shaking once a day until all the sugar has dissolved.
Decant the infused vodka into a bottle after 3 months, then leave it to mature for 6 months before drinking. The sweet vodka-soaked raspberries are particularly good so don’t share.
Raspberry vodka
Haw gin
| SEASON | Late August–early December |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
By a long way, the haw is the commonest fruit growing in our hedgerows. Hawthorn trees were planted on an industrial scale during the various periods of enclosure, but especially in the nineteenth century. While the hawthorn forms an excellent, stock-proof hedge it is a pity that its fruit is not a little more exciting.
The humble haw consists of a large pip surrounded by a thin layer of soft, almost tasteless flesh and a dull red skin. Various techniques have been devised to use this bounteous if slightly disappointing fruit, the best being a crab apple and haw fruit leather. However, it does make an excellent sherry-like infusion. This recipe was supplied by my herbalist friend Monica, who tells me that it is also terribly good for you – keeping your blood pressure under control and strengthening cardiovascular action. All without getting out of your armchair.
Makes about 250ml
Sufficient ripe haws to fill a 500ml Kilner jar
2 tsp sugar, more if you want it sweeter
About 250ml gin
Loosely pack the haws into your 500ml Kilner jar, sprinkling the sugar between the layers. Top up with gin, seal the lid and shake to dissolve the sugar. Store in a dark cupboard and shake once a day.
Decant the infused gin into bottles after 3 months. The haws will have lost their dusky pink coloration and turned the gin the colour of rosé. Leave to mature for a year or so before drinking.
Crab apple eau de vie
| SEASON | September–October |
| INFUSION TIME | 6 months |
Because they are so large it is near impossible to make an infusion of even the smallest cultivated apple as they would simply rot away to form a nasty brown mess. However the small size of crab apples and their disinclination to rot even under extreme provocation make them perfect for the job. The hedgerows abound with apples that sometimes pass for crab apples because they grow wild. Most of these will be ‘wildings’ – apple trees grown from discarded cores and bearing fruit with near random characteristics.
True crab apples are more often found in old woodland and hedges and produce rock-hard and highly acidic fruit made almost entirely of skin and pips surrounded by membranes with a toenail-like texture, perfect, in other words, for an infusion. It takes at least 6 months to thoroughly extract the apple flavour. This is one of my favourite wild infusions as the flavour is intensely and cleanly of apple.
Apple eau de vie is not commonly seen in the shops, but Julian Temperley of the Somerset Distillery makes it and deserves a knighthood for reviving the lost art of distilling fermented apple juice in Britain.
Makes about 600ml
280g small crab apples
140g sugar
About 600ml apple eau de vie (vodka will do, but it’s not as good)
Put the crab apples and sugar in a 1-litre Kilner jar and top up nearly to the brim with apple eau de vie (or vodka). The apples will float partly out of the liquor so scrunch up a small amount of foil and place it on top of the apples to hold them under. Close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard and shake gently once a day until all the sugar has dissolved.
Decant the infused liquor into bottles after 6 months. Leave to mature for a year or so before drinking.
Cherry brandy
| SEASON | Late June–July |
| INFUSION TIME | 2–6 months |
Although there is no reason why other alcohols could not be used, brandy is the obvious choice for a cherry infusion. Cherries are sometimes found in the wild, or more likely, semi-wild as a planted roadside tree. July is the best time to dangerously scan the hedgerows as you drive along. However, they are not always easy to find, so most people will rely on fruit from their garden or the market.
Cherry brandy tastes better if the fruit is removed fairly quickly – within a couple of months. If you leave it longer the almond flavour is extracted from the stone and your cherry brandy will taste inescapably like the disgusting syrupy, pink medicine I gave my young daughters when they were feeling unwell. The alternative is to remove the stone first, though the drink may be a little cloudy as the exposed flesh is carried into the liquor. Of course you may like the almond flavour, in which case leave the cherries in for 6 months. Recipes for cherry brandy go back to at least the eighteenth century and some even suggest making a liqueur from the stones alone – the cherries themselves being eaten – to give a strongly almond-flavoured drink.
Makes about 600ml
300g cherries (traditionally black cherries, but any will do)
120g sugar
About 600ml brandy
Put the cherries, stoned or not, into a 1-litre Kilner jar, add the sugar and top up with brandy. Close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard and shake once a day until all the sugar has dissolved.
Decant the infused brandy into bottles through a muslin-lined funnel at 2 months (or 6 months if you prefer an almondy flavour). Allow to mature for a year or so before drinking.
Orange liqueur
| SEASON | All year |
| INFUSION TIME | 1–7 days |
While sloe gin and most other fruit infusions take months to develop their flavour, orange liqueur is ready in a day. The resulting liqueur is like the famous Cointreau.
A rather pretty alternative is kumquat vodka, which needs at least twice as much sugar as the fruit contains a lot of water. This drink, or something very much like it, is a favourite in Corfu.
Orange liqueurs are good on their own but much better in a long drink made with, well, orange juice. Pour a shot or two of the liqueur into a glass, pour on fresh orange juice, stir and add crushed ice.
Makes about 350ml
1 orange, unwaxed and as shiny and fresh as possible
1 tbsp sugar
350ml vodka
Use a potato peeler to slice off the zest of an orange, pop it into a 350ml Kilner jar, sprinkle on the sugar and top up with vodka. Close the lid and shake until the sugar has dissolved. Place in a dark cupboard and shake once a day.
Remove the peel after no more than a week as the liqueur can become cloudy. If you want to drink it immediately then it can be ready in half an hour if you warm the jar in hot water.
Variation
Lemon liqueur Simply replace the orange with lemon zest. This will find many a use as a cocktail ingredient or simply with soda, lemon juice and crushed ice as an alcoholic lemonade.
Orange liqueur
Pomegranate rum
| SEASON | All year |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
The first time my mother gave me a pomegranate to eat I thought she was playing a cruel joke. Although the flavour was quite pleasant it clearly was not an edible fruit because of the absurd number of pips. An aunt of mine lived long under the mistaken impression that I liked the damn things and would bring me one every time she visited. I hate them. However, pips are no hindrance if you want to make a liqueur and the fact that the pomegranate makes such a fine one is no surprise when you consider that the essential ingredient in many a cocktail is grenadine – pomegranate cordial. If you use pomegranate rum as grenadine you will be adding extra alcohol to your cocktail, but I will not judge you.
Makes about 250ml
1 pomegranate
50g sugar
About 250ml white rum
Carefully break open the pomegranate and gently tease apart the arils (the proper name for the seeds and their surrounding juice pockets). Place these in a 500ml Kilner jar, taking care to exclude the bitter membranes. Add the sugar and top up with rum. Close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard and shake once a day until the sugar has dissolved.
Decant the infused rum into bottles after 3 months. Leave to mature for a year or so before drinking. This really is one of the best infusions I know, with a pleasant bitter bite. I highly recommend that you try it.
Chestnut liqueur
| SEASON | Mid October–November |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
I would not sit and drink a glass of chestnut liqueur neat, as the flavour is rather cloying, but it makes an excellent base for a cocktail with a soft ginger beer or soda water. The chief problem with it is that the resultant infusion tends to cloudiness, which either has to be tolerated or removed by careful filtration.
The best chestnuts I ever saw were in Piedmont, while on a British Mycological Society visit. We were distracted from our mycological pursuits one morning by a vast chestnut coppice, the floor of which was covered in fat, ripe chestnuts. This would never happen in Britain. Our native sweet chestnuts ripen, if they ripen at all, in mid-October, though few trees produce useful fruit and those that do bestow nuts that are seldom more than a quarter the size of their continental cousins. Unless you are very lucky you will simply have to buy your chestnuts from the shop.
Unfortunately chestnuts need to be peeled. To do this, boil them for 12 minutes then turn off the heat, leaving the chestnuts in the hot water. Don one rubber glove, take the chestnuts one at a time from the pan and cut a fairly wide slit on the flat side from the pointy end. Grab hold of the skin of the flat side and carefully peel it away, trying to peel the inner skin with it. Peel away the rest of the skin. This works much better on really fresh chestnuts, so buy early in the season if you can.
Makes about 600ml
280g peeled sweet chestnuts
150g sugar
About 600ml rum, vodka or brandy
Place the chestnuts and sugar in a 1-litre Kilner jar and top up with your spirit of choice. Close the lid and shake. Store in a dark cupboard and very gently shake the jar once a day until the sugar has dissolved.
After 3 months decant the liqueur into bottles, filtering if necessary. The chestnuts can be added to a fruit cake or Christmas pudding. Allow the liqueur to mature for 6 months and use for cocktails.
Chestnut cocktail Add 2 shots of chestnut liqueur to 125ml dry ginger beer, stir in some crushed ice and serve with a slice of fresh root ginger and a slice of lemon.
Chestnut liqueur
Elderflower vodka
| SEASON | June–early July |
| INFUSION TIME | 1–2 days |
For me, nothing heralds the arrival of summer like the elderflower. Although a few of its blossoms appear in late May, it is in June that this tree comes into full flower. The sweet fragrance is entrancing, though not to everyone’s liking – for some it has the distinct odour of cat’s wee. The aroma of the blossoms and the long, paired leaflets make it an easy plant to identify, but it seems people do not always pay close attention and the flowers of the wayfaring tree, rowan, dogwood, hogweed and even the deadly hemlock have been mistaken for it. If the elderflower is unknown to you then do check in a guidebook. Pick the fresh, yellow-centred blossoms in full sun and use them within a few hours.
Makes about 500ml
About 30 elderflower heads
2 tsp sugar
About 500ml vodka
Remove the tiny elderflowers from the spray of blossoms using a fork (forking off, in the jargon). Loosely fill a 500ml Kilner jar with them, sprinkle on the sugar, top up with vodka and close the lid. Shake for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar.
After a day or two, strain off the infused vodka into a bottle. It is ready to drink straight away. This is not a drink to take straight, being more useful in cocktails.
Elderflower cocktail A simple, refreshing summer drink can be made by mixing elderflower vodka with another infusion: Lemon liqueur (see here). Put a shot of each of the infusions into your shaker, shake with crushed ice, pour into a glass and add your favourite lemonade or soda, a few leaves of wild sorrel (decidedly optional) and a slice of lemon. This is remarkably like a sweet elderflower sparkly but much quicker, easier and safer. For the real thing see here.
Gorse flower white rum
| SEASON | Best in April, but available most of the year |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 days |
Gorse is nearly always in flower. The old saying ‘When gorse is out of blossom, kissing’s out of fashion’ has a strong element of truth in it, but April, when every bush turns a dazzling yellow, is the best time to pick, St George’s Day, 23rd April, being traditional. A warm sunny day is best.
Picking gorse flowers is even more lethal than picking blackberries or nettles. You will usually come away bloodied in some way unless you go dressed for battle, so wellington boots, leather gauntlets and a chainmail vest are essential accoutrements. It also takes a long time to pick, so bring reinforcements with you if you can.
The smell from a gorse bush in spring sunshine is very powerful and one can be overwhelmed by the aroma of the coconut-scented flowers. But it is coconut with a slight difference. Perhaps a little more like a vanilla joss stick or the vanilla-scented air freshener I put in my car once to counteract the effects of the great oyster disaster of 2009 (an entire dustbin of them overturned during an emergency stop and I only found most of them).
Makes about 500ml
A handful of gorse flowers
2 tsp sugar
About 500ml white rum (or brandy)
The moment you arrive home, loosely pack a 500ml Kilner jar with gorse flower blossoms, sprinkle on the sugar and top up with white rum. Close the lid and shake gently.
Strain the liquor into bottles after 2 days. It is ready to use immediately.
Gorse flower cocktail Gorse flower white rum retains its coconut flavour very well, but there is also an undertone of pineapple. This effectively gives you an instant Piña Colada if you add lemonade. If you like pineapples a lot, then use half lemonade, half pineapple juice for the cocktail.
Rose petal vodka
| SEASON | June–August |
| INFUSION TIME | 1 day |
The summer hedgerows abound with dog rose and field rose and it is possible to make an infusion from these pretty blooms. However, their bouquet is slight and they are best left where they are. If, however, you see a startlingly pink, dense rose bush in the hedgerow it is likely to be the most useful of all the invasive plants – the Japanese rose, Rosa rugosa. This tough and vigorous plant is a common weed of dunes and hedgerows near to towns and even more common in the place where it is not a weed – gardens. It is remarkable for several reasons – the flowers and rosehips can often be found on the plant at the same time, the hips are simply enormous and the flowers produce the sweetest smell of all the roses. There is no need to remove the entire flower, just pull off the petals and infuse them as soon as you get home.
Makes about 500ml
About 500ml Japanese rose petals
2 tsp sugar
About 500ml vodka or eau de vie
Fairly tightly fill a 500ml Kilner jar to the brim with rose petals, sprinkle on the sugar and top up with vodka. The colour fades from the petals within hours and by the next day they will be an unappealing grey.
After a day, strain off the rose petals and bottle the liqueur. It is pinkish to start with but soon turns an attractive dark amber colour. It is ready to drink immediately. The flavour is as glorious as one would expect and the temptation to dab it behind your ears irresistible. As with most of these drinks, rose petal vodka is best used to make a cocktail (see here).
Pink pint
| SEASON | August–September |
| INFUSION TIME | Not applicable |
In the late 1960s I worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough as a junior scientific officer. To alleviate the tedium of this bachelor existence, I would slip across the road to the pub with my drinking companions, including one by the name of Armando Cuthbert Darlington. Wearing his name with pride and a dash of fortitude, he would sit on a bar stool all evening smoking Black Russian cigarettes and drinking a potent compound called Parfait Amour. He offered me some once – it tasted like the perfume counter at Boots. This recipe is a homage to Armando.
Before we explore this – one of the most successful of all summer cocktails and my gift to the world – I need to tell you how to make rosehip syrup. This denizen of the medicine cabinet has fallen into sad disuse but is fairly easy to make and, being packed with vitamin C, is terribly good for you. It can be made from any rosehip, including the garden varieties such as Rosa rugosa.
Makes about 750ml syrup
For the rosehip syrup
500g rosehips
250g sugar
Serves 1
For the cocktail
150g raspberries
2 shots of rose petal vodka
2 shots of rosehip syrup
Lemonade
To make the rosehip syrup, put the intact rosehips into a pan and pour on enough water to just cover them. Bring to a simmer and cook until they are soft, but for at least 20 minutes. Mash the rosehips with a potato masher and squeeze the juice through a double layer of muslin. Clean the cloth and squeeze the juice through again to ensure the hairs on the seeds are removed as they are an irritant.
Return the strained juice to the cleaned pan, bring to a gentle boil and add the sugar. Stir until it is dissolved. Pour the rosehip syrup into warm, sterilised bottles. It keeps well in the fridge for at least a month.
To make the cocktail, squeeze the raspberries through a fine sieve and put them into a cocktail shaker. Add the rose petal vodka, rosehip syrup and some ice, shake and pour into a tall glass. Pour over some lemonade. It is a remarkably refreshing drink, very pink and with a pink head. A pink pint!
Pink pint
Dandelion brandy
| SEASON | Late March–early May |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 days |
The dandelion must be the most familiar and common of all flowers in the British countryside. Although the flowers can make an appearance at any time of the year, 95% of them bloom in a flamboyant spring flush, from the end of March to the beginning of May – turning roadsides, fields, hedgerows and untended lawns golden. A single field may blossom with a million flowers – one of the least appreciated sights in the countryside. For an unassuming flower it makes a surprisingly pleasant liqueur – bittersweet with a hint of barley sugar. The colour is a pretty golden yellow.
You may have noticed that dandelions are rather variable in appearance. This is because the dandelion is really a species-complex with over two hundred micro-species in this country alone. Despite this variability it is difficult to confuse them with the many superficially similar plants such as the hawkbits – not that it would matter much if you did.
As with any flower destined for the kitchen, the dandelion should be picked in full sun and preferably in the morning. Dandelions shut up shop for the night by closing their petals and will even do this after being picked, so you will need to start your infusion the very moment you get home. At least the flowers are easy to pick and the large number of blossoms needed can be collected in just a few minutes. The petals are the least bitter part of the plants so, unless you are keen to have a bitter drink, cut the petals from the flower heads with scissors.
You will be pleased to note that I have not fallen into the temptation of calling this drink ‘dandy brandy’.
Makes about 500ml
Enough dandelion petals to fill a 500ml Kilner jar when lightly pressed down
2 tsp sugar
About 500ml brandy
Put all the ingredients into a 500ml Kilner jar, seal the lid and shake until most of the sugar has dissolved.
Strain the infused brandy into bottles 2 days later. It is ready to use immediately.
Watermint vodka
| SEASON | April–November |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 days |
Watermint is one of the most overlooked of wild edible plants. It grows in nearly every stream, damp path and watermeadow and can be picked with abandon. The slightly hairy, dark green to purple leaves are easily spotted and when in pink-purple flower the plant is unmistakable. It also smells strongly of peppermint. The stem is tough and wiry so you need to cut it with scissors to avoid uprooting the whole thing.
Vodka takes up the minty flavour very quickly and you will have your watermint vodka perfectly drinkable in 4 hours or so. If you include sugar with the leaves – or even add it later – you will effectively have something similar to crème de menthe. The major difference is that the latter is made from the tiny leaves of the potent Corsican mint, Mentha requienii, which is sometimes found here growing in gardens.
Watermint vodka takes some drinking on its own unless you like mint flavours a lot. Like its commercial brother it is best used in cocktails such as Grasshopper (equal quantities of crème de menthe or watermint vodka, crème de cacao and fresh cream), though whether this really improves things is entirely a matter of opinion.
Perhaps watermint vodka’s greatest use is as an after-dinner liqueur or a ‘hair of the dog’ hangover cure. Mint contains a couple of ingredients which settle the stomach. There also seems to be some truth to the notion that an alcoholic drink the next day will restore some much needed equilibrium. The brain, having had its activity depressed by alcohol, fights back by over-stimulating it. A morning-after drink will depress it back to something resembling normal.
You may also come across the long serrated leaves of wild spearmint, M. spicata, in the hedgerow. This can be used instead if you like your drink to taste of toothpaste.
Makes about 250ml
About 20 watermint leaves, plus a sprig with flowers on if possible, or 1 tbsp Corsican mint leaves
1 tbsp sugar
About 250ml vodka
Put the watermint (or mint) leaves, sugar and vodka into a 250ml Kilner jar and shake gently. Close the lid and leave to infuse for a couple of days.
Strain the infused vodka into a bottle containing the sprig of watermint with flowers. It is ready to drink straight away.
Sweet vernal grass vodka
| SEASON | May–June |
| INFUSION TIME | 1 week |
There is a remarkable Polish speciality called Żubrówka, also known as bison grass vodka. Bison grass (Hierochloe odorata), or holy grass as it is also known, is a bit thin on the ground in Britain, being confined to a few Scottish islands and parts of the Lake District, but we have something which is just as good – sweet vernal grass. This is the stuff that gives hay its aroma and vodka captures it perfectly and permanently.
Sweet vernal grass is fairly easy to spot with its relatively narrow and dark flower heads and distinctive smell when rubbed. Another clue is the fine hairs which appear where the tiny leaves join the stem. Pick in May or June when in flower. Żubrówka is traditionally bottled with a blade or two of the grass; I do the same but I got carried away with the one in the picture and left all the blades in. Looks good though.
An alternative is to use creamy blooms of meadowsweet, which adorn roadsides and damp meadows from the Channel Islands to the Isle of Skye. They appear in summer and linger until November. Their intense, slightly antiseptic smell can be overpowering close up and despite the best efforts of foragers they have found but small use in the kitchen except in the making of drinks, meadowsweet sparkling wine (made to the same recipe as sparkling elderflower) being one.
Both sweet vernal grass and meadowsweet contain the highly aromatic and (slightly) toxic chemical coumarin. The tiny quantities involved are harmless – more harmless than the vodka certainly – and it is chiefly this that gives us the flavour.
Makes about 500ml
A handful of sweet vernal grass (or meadowsweet blooms)
Sugar, to taste (optional)
About 500ml vodka (a good one)
Cut the grass to length to fit into a 500ml Kilner jar (or loosely pack meadowsweet flowers). Top up with vodka and close the lid. Store in a dark cupboard, shaking once a day. This takes a week to infuse properly (meadowsweet needs only a day). Add a little sugar to sweeten if you like. Strain and bottle. It is ready immediately.
Szarlotka For this cocktail my friend Monika who hails from Poland and knows all about Żubrówka suggests: 2 shots of the infused vodka mixed with 4 shots of fresh apple juice and crushed ice. Szarlotka, Monika tells me, is Polish for apple pie. Na zdrowie!
Sweet vernal grass vodka
Fennel vodka
| SEASON | May–June |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 weeks |
Fennel is a common garden plant but also frequently found at roadsides and, for reasons best known to itself, around seaside car parks. The leaves, available throughout much of the year, the bright yellow flowers of summer, and the seeds, found in summer and autumn, can all be used for this infusion. It is one to which I never add sugar. Fennel itself is sweet, not from sugar, but from anethole, the chemical which provides the typical anise flavour and which is many times sweeter than sucrose.
An easy variation is to use sweet cicely, another member of the Apiaceae (carrot family). Outside of the garden this is a plant of northern climes, seldom making an appearance below Birmingham to the west or York to the east. In its northern fastness it can take the place of the considerably less delicious cow parsley, which fills the roadsides of the south. As its name suggests, it too is sweet; the immature seed pods particularly so and these can be eaten straight from the plant as sweetmeats.
Whichever plant, or part of the plant, you use you will have a drink not dissimilar to Pernod, pastis and ouzo, all of which derive from anise – yet another member of the Apiaceae, but one not found in Britain.
Makes about 250ml
1 tsp fennel or sweet cicely seeds
A sprig or two of the leaves of fennel or sweet cicely or the flower heads
About 250ml vodka
Put all the ingredients into a 250ml Kilner jar, close the lid and shake gently. Store in a dark cupboard, shaking gently once a day.
Decant the infused vodka into a bottle after 2 weeks and pop in a couple of the fennel (or sweet cicely) leaves or flower heads for artistic purposes. It is also possible to use just the leaves or both leaves and seeds. The drink is ready to use immediately.
Absinthe
| SEASON | November–April (for Alexanders) |
| INFUSION TIME | 4 weeks |
In the early twentieth century a particularly notorious drink was banned throughout most of the Western world. It is called absinthe. This is an anise-flavoured drink but the ingredient that caused so much heart searching and disagreement is another herb – wormwood. The manufacturing process is part-infusion, part-distillation, with the various herbaceous ingredients steeped in warm water for 12 hours, strong alcohol added and the resultant liquor distilled. The colour, itself taken from various plants, is a later addition.
The big question, of course, is this: Does absinthe deserve its notoriety? Many at the time were in no doubt, the Pall Mall Gazette of 1868 among them:
If a visitor to Paris strolls along the Boulevards from the Madeleine to the Bastille some summer’s afternoon, between five and six o’clock, which is commonly called the ‘hour of the absinthe’, he can hardly fail to remark hundreds of Parisians seated outside the various cafés, or lounging at the counters of the wine shops, and imbibing this insidious stimulant... It is an ignoble poison, destroying life not until it has more or less brutalised its votaries, and made drivelling idiots of them.
The ills ascribed to absinthe – hallucinations, tendency to criminal activity, death and so on – were blamed on a chemical called thujone, which is derived from one of its principal ingredients, wormwood. Thujone is known to be toxic in sufficiently large doses, but absinthe, it has recently been discovered from bottles surviving from the time, contained only small amounts. Much more likely it was straightforward alcohol poisoning. The Lancet of the time tells us:
At any rate, it will take a good deal of very solid and precise evidence to convince us that the trifling amount of essence of wormwood contained in the liquor called absinthe, adds any considerable poisonous power to the natural influence of some 20 or 30 ounces per diem of a highly concentrated alcohol, which is what many of these Parisian buveurs actually dispose of in the course of innumerable visits to the cafés and other houses of refreshment.
Thirty ounces is about 1½ pints and absinthe was anything from 48–88% ABV so it is little surprise that things went awry. Today absinthe has been exonerated and rehabilitated as a legal drink, because very little thujone survives the brewing process, though hitting the juice like Toulouse-Lautrec and his peers will still have you singing ‘La Carmagnole’ and storming the Bastille.
So it is that I feel justified in offering my own recipe. For reasons of legality we cannot follow the traditional distillation process but will use instead the method employed for making cheap absinthe – an infusion. A treatise on the Manufacture and Distillation of Alcoholic Liquors of 1871 gives several intriguing recipes using a variety of ingredients which are readily available. It is the absinthe maker’s bible and I highly recommend it to those who wish to experiment further.
Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is an occasional plant found typically on the coast of the British Isles but also in scattered locations elsewhere, particularly the Midlands. It is an extraordinary plant with an extraordinary smell, and it is not one I would like to take through customs. With this, safety and the relative rarity of the plant in mind only a tiny amount is used, so just snip off a few leaves. The amount of wormwood I suggest below is perfectly safe unless you have epilepsy (and I would not like to see expectant or nursing mothers knocking back absinthe either).
Absinthe is famously green, hence its name ‘The Green Fairy’, and if you would like yours to be green too then you can use the traditional plant for colouring. Find some brooklime – it grows in streams and along damp paths – crush the leaves with a pestle and mortar and add at the beginning with the other ingredients.
If you wish to experiment then try adding Alexanders seeds or hogweed seeds with everything else. These are wild analogues of other plants often used in the manufacture of absinthe.
Makes about 500ml
4g dried wormwood leaves (optional)
30g green aniseed or star anise
20g fresh fennel leaves
20g leaves and stems of Alexanders or angelica
20g brooklime leaves, crushed (optional)
50g sugar
400–500ml vodka
Place the dried wormwood leaves, if using, aniseed, fresh fennel leaves, Alexanders, brooklime, if using, and sugar in a 500ml Kilner jar and cover with the vodka. Close the lid and leave for 4 weeks to allow the flavours to pass to the alcohol.
Strain off the seeds and leaves, and bottle the infused liquor. Leave to mature for 3 months before drinking or knock it back straight away if you can’t wait.
Absinthe is traditionally sipped from an absinthe glass. A special absinthe spoon is placed over the glass, a rectangular cube (yes, I know) of sugar is placed on the spoon and water slowly dripped on to it until the correct level of sweetness is achieved. Evidently Parisians had special dispensers – absinthe fountains – which would drip water for you; no doubt it saved time for those determined to get through their daily pint.
Absinthe
Gin Alexanders
| SEASON | November–April |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 weeks |
There is a well-known cocktail called Gin Alexanders but this is the real thing – gin and Alexanders. Alexanders is a very common roadside plant found around the more southerly coasts of Britain. It is an easy plant to identify: the leaves are relatively large, yellow-green and shallowly lobed, and the aromatic smell is unmistakable – just like angelica (if you know what that smells like). It is very important to get this right as in the spring a rather similar plant in the same family, hemlock waterdropwort, can be found in damp places and very often by the sea. It has smaller, darker leaves, which are incised not lobed, and has an intense and unpleasant smell. It is one of the most deadly plants on the planet.
An odd characteristic of Alexanders is that in early winter, when everything else is settling down for a rest, it starts to produce its succulent leaves and shoots. I pick it from early November until April, when the stems toughen to the texture of bamboo.
Alexanders is sometimes steamed and served with butter or candied to make an unusual sweetmeat, but in whatever form it comes, it is rather an acquired taste and pretty well indescribable to the uninitiated. However, I do think Gin Alexanders shows the plant at its best as the flavours of the two ingredients are rather similar.
Makes about 500ml
About 6 Alexanders stems (30cm long) and leaves
About 500ml gin
1 tbsp sugar
Chop up the Alexanders stems, put them in a 750ml Kilner jar with the leaves and pour on the gin. Leave to infuse for a couple of weeks, then decant into a bottle and add the sugar. It is ready to drink straight away.
Quick method To speed things up, crush the stems then squeeze out the juice through muslin straight into the gin, adding the sugar.
To drink The bitter taste of Gin Alexanders taken straight is perhaps a little too invigorating for most palates but it works nicely with a good lemonade and crushed ice, served with a stem of Alexanders for decoration if you have one to hand.
Rhubarb vodka
| SEASON | March–July |
| INFUSION TIME | 3 months |
I do not entirely approve of gardening, but I am willing to grow a few maintenance-free plants like herbs, apple trees and, most important of all, rhubarb. I planted my rhubarb in a sheltered corner next to the shed and within a year it had grown to about five feet across and looked like it had been there since the Coronation. It is an exciting time when the first sticks appear and these are the best ones to use in an infusion, though it is perfectly good up until midsummer.
Rhubarb vodka is the best ‘fruit’ infusion of them all and I have had to hide my stash in a distant cupboard as guests have taken to helping themselves once they have had a taste. With most infusions I suggest making a little first before tackling a big batch but go straight for a half-gallon of rhubarb vodka – you won’t be disappointed.
A first-class variation on the recipe is to add ginger – a few slices of root ginger will work their wonders. Another is to add sweet cicely pods or leaves. The leaves of sweet cicely are available from spring until the late summer and the pods from late June to early July.
Makes about 600ml
280g rhubarb stalks
150g sugar
About 600ml vodka
Optional flavourings
A couple of slices of ginger or
2 tsp sweet cicely pods/a couple of sweet cicely leaves
Slice the rhubarb into 3–6mm lengths (a mandolin is ideal for this, if a bit scary) and layer in a 1-litre Kilner jar alternately with the sugar and flavouring (if you have opted for one). Pour over the vodka and close the lid. Leave for a couple of days, then shake the jar once a day until all the sugar has dissolved.
Decant the vodka into bottles after 3 months. It is ready straight away.
Quick method To speed things up, sprinkle the sugar on to the rhubarb first and give it a shake every day for 4 days to extract the juice by osmosis. Then add the vodka, shake and wait until all the sugar has dissolved. Strain out the rhubarb and bottle the liqueur. Incidentally, the slightly alcoholic rhubarb is softened and sweetened by this process and quite unbelievably delicious with ice cream.
Green walnut grappa
| SEASON | June–July |
| INFUSION TIME | 6 weeks |
A long time ago I spent a couple of weeks in Italy with an Italian lady friend, visiting her rather large extended family. Her aunt Maria lived in a farmhouse somewhere between Rome and Naples. It had no sanitation and the electrical supply consisted of cables draped like Christmas decorations around the house, but it was one of the happiest homes I have ever visited. We sat outside, raised an arm to pick figs, played bocce, ate the best home cooking in the world and drank – mostly good wine.
It was forty years ago but I can still recall the taste of Aunt Maria’s grappa infusion. It was an opaque pale green colour and sufficiently thick to stand a spoon upright in it. The flavour was cloyingly sweet and seemingly arrived at by infusing everything from the shelves of a well-stocked herbalist, with unripe walnuts in the mix. It was too much for me, though I did manage to down a glass of the noxious stuff.
To be fair, most herbal liqueurs are made to promote good health, not to provide entertainment and auntie’s drink was probably designed as a digestivo. I am afraid that Aunt Maria is no longer with us so I rely on a recipe sent by my friend Monica.
Makes about 1 litre
10 large green walnuts, or 15 small ones (soft enough for a fork to penetrate the young shell inside)
About 1 litre grappa (or brandy)
250–400g sugar, depending on how sweet you like your drinks
Flavourings
2 roasted dandelion roots (3 coffee beans will do) or
2 tsp hogweed or Alexander seeds (a few cloves, a cinnamon stick and ½ mace blade will do)
Wear gloves before handling the nuts – extract of walnut husks are used to this day as an excellent wood stain, one that takes a couple of weeks to wash off the hands. Slice the green walnuts into quarters, then again to give you about 8 pieces from each – it does not have to be exact. Put them in a 1.5-litre Kilner jar with your chosen flavouring ingredients, then top up with grappa. Leave the jar on a sunny windowsill for 6 weeks.
Strain the grappa into another jar. Gently heat the sugar in a little hot water until dissolved and add this to the strained liquor. Bottle and leave for another 6 weeks before drinking.
Épine apéritif
| SEASON | May–August |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 weeks |
The leaves of some trees are considered to be edible by a few wild-food enthusiasts though I have always had my doubts. As an inveterate hedgerow nibbler I have tried most of those that won’t actually poison me and found little to inspire. Apart from Beech Leaf Noyau (see Pam Corbin’s recipe in the River Cottage Preserves Handbook) I had never tried a tree-leaf infusion until recently when I was delighted to receive a bottle of homemade épine apéritif from my friend Sarah, who discovered the drink during a long sojourn in France. It is different from other infusions in that it also contains wine (lots of it). Fortunately Sarah gave me the recipe too.
Blackthorn, that prickly denizen of hedgerows from Penzance to Peterhead, is of course famous for the making of sloe gin, yet it came as a surprise to me to learn that blackthorn leaves make a drink which is every bit as good. The blackthorn leaves give the drink the almond flavour that you find in sloe gin, while the wine provides the acid. The finished drink is an extraordinary treat – fruity, rich and very strong.
A small word of warning is appropriate here. While the leaves of blackthorn are harmless, the same cannot be said for some other members of Prunus such as the bird cherry. These contain fairly high levels of cyanic compounds which have been known to cause problems (death). Stick to blackthorn and everything will be fine.
The blackthorn leaves are best picked fairly young from mid-April to midsummer. In France they use red wine but a blackberry or elderberry wine is more appropriate for us home brewers.
Makes about 2.85 litres
About 500ml blackthorn leaves
2.5 litres red wine, or homemade red fruit wine such as blackberry or elderberry
350ml brandy or eau de vie
500g sugar
Put all the ingredients into a small plastic fermenting bucket (see the wine section, here, for more on these). Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then fit the lid tightly. Leave for 2 weeks, stirring occasionally.
Strain through a funnel lined with a double layer of muslin into clean bottles. Leave to mature for a year or so. Santé!
Épine apéritif
Oak moss gin
| SEASON | All year |
| INFUSION TIME | 1 month |
This is one of the oddest things in a book full of odd things. Despite a lifetime of eating wild mushrooms I had never tried lichen until very recently. Lichens are not, generally speaking, edible, but a friend suggested I try deep-fried oak moss (Evernia prunastri). This common lichen is most often found on the dead twigs of oak trees, though it grows on other trees as well and one can find as much attached to fallen twigs on the ground as on the tree. Several species look a little like it and the best tip I can give you is that the undersides of the lobes are almost white, not pale green as in other species.
Oak moss is used in perfumery and as soon as you cook it you can understand why. The kitchen, and indeed the rest of the house, is filled with a pleasant aroma not dissimilar to that of an upmarket department store. The flavour simply follows the aroma.
Naturally I wondered what sort of infusion it would make so I popped some in a jam jar and poured in some gin. After 2 days all I could taste was earth and gin but it settled down after a month and the aromatic qualities came remarkably to the fore, filling the mouth with a fresh, pleasant and rather persistent perfume.
A word of warning. Although I have been unable to find any indication that oak moss is poisonous if ingested, it is known to cause an allergic skin reaction in some people. This is really a conversation-piece kind of a drink so, to err on the side of safety, I suggest drinking no more than half a shot…and don’t rub it on your chest.
Makes about 250ml
½ teacupful of oak moss
About 250ml gin
Place the oak moss in a 250ml Kilner jar and pour on the gin. Close the lid and leave for a month, then strain into a bottle. It is ready immediately.
The oldest drink in the world
| SEASON | All year |
| INFUSION TIME | 3–4 months |
In the summer of 2012 I was invited to take a seashore foray on the Danish island of Samsø. At the northern tip of the island I met the warden of a nature reserve, Bjorn, who showed me around the place. We then spent a good couple of hours sampling the contents of his very peculiar drinks cupboard. He was, it transpired, a brother infuser.
My sometimes odd combinations and ingredients paled in comparison to his outlandishly adventurous concoctions. Towards the end of our time in his aromatic shed he pulled from the back of the cupboard a bottle of what he called the oldest drink in the world. It seemed to have a vodka base and the flavour was reminiscent of pine trees. My guess that it was pine needle vodka was not so far away from the truth, but the ingredient which gave the drink its flavour was not a year or two old but 35 million years old. It was amber.
Anxious to try it myself, I discovered that small packets of amber are available online for next to nothing so I ordered a few grams. The result is a pleasant pine-scented liquor, although not one you would wish to knock back by the bottle. However, its great virtue is that it is such an impressive thing to offer friends.
Makes about 250ml
1 tsp amber
250ml vodka
Wash the amber, dry it, then wrap it in cling film. Lay it on a small sheet of plastic on your concrete patio and proceed to reduce it to powder with a large hammer. Place the powder in a 250ml Kilner jar and pour in the vodka. It can take several months for the flavour to develop but warming the jar in a hot water-bath will produce an instant effect. Either way the amber never seems to dissolve completely so pass the liquor through a filter paper when bottling.
A hangover cure
| SEASON | All year |
| INFUSION TIME | 2 weeks |
I almost never suffer from a hangover but on the odd occasion when I have a touch too much of an evening I rather dread the terrible feeling that I know I will face in the morning. My favoured ‘cure’ is a pre-emptive attack on the hangover consisting of two ibuprofen tablets washed down with a pint of cocoa. This must be followed by staying awake and consuming nothing else for an hour. The regime is pretty foolproof provided you are in a fit state to a. make a pint of cocoa, b. drink a pint of cocoa, c. keep a pint of cocoa down and d. stay awake for an hour. If you can manage these things it works extremely well.
If you prefer the herbal route, my friend Monica Wilde from Napiers Herbalists in Edinburgh has supplied a recipe, which, she tells me, will make life worth living again. I asked her how this stuff worked and was informed that willow bark contained aspirin, milk thistle is for the liver, yellow gentian is bitter and gets the gastric juices flowing, mint settles the stomach and dandelion is a diuretic, stimulating your much put-upon kidneys. However, I suspect that its true modus operandi is to take your mind off your hangover with its flavour – it is technically called a ‘herbal bitter’ and it really isn’t kidding. You will probably have to buy some of the flavouring ingredients, though a few are forageable.
Makes about 450ml
25g cut dried white willow bark (Salix alba)
25g lightly crushed milk thistle seeds (Silybum marianum)
10g chopped dried yellow gentian root (Gentiana lutea)
20g dried peppermint leaves (Mentha piperita) but watermint (M. aqua), found near streams, will do nicely
20g chopped dried dandelion root (Taraxacum officinalis)
About 450ml vodka
You can, if you like, just simmer all the flavouring ingredients in 1 litre water for 15 minutes, then strain off the liquid – a cupful being sufficient to brighten the day. However, much more to my liking – as it has the added benefit that comes from the ‘hair of the dog’ – is to prepare for the dark day beforehand: put the flavouring ingredients into a 500ml Kilner jar, top up with vodka and leave to infuse for a fortnight. Strain and bottle. Just 5ml in a little water taken every hour for up to six doses is what Monica recommends.