Victoria Moore - How to Drink

Appetite is not just about food, as Elizabeth David understoodits there in the title of her seminal essay An Omelette and a Glass of Wineyet somehow in the past few decades weve allowed the solid part of what we eat to take most of the attention. Drink is an integral part of any meal or snack, just like another ingredient on the plate. A sip should send you for another forkful of food, and vice versa. Yet drinks are often thought of separately or neglected altogether. Ive lost count of the number of intricate, slaved-over dinners featuring organic rare breeds from the farmers market to which Ive sat down when the first thing to pass my lips has been a virtually flat gin and tonic with no ice or a glass of lukewarm white wine that no one has noticed is also corked. And as for trying to find a decent cup of coffee, or even tea, dont get me started.

It shouldnt be like this. It doesnt need to be either difficult or expensive to drink as well as you eat; it just requires a little care.

And theres another thing. Its often said that lifes too short to drink bad wine, but Id go further. Lifes also too short to drink good wine, or anything else for that matter, if its not what you feel like at the time. Theres no point in popping the cork on a bottle of vintage champagne if really you hanker after a squat tumbler of rough red wine. Likewise a milky hot chocolate, served in a breakfast bowl as they do in France, can be delicious but really works only on dank, dark mornings in the middle of winter, when youve got time to wrap your hands round it and havent eaten so much the night before youre still full from dinner.

A good drinkthe right drink poured at just the right momentbecomes not just a thirst-quencher but part of our social fabric.

A passing moment can be burnished to become an event that fixes in your mind: the jug of homemade lemonade shared outside on a rare warm afternoon; the kir (far superior to kir royale) that was so good just before a coq au vin on that cold winters night; or the glass of prosecco, too often thought of as a poor mans champagne when it is nothing of the sort, poured as a pick-me-up at the end of a grimy day in the office.

Sometimes its worth memorizing a few easy recipes: one of the best drinks Ive ever had was a negroni (Campari, gin, and red vermouth, in equal parts, poured over lots of ice) knocked up from the minibar of a hotel in the Middle East, which we savored on the terrace in the sticky heat as the sun dropped out of the sky.

More often its the simple rituals of drinking that give the most pleasure: the rhythm of the morning cup of tea, whether a mug of strong English breakfast tea or a calming lemon-balm infusion, that helps you out of bed to start the day; the whirr of the blender pulverizing fruit that might otherwise have gone to waste but has been reinvented into a nutritious smoothie; or the pfft of relief as you pull open a can of tonic at 6:00 P.M. on a Sunday afternoon.

Ive written this book partly as a response to the flow of queries I get from friends, acquaintances, and readers of my Guardian wine column, asking first what they could make to drink at such and such an occasion and second how to make a certain drink taste better. But also partly out of a sense that while we all have kitchens piled high with books telling us how and what to cook, few seem to offer advice on what to drink in the context of our everyday lives.

This book is a very personal collection of the things I like to drink at home. It is not intended to be encyclopedicone that was would have been twelve times the size, taken the rest of my life to research, and done some serious damage to my liver in the process. So I apologize for the many, inevitable omissions, as well as for those drinks, some of which deserve an entire book to themselves, to which I have perhaps not given as much space as some might like. One of these is beer, a subject on which others are far better informed than I am. Cognac, whiskey, and Armagnac lovers may also feel slighted by the small amount of space given to those drinks. Part of the reason for these absences is that this book is mostly about the preparation of drinks, and how best you might enjoy them, rather than being a shopping guide.

What I drink depends not just on current whim but also on whom Im with, what time of the year it is, and how cold it is outside, so the book is arranged by season and, to some extent, occasion. The idea is that this will make it easier for you to find a drink that will quench your thirst and suit your appetite, whether you have friends coming round, are throwing a big party, or just want to have a nice night in at home. Because what you drink cues up your taste buds, in some cases I have included a few food suggestions or recipes too, particularly for canaps. There are occasionally suggestions for what to have for dinner toothe whole package.

Im no expert bartender, so there is nothing complicated or difficult in this book, but I think thats the point: every drink can be thrown together by anyoneprovided the person is sober enough, of course.

A drinks cupboard is just like the food section of your kitchen, in that with a good stock of basics and old favorites you should be able to add the simplest of fresh ingredientsa slice of lemon, perhaps, or an egg white, some milk or half a glass of freshly squeezed limeand bring everything else alive. In the same way that you might keep two (or even three) olive oilsa cheap one for cooking and a superior extra virgin oil for dressing raw greens or drizzling on bruschettaits sometimes worth duplicating an ingredient on different quality levels, especially if you are a keen martini drinker or an addict of single malts. Here are some suggestions to give you the bones of a good liquid larder. Also, do remember that a drink can only ever be as good as the quality of its ingredients.