A Christmassy Drink – Seasonal Shift

For this year’s St. Nicolas Day my wife came up with the idea to serve a drink in a chocolate Santa. However, it turned out that not every chocolate Santa is leakproof. Nevertheless, I came up with a suitable cocktail and added an ingredient I rarely use. No, I am not talking about the Douglas fir eau de vie!

Usually, I am not in the mood for after dinner cocktails. Instead, I either go for something refreshing, or bitter. However, if you are going to serve your drink in a chocolate Santa you probably should adapt your recipe to it, shouldn’t you? Therefore, I took a punch recipe and added cream to it. Which resulted in a drink with certain characteristics of a Ramos Gin Fizz.

Brandy, port and a little tea

I do not know why, but if I am coming up with a punch recipe, I tend to use the same ingredients. For me, a good punch has brandy, port wine and a tea of some kind in it. In this case, I used the lighter, but still complex Ferrand Ambre Cognac in combination with a great Tawny port from Quinta de la Rosa. For the tea, I used an organic, spiced Rooibos. To take the drink in a more Christmassy direction, I added a Douglas fir eau de vie and a black chocolate liqueur. Word of warning, make sure your chocolate Santa is made of thick chocolate with closed seams. – Our first one leaked and made quite a mess!

Leakproof chocolate

The drink starts off with some dried fruit notes from the cognac and the port, as well as certain chocolate notes. Afterwards, the tea takes over with a slightly silky mouthfeel from the cream. The Douglas fir eau de vie adds some funky notes in the back of the taste, but does not overwhelm the rest of the ingredients. In the end, the “Seasonal Shift” is a great Christmas drink, but serving it in a chocolate Santa is rather unpractical to be honest…