TAKING IT EASY
Even a novice host can impress with a pear-flavoured Grey Goose cocktail.
Holiday entertaining can be daunting, especially if, like me, you have lacklustre bartending abilities. I can spike coffee or hot chocolate with basic spirits, but if I’m going to impress guests this winter, I need to step it up.
The good news is that Grey Goose Vodka makes being impressive relatively easy, whether you like it shaken or stirred or however. First, the distillers create a perfectly balanced spirit from France’s finest wheat. After that, they use a single-distillation process, which means that more of the quality of the wheat is preserved. Then, they infuse that spirit with an assortment of natural essences for a line that includes Grey Goose Le Citron, La Poire and L’Orange flavoured vodkas. Side note: After visiting Menton, the lemonorchard paradise of the French Riviera, earlier this year, I can attest that sipping Le Citron neat is the next best thing to tasting a lemon plucked fresh from the tree. It would be tempting to add a few splashes of soda water to any of these offerings and call it a party, but I’m looking for the perfect winter cocktail, one that works equally well for a casual after-work gathering or a special holiday blowout. When the cocktail is perfect, the size and zeal of the occasion don’t really matter. Celebrate the small moments, like finding a reasonably priced plane ticket home for New Year’s, or the big moments, like a holiday family reunion.
That kind of versatility requires expertise. François Thibault is the cellar master for Grey Goose. He tells me to look for ingredients that bring warmth as well as winter-suited fruit flavours such as pear and orange. When he’s not advising me on cocktail matters, it’s his task to work with the flavourists in Grasse—where many famous perfumes are created—to produce the perfect blend of 100 per cent natural flavours while keeping the flavoured vodkas free of added sugar or gluten.
It’s actually the resident mixologists at Le Logis, the distillers’ manor in Juillac-le-Coq, who solve my cocktail conundrum: The Grey Goose La Poire Hot Toddy, a warm mug of pearflavoured vodka mixed with honey and lemon, is an excellent way to celebrate bringing everyone together—or to simply congratulate friends for braving the cold when you know they’d like nothing more than to crawl back under their duvet. Besides their reputation as a cold remedy (really, you’re just being a good host), honey and lemon add just the right amount of citrusy sweetness to the smooth, creamy taste of the Grey Goose La Poire Flavoured Vodka. But mostly the cocktail tastes like it would go wonderfully with family and friends. “Those,” explains Thibault, “are two indispensable ingredients.”
And they’re in season all year round.