A Bitter Spirit

Day 3: God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

The carol for Day 3 of our calendar is the traditional English song, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman. The archaic Victorian language make the carol, and in particular the first line, one of the most misunderstood carols in our Christmas canon. While modern singers would interpret the line as telling the titular men to stop their celebrating and happiness making, Victorian peasants would have found a different meaning. In Victorian times, the word merry is more akin to strength or might (think Robin Hood's Merry Men - more mighty than happy) and the word rest means to keep or make. In modern speak, the line would probably best read, "God make you mighty, gentlemen!" Ok, enough with the English lesson! Let's have a drink.

This carol was originally published during the reign of Queen Victoria and made popular in the Anglican Church because of her love of carols. So we wondered, what would good Queen Vic be sipping on while she enjoyed a Christmas Carol? Well she abhorred the idea of teetotaling and often drank a combination of claret (the English name for red wine from Bourdeax) and scotch. Various blogs have said that the Queen Victoria Tipple, as this drink is called in England, can be rather dodgy. So we decided to make it a bit more modern, using the recently popular New York Sour as inspiration.

A New York Sour has a whiskey sour base with a float of sweet red wine on top. It looks pretty fantastic when done properly with the dark red layer at the top and the brownish-yellow layer on the bottom. To give the drink that Queen Vic twist,  we decided to make a Scotch sour and then float some Bourdeaux wine or port.

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Cocktail
3 parts Scotch (we used Balvenie)
1 part lemon juice
1 part simple syrup
1/2 part Merlot
1/2 port
ice
Rocks glass

Mix the first three ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake until chilled. Pour into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Pour merlot over the back of a spoon placed just below the surface of the drink. Step back and admire the float. Pour the port into the cocktail in the same way. The float she is no more.

Cocktail Notes
The Balvenie is a sweet single malt Scotch that tastes surprisingly good as a sour. Like really good. You could probably use any Speyside or Highland scotch (we would expect a Dalwhinnie or a Glenmorangie to work very well). An Islay scotch would be interesting to try. Kate's not a fan of the peat, so we didn't have any on hand, but if you do like a good Laphroaig or Lagavulin, definitely give it a try!

The Bourdeaux we bought wasn't very good and definitely not sweet so we ended up switching to a merlot but we liked the extra sweetness that the port gives. If you have a decent quality, lightly sweet red, you might not need the port (and you'll get the full float affect)!

Listen Along

The Bishop .. She Smokes!

We had some of The Ebenezer Scrooge left, so yesterday we took a mug of it outside and tried to snap a picture while it was smoking. Yup, that's steam - not a lens flare or anything :) Also - festive!

Day 3: Ebenezer Scrooge

What character in literature personifies the lack of Christmas spirit more than Ebenezer Scrooge? Seriously, the spirit world ultimately had to send four (FOUR!) ghosts to get him to see the error of his ways and to turn him into a decent human being. Yet for most of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer looks down on the less fortunate, abuses his poor assistant, Bob Cratchett and mutters “Bah, humbug” whenever another character so much as cracks a smile. For that, Mr. Scrooge, you get a well deserved chair at the NAUGHTY table.