House of Winston – Mühle 4 Mandarine

While Milk Punches are en vogue right now, I came up with the recipe for a classic punch quite a while ago. Additionally, I want to use the drink to introduce two spirits to you which I did not come around to write about. The one is another Monteru single grape variety brandy and the second a citrus eau de vie from the Mühle 4 distillery.

A typical brandy

The Monteru Merlot Brandy uses the same production techniques as the Cabernet Sauvignon bottling. The grapes grow in the Charentes Maritime region and are fermented with Bordeux yeast. On top of that, distillation takes place on Alembic pot-stills. In my case, it is a 2014 vintage bottled 2015.

The Monteru Merlot Brandy combines typical brandy notes with some gooseberry flavour. Apart from that, you also can find some candied violets and oak spices in the taste. Despite its slightly higher ABV compared to the typical cognacs, the Monteru still is smooth without loosing complexity.

A lot of mandarin notes

The Mühle 4 Mandarin eau de vie use organic mandarins from Sicily. Peter Day macerates the citrus fruits and slowly distils them on his Müller aRoMat still. The mandarin eau e vie is bottled at 40 % ABV. Obviously, the eau de vie tastes of mandarins. Apart from that, you can taste every aspect of the fruit, from the essential oils in the peel, over the white pith to the fruit flesh. Moreover, you detect a hint of bitter oranges. I also noticed some vanilla notes. In the end, the eau de vie does exactly what it should, deliver a lot of mandarin notes.

One sour, two sweet…

For the punch, I combined the two base spirits with wine notes in the form of the Rinomato Americano. For the week part, I chose a lemon and orange tea and grapefruit juice for acidity. To spice things up I also added two pinches grated green pepper and three pinches nutmeg. In the end, the drink also lacked some bitters. So, I added a few dashes of Bittermen’s Transatlantic Bitters.

The “House of Winston” punch is a great combination of brandy and mandarin notes. You can also taste the spices and the bitters, but they are very well integrated. On top of that, the aperitif wine and the grapefruit juice make the drink very balanced and almost easy to drink. All in all, you could make a Milk Punch out of it, but this would in turn make the drink too mellow.

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The brandy was provided by Vodkakultur GmbH and the eau de vie by the Mühle 4 Distillery.