London Marathon Cocktail

As I have said elsewhere on this site, I enjoy cocktails. Mixing them and drinking them.For obvious reasons I took it a bit easy on the alcohol front throughout the Marathon training but in the days after I had finished the Marathon, I really fancied a refreshing, celebratory cocktail but didn’t really know what to have. So I decided to invent one for the occasion. The London Marathon Cocktail. The nature of cocktails is that somewhere out there may well be a cocktail with these ingredients. But I have looked and haven’t found one yet. If there is one I apologise, but I had no knowledge of one when I was putting this recipe together. Below the main recipe is a non-alcoholic version, the Virgin London Marathon Cocktail (see what I did there?)

The grenadine represents Greenwich in name and The Mall in it’s colour. The start and finish of the London Marathon.

I use Beefeater Gin for this cocktail. Aside from being made in London, it represents the Tower of London & Tower Bridge – more or less the half way stage of the London Marathon. I prefer to use the new-ish “Beefeater 24”  – the super premium version although obviously for the purposes of this cocktail recipe I would have preferred it to be called Beefeater 26 but any Beefeater Gin will more than do the trick.

Most cocktail measures are poured by jigger. The measures on a jigger will usually be 25ml and 50 ml. To achieve the ‘marathon’ measure of 26.2ml,  basically use the 25ml one and then just add that extra little bit. Even the last .2 is important as anyone who has run a marathon will tell you.

The oranges and lemons are there for the bells that ring out through London on the route.

And finally, the fizz because at the end of the race it is what you deserve even if you don’t have it straight away. English wine by preference as it’s the London Marathon after all – I use Chapel Down.  But champagne, prosecco or cava will, of course, do.

The London Marathon Cocktail

Ingredients – for one drink:

10ml Grenadine

26.2ml of Beefeater Gin

Twists and zest of “oranges and lemons”

50ml of Chapel Down sparkling wine

Method:

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the grenadine, gin, twist and zest of orange and lemon.

Shake well – you are trying to wake it up, not put it to sleep. (copyright Harry Craddock, the great mixologist and author of the Savoy Cocktail Book).

Strain and pour into an iced champagne flute. Top up with 50 ml of well-chilled Chapel Down.

The Virgin London Marathon Cocktail

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice.

Add: 10ml grenadine syrup, twist and zest of orange and lemon.

Shake well and strain and pour into an iced champagne flute. Top up with 50ml of sparkling elderflower.