Review: Crozier Drinks

Crozier Drinks is a brand new company, launching only last week. They offer a home delivery service of pre-mixed, luxury cocktails using the best-quality fresh ingredients. You can make one off purchases or set up a regular subscription. It makes a lovely treat for yourself or an amazing gift for someone else.

All the packaging is recyclable – we’ve kept the box to send items sold on our web shop and the inner cardboard filler has gone on to our compost heap. The very nice aluminium bottle is totally re-usable for storing & carrying other liquids – or displaying a few cut flowers, perhaps.

We opted to try the Mango Lime & Cayenne Pepper Margarita. The beautifully labelled bottle contains gold tequila, mango juice, lime juice, sugar syrup and cayenne pepper – suitable for vegetarians and vegans. This mixture 14% ABV.

Some of the other mixes in their range include marmalade & ginger daiquiri, kiwi & lime mojito, bakewell sour and apple pie martini.

The margarita is very quaffable; the delicious fruitiness of the sweet mango is balanced with a tangy sourness of lime. The cayenne pepper adds a depth of flavour & spicy warmth. Truly delicious!!

Included in the package is an info sheet containing useful garnish ideas and serving suggestions for their whole range of cocktails.

Each Crozier Drinks bottle holds a 500ml amount of cocktail. The number of cocktails you get will depend on the size of your glass. Somewhere between two and four… or one whopping big one if you’re feeling particularly thirsty!!

Get their look: The Staying Inn home bar

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We thought that this home bar was a very sweet idea. This year’s Covid crisis, and its associated social lockdowns, has meant restricted opening hours for pubs, bars and clubs… and often no opening hours at all.

So, if you’ve fancied a drink or two, there’s often been no alternative to having them at home. ‘The Staying Inn’ adds a little bit of fun to the experience. It also serves as the perfect backdrop for those online get-togethers on Zoom and FaceTime. You could even go on a virtual pub crawl if your friends install similar bars. Get thinking of some equally good names!

Get their look

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Prices & links correct at time of publication.

Just for Two 34ml lead crystal white wine glass (set of 2)

Haysmith’s rhubarb & ginger gin

Kraken black spiced rum

6-bottle wall mounted wine glass rack

The Staying Inn acrylic street sign

Just for Two 34ml lead crystal white wine glass (set of 2)

Haysmith’s rhubarb & ginger gin

Kraken black spiced rum

6-bottle wall mounted wine glass rack

The Staying Inn acrylic street sign

Just for Two 34ml lead crystal white wine glass (set of 2)

Haysmith’s rhubarb & ginger gin

Kraken black spiced rum

6-bottle wall mounted wine glass rack

The Staying Inn acrylic street sign

Elderflower and rose cordial

What a scorching few weeks we’ve just had! To me, summer officially begins when the wild elderflowers are in bloom.

I’ve long wanted a sambucus nigra – or black elder – for the garden; it’s just that little bit more exotic looking than the usual type. What luck, I discovered that there’s one here in our new garden – and it’s a good size too!

As well as the elder, we have at least a dozen rose bushes; that’s when I decided this year, I’ll make elderflower and rose cordial.

The colours and scents of the elderflowers, rose petals and lemon peel give the cordial a fresh, fragrant, summery look & flavour.

I’d never attempted a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe before; they’re usually quite involved and require ingredients that aren’t the easiest to get hold of… pomegranate molasses, anyone? This one, for me anyway, is doable; florets of elderflower, petals from a single rose, a couple of lemons and caster sugar… that was it! The other great thing about the recipe was it makes less than a litre of the stuff; I find it much easier to double or triple up a recipe than to halve or quarter it. Or is it just me? How do you divide an egg by four?

Anyway, this will be an annual early summer ritual for me from now on. It’s gorgeous – a glug in a glass of fizzy water loaded with ice or a splash in a gin & tonic. I’m going to make some more before the elderflower season is over… I’m hooked!

Click here or on the image below to save the recipe to Pinterest

Elderflower and rose cordial

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Course Drinks

Cuisine British

Servings 800 ml

Ingredients

100 g elderflower heads about 12 heads, gently rinsed
Shaved skin of 2 small lemons
1 small red rose petals picked (about 20 petals)
500 ml boiling water
325 g caster sugar
125 ml lemon juice

Instructions

Put the elderflower in a large bowl with the lemon skin and rose petals. Pour over the boiling water and press down the florets, making sure they’re submerged. Leave to cool, then cover the bowl and leave to infuse at room temperature for about 36 hours.
Strain the infusion into a medium saucepan, pressing against the flowers with the back of a spoon, to release all the liquid, and discard flowers, branches and rose petals. Add the sugar and lemon juice to the infusion, then turn on the heat to high and cook for three to four minutes, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved, and the liquid is starting to simmer. Take off the heat, leave to cool, then pour into a sterilised bottle, seal and store in the fridge.

Elderflower and rose cordial ingredients

The cordial keeps in a sterilised bottle in the fridge for at least a month.

Keyword elderflower, elderflowers, forage, rose

Price Points: Wine racks

If you’re anything like us, wine doesn’t last long enough in the house to warrant a wine rack! Besides, we’ve previously always lived very close to shops – and usually only bought a bottle or two as and when we’re going to drink it. Perhaps with our new, more rural location, this item might become more essential for us.

However, what I do use wine racks for is my annual summer batch of elderflower cordial. Each late May/early June, I pick the wild, fragrant blooms to make cordial and occasionally champagne. So long as the cordial contains added citric acid and is stored in properly sterilised bottles, it will last until the following summer, when production happens all over again.

These are 3 of my favourite wine racks; I like each for different reasons. Starting with the IKEA model – it’s really cheap, yet is made of solid wood, so can be stained or painted to match your décor. In addition, it’s stackable, so it can be built to suit your space and/or bottle collection.

Number 2 is unobtrusive and minimalist; it’s made of thin black wire with hexagonal slots (a shape that gives a structure maximum strength in minimum space – think honeycomb). It gives the appearance of the bottles hovering in mid-air.

The final example has been designed to resemble a wooden wine box and can hold more bottles than the previous two. If this is your favourite of the trio, it would be a match made in heaven if your name also happens to be Chloé!

HUTTEN 9-bottle wine rack, solid wood: £8.00, IKEA
Black metal bottle rack: £33.00, Maison du Monde
Vinothek 12-bottle wine rack: £39.99, Wayfair

shop wine racks

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Prices & links correct at time of publication.

Vinothek 12-bottle wine rack
£39.99