How to celebrate World Cocktail Day this Thursday
This Thursday is World Cocktail Day, and what better way to celebrate than splashing out on some new glass- and silverware with which to shake and sip your mix of sugary booze?
For collectors that means more than a cursory scroll through the Amazon listings: must-have items include Art Deco Parisian ‘Boston’ cocktail shakers and a set of late Victorian Collins glasses.
A cheaper way, however, is to try and get hold of a calabash. The first cocktail shaker, you see, was probably a South American gourd not dissimilar to a calabash. The ancient Egyptians, who always seemed to be on the lash, mixed up spices with fermented grain concoctions in hollowed out fruits, but gourds are easier to come by than pre-dynastic drinking vessels made out of Nile silt clay.
They come in a bottle, a can or even a box. But should you be stocking up?
Xhulio Sina used to manage the bars at Sketch, the Royal Opera House and the South Bank Centre. He now makes his own passion fruit daiquiri and other classic cocktails from his Catford-based “Bottle Shop and Bar”.
They are far from alone – takeaway alcohol sales have risen by a third during Covid and the home delivery subscription industry has sky-rocketed. In the UK, Porn Stars now come bottled and batched courtesy of Nick Wall’s Tails; Sloe Sex on the Beach is available from Essex’s Tapp’d Cocktails; Zombies can be ordered from Karl Wozny’s Cocktail in a Bottle in Kent; while Jen Wright’s West Yorkshire company The Cocktail Pickers Club delivers classics including a bramble hedgerow gin straight to your door.