A trip inside the Christmas drinks cabinet

One dreads to think what volumes of booze have been consumed in the UK over the last week. Seriously tying one on is regarded as a critical part of the office Xmas party. If the dozens of pavement pizzas and broken glass in the streets are anything to go by the answer is off the scale. This morning, as is customary at this time of year when alcohol consumption is at its height, we were given the news that GPs should be sending heavy drinkers among their patient lists off for a liver scan 

The  BBC also helpfully provides this alcohol intake questionaire.

It tells you which nationality your drinking habits match. To my shame, as measured over the last week, I got Ukraine. I’m already looking forward to Lent.

In the UK what we have, we drink. But we’re also hoarders when it comes to the hard stuff. What is unusual about the averagely stocked British drinks cabinet is not its volume but how long most of the contents have been languishing there. Having bought spirits and exotic drinks home from holidays we hoard them like boozy squirrels and then forget they're even there.

When it existed way back when, two factors figured strongly in our devotion to duty free. The first was nostalgia. Returning to the UK and the trials of work after a holiday, we're great ones for trying to re-create the pleasure of foreign lands through native varieties of alcohol. Everyone knows, for example, that retsina is just about palatable in a taverna the full flush of holiday felicity. (You need something with a bit of edge to cut through most Greek food.) Somehow, though, retsina, never tastes quite so good when consumed on a wet Winter's evening in Watford.

A quick subjective survey of a number of friends and acquaintances who had clearly got very relaxed while abroad trawled up a remarkable range of exotica gathering dust. There was Fernet Branca, the Italian herbal digestif.  ‘We tried it once in Florence but I can't remember what it tasted like.’ (I’m told it’s now become The Hipster Tipple of the year.) Another had some Pineau des Charentes, a sweet aperitif from Cognac. ‘I think my mother in law brought us back that one.

And there were also quite a few  bottles of cassis - a delight nestling under a bone dry white of a Summer's evening in Provence, a bit out of place during a British December. ‘I was sure I'd get to use it in summer pudding,’ said one sad owner.

Another had a miniature of ‘Mahon gin’ from the Balearic island of Minorca, not known as a centre of spirit-making excellence. ‘It was the only excursion on the island. They blend it with different treacles. Mine must be twenty years old and still in the back of a kitchen cupboard.’ I can even lay claim to a bottle of Lebanese arrack, unopened and certain to stay that way for the foreseeable future unless a platoon of Druze militia comes to visit.

Anyway, do take it easy over the season because we want to see you back in January. And have a terrific Xmas.

A version of this article first appeared in 2015.