Knight Cap of the Side Table

Boxes and Booze

Oct 24

Knight Cap of the Side Table cocktail — Knight Cap of the Side Table

The Knights of the Round Table were of course not well known for their cocktail culture. Cocktails wouldn’t be invented as such for well over a millennium. But let’s not mistake our fine knights for teetotalers – they clearly enjoyed their wine and ale. On special occasions, spiced mulled wine would be just the thing to raise up inside a chalice, holy or otherwise. Although, it wasn’t the kind of mulled wine we think of as such today, a rich red wine infused with baking spices and citrus, for example. In Arthur’s era, they drank piment, a precursor to mulled wine that was sweetened with honey and seasoned with familiar spices like cinnamon, ginger and cloves, but also spicy pepper and other exotic herbs.

For this epic toast I wanted to pay homage to that history, but incorporate it into a modern cocktail, and I’ve been known to love a Negroni. Simon Difford, cocktail aficionado and author of the cocktail compendium Difford’s Guide, created a mulled wine Negroni a few years ago, playing off many other variations on that seasonal theme. In addition to the expected gin, sweet vermouth and red bitter aperitif, he adds Claret wine, falernum liqueur, and a touch of sloe gin. His version is delicious, and served as the source material for my own, for which I leaned in the nightcap direction, skipping the gin entirely for a lower alcohol drink one might enjoy in the late evening – perhaps after a day spent in epic adventuring. Cheers!