A funky, fresh pre-batch to set your summer party alight

The rebujito is a classic Spanish cocktail that’s typically made with sherry and a lime/lemon soda. This lifts it up a notch, and also takes well to being batch-made for summer party drinking.

Steve Georgiou, beverage manager, Alta, London W1

The magic of easy-make ice-cream combined with the comfortingly familiar flavours of the classic Italian dessert

I can be a real creature of habit when it comes to ice-cream. You could present me with the most creative flavoured scoops in the fanciest gelato shop and I will unfailingly choose mint chocolate chip, pistachio or coffee – not at the same time, of course, I still have some sense. I recently came across a tiramisu ice-cream and my interest was piqued; it’s one of my favourite desserts. Here, I’ve turned it into a no-churn version for ease and added a mascarpone layer to stay true to the original dessert.

A margarita with an aromatic kick from south London’s coolest Caribbean eatery

Don’t be put off by the name, because this isn’t blow-your-head-off hot – the scotch bonnet infusion is quick, so the flavour is subtle and aromatic, rather than aggressive. The chilli-infused base would also work in other classic tequila cocktails, especially a spicy vampiro.

Nathaniel Mortley, chef/owner, 2210 by Natty Can Cook, London SE24

A lower-ABV highball that brings together cherry cola, red wine and Italy’s favourite bitter artichoke aperitif

Our highball menu at Circle 13 champions lower-ABV pours for relaxed evenings of petanque. This one’s a favourite at our park takeovers, as well as a nod to the Basque-inspired pintxo kitchen at our first permanent site in east London.

Marc Sarton Du Jonchay, Circle 13, London E2

A daiquiri endowed with citrussy lemongrass syrup and a welcome waft of herbal shiso

A daiquiri is a cocktail that shows just how far you can get with only three ingredients: rum, sugar and lime. Our version includes fresh shiso leaves for herbal notes you don’t expect, but absolutely want with rum (and if you use red shiso, the vibrant pink colour it imparts just makes everything cooler). If you have time – even just half an hour – it’s worth chucking a few shiso leaves into the rum ahead of time, then giving it a good shake and leaving it to steep. The syrup can be made with white sugar, but soft light brown sugar will remind the rum of home, and add a warmer, richer finish that works well with the lemongrass.

Abie Lamin, general manager, Cafe Kowloon, London E8

A zesty, grown-up, after-dinner digestif that drifts into the arena of the rum old fashioned but in a fancy glass

A balanced, after-dinner refresher that layers sweetness, bitterness and richness in equal measure. The result has a clean, bitter-edged finish, making this perfect for the season, when the nights still hold a bit of a chill in the air.

Giovanni Dellaglio, assistant bar manager, Le Magritte at The Beaumont hotel, London W1

A sophisticated sour flavoured with a dense and intense rhubarb cordial

The spiced rhubarb base doesn’t make quite as much as you might imagine, because it’s reduced so much that you end up with a super-thick and very intense cordial. That said, any leftover cordial also works well as a soft drink mixed with water and lemon juice to taste; it’s pretty tasty poured over thick yoghurt and/or fruit, too.

Stan O’Brien, Vivien, Edinburgh

A delicate, elegant and aromatic sour that’s a bit like a floral white lady

A delicate, elegant and aromatic sour with notes of floral jasmine tea balanced by bright citrus, making it fresh and perfect for spring. By all means make double or triple the infused gin, if you like, because it also works beautifully in an elevated jasmine gin and tonic (plenty of ice, quality tonic and a lemon twist), or stirred into a simple floral martini with a splash of dry vermouth, or lengthened into a light spring spritz topped with sparkling wine and a dash of soda.

Fredi Viaud, bar manager, Julie’s, London W11

Nearly every European country has its own fruit brandy. Some are a bit agricultural so here’s a taste of the best

“I’ve had people burst into tears tasting these – it takes them straight back to a moment in their past.” I have come to visit Barney Wilczak, an unusually soulful spirits producer, at Capreolus Distillery near Cirencester. We are surrounded by stainless-steel vats of his eau-de-vie, the clear, fragrant brandy that he distills from apples, gooseberries, cherries, pears, plums, raspberries, grapes, quince and various other fruits grown within a 35-mile radius of this sunny English hilltop.

I say “distillery”, which might make you imagine something vaguely industrial, but we are in fact in his dad’s garage, while the still itself is in the shed. But the liquids? My goodness. Each 60-litre container represents around 4,000kg of fruit, all picked within a day of ripeness, wild-fermented over months into fruit wine, then triple-distilled to exacting specifications that vary fruit by fruit and batch by batch. Obsessive doesn’t cover it. When Wilczak made his first batch of raspberry eau-de-vie, he reckons he hand-graded 2m raspberries, rejecting any with even the slightest imperfection.

Publicans say celebrity-backed brands have helped the take-up of a ‘slightly lighter alternative’ to the classic G&T

A crisp gin and tonic has for many British people been just the ticket as the weather gets warmer, but new consumer data shows tequila is overtaking gin for the first time as a summer tipple of choice.

Spicy margaritas, which are a piquant twist on the classic tequila, lime and triple sec cocktail, have taken the UK by a storm in recent years and now the country is firmly hooked on tequila, with many ordering a tequila and tonic instead of a G&T.

A knickerbocker-style punch with notes of berry compote and scones

Named after a community-focused cafe in Dublin, this drink has a flavour profile that brings to mind berry compote and scones. It’s delicious as a single serving, or make a big batch and serve as a punch to share with friends. At Homeboy, we garnish it with a little raspberry dust, but at home a little lime flag perched on the side of the glass also works well.

Lizzie Wharton, head bartender, Homeboy, London N1

Pedro Piscal pisco is latest Chilean brand to resemble a Hollywood name – and others have fought off the lawsuits

The actor Pedro Pascal is waging a legal battle against a Chilean pisco merchant who has chosen a cheeky name for his brand of the country’s national spirit: Pedro Piscal.

David Herrera registered the brand name with a Chilean commercial regulator in 2023 and began selling his pisco in off-licences and restaurants.

Tonic is much more than a bit player in a G&T. A lot of it’s good enough to drink solo

If a tonic is something that “makes you feel stronger and happier”, my tonics come in the form of good wine, bad chocolate and an ageing whippet called Ernie. Recently, though, I’ve found myself craving the OG tonic – tonic water – which started life as a malaria treatment in the age of the British empire.

In the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries brought quinine, a bitter compound found in the bark of American cinchona trees, to Europe. They knew that indigenous people had been using it to treat fevers, and by the 1700s it was routinely being used as an antimalarial in tropical colonies. But there was a snag: quinine is unpalatable. To offset its impossible bitterness, it was combined with water and sugar to make a drink that enabled those stationed in the tropics to self-medicate every day. By the Victorian times, that self-medication had taken on a different aspect; not only had tonic water become fizzy, but it was routinely combined with gin for a drink now emblematic of the British Raj.

This Lombardian ‘village cake’ is simple, delicious and endlessly adaptable

Old sourdough is my secret ingredient. To stop it going mouldy, I take it out of any plastic packaging and keep it in the bread bin with plenty of airflow around it – that way, it will dry out slowly, rather than turning mouldy. Any odds and ends, meanwhile, I store in a cloth bag to use in various dishes, from pangrattato (or poor man’s parmesan) to strata, a savoury bread-and-butter pudding.

My new favourite recipe discovery for using up stale bread is today’s torta paesana, or village cake, from Lombardy. The best way I can come up with to describe it is that it’s a bit like a firm baked custard.

An upmarket, smoky ‘tegroni’ that is simplicity itself to make

All you need to make this is a glass and a spoon. We’ve switched out the tequila from the original noughties twist on the negroni and instead brought forward our favourite spirit, mezcal, to bring a lightly smoky profile to proceedings. The perfect pairing for this drink is a campfire, so it’s an especially good one to premix in a flask and chuck in your backpack for a spring camping trip.

Daniel Craig Martin, co-founder, Bar Shrimp, Manchester

Created in Italy and made with elderflower liqueur, the cocktail is sweeter than Aperol spritz and lower in alcohol

Pub gardens and bar terraces have been awash with a sea of orange in recent years as Italy’s love of Aperol spritz spread to the UK. But this year the cocktail’s cousin, a Hugo spritz, will be the drink of the summer, according to supermarkets and bars.

It is already being served across the country, including at Sea Containers on the banks of the Thames and Mayfair’s swanky Claridge’s hotel in London, 20 Stories bar in Manchester and the Bridge Tavern in Newcastle. Wetherspoons has the cocktail on its menu nationwide.

40ml St‑Germain elderflower liqueur.

60ml prosecco.

60ml sparkling water.

8-10 mint leaves.

Lime wedge for garnish.

Mint sprig for garnish.

Fill your glass with ice cubes.

Add in the mint leaves.

Pour sparkling wine and sparkling water over ice.

Add St‑Germain elderflower liqueur.

Gently stir.

Garnish with a mint sprig and lime wedge.

Gently scented with orange and vanilla, lightened by ricotta, and studded with rum-soaked raisins

This is a cake for the long, ambling tail-end of an Easter lunch. It’s gently scented with orange and vanilla, lightened by ricotta, and studded with rum-soaked raisins that bring bursts of sweetness to each slice. Ideally, they’d be soaked overnight to plump them into something luscious, but if time gets away from you, take a shortcut: put the raisins and rum in a microwave-safe bowl, zap for 20–30 seconds, then leave to cool and absorb. The chocolate glaze is optional; on days when you want something simpler (or lighter), a generous sifting of icing sugar is all this cake needs. Serve with a small glass of grappa or something similarly warming for a quietly perfect way to bring a feast to a close.

Keep a batch of this premix in the fridge, and you’ve got tropical on tap

Make a batch of the premix, and it’ll be there in the fridge whenever you fancy something tropical. If you prefer, use Bristol Spirit Co’s Nogave, which is a remarkable, agave-free syrup that has all the taste of agave but none of the air miles. And if you want to go to town with the garnish, sprinkle sugar on a slice of tinned pineapple and grill until caramelised.

Zac Spooner, general manager, Albers, London N1

Herb is the word in this pungent seasonal infusion with a taste of honey

It’s wild garlic season, which is as much cause for celebration on the drinks trolley as it is in the kitchen. Forage your own, ideally before the plants flower, or ask a decent greengrocer to get some in for you.

Matthew Wakeford, sommelier, Bear by Carlo Scotto, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

From mezcal to sotól, the agave plant delivers a bounty of styles and flavours to explore

“We were amazed,” wrote the Spanish conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo as he beheld the extent of the Aztec empire in 1521. “Some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream.” I remember feeling a similar vertigo when I first saw the wall of agave spirits at the long-since-closed Los Angeles mezcaleria Petty Cash more than a decade ago. Agave spirits are distilled from the fermented heart (or piña) of the agave plant – not a cactus, but a succulent, like aloe vera or that thing dying on your windowsill.

Tequila, from Jalisco, is the most famous kind, but it’s far from the only one, much as burgundy is just one way the French make wine. And here was an entire continent to (respectfully) explore: not only refined tequilas, but hundreds of mezcals from wild, untamable agaves: madrecuixe, arroqueño, tobalá and pulquero, some of which take 25 years to reach maturity. Beyond these foothills were spirits that had barely penetrated European bartending consciousness: sotól and raicilla, bacanora and pox (“posh”) made from maize, as well as pechuga, whose ingredients include, yum, poultry breasts. And all this at a time when a lot of tequila sold in Britain came topped with red plastic sombreros.