The Gin & It, two-parts gin to one-part Italian vermouth, is a vintage English drink that I’ve come to associate with Christmas. Mezcal y Blanco employs the exact same template but it’s made with mezcal, the artisanal Mexican spirit beloved of craft bartending types. Mezcal usually gets subbed in for tequila in cocktails, since both are made from agave, but it works wonderfully in gin contexts, too. Both spirits share a savoury profile that makes for an ideal aperitif if you temper its strength just a little bit. Mezcal marries particularly well with sweet white vermouth: the Spanish brands El Bandarra white or La Copa Blanco are particularly good here. And don’t omit the grapefruit. It gives the cocktails a wonderful lift.

• Grapefruit zest

• 50ml mezcal

• 25ml sweet white vermouth

Cut a large swath of grapefruit zest and twist it over a cocktail coupe so that it’s covered in the bitter spray of oils. Now prepare the drink. Stir up the mezcal and vermouth with plenty of ice for a good 20 seconds or more, then strain into a coupe. Garnish with grapefruit zest. If that sounds a bit like hard work, you can just serve this on the rocks with a slice of grapefruit.

A poinsettia is one of those red flowers that you always see in Christmas displays and the drink that shares its name is a reliable Christmas crowd-pleaser. It’s a mimosa or Buck’s Fizz-style drink, only with cranberry instead of orange juice and a dash of orange liqueur. The cranberry adds a mouth-puckering dry bitterness that’s far preferable to orange juice, while the liqueur gives it a bit of depth: Cointreau is good, Grand Marnier is particularly good. It batches up particularly well: if you’re serving it for a crowd, multiply the quantities and make the cranberry-liqueur mix in advance, storing in the fridge until you’re ready to serve.

• 20ml orange liqueur

• 60ml cranberry juice

• 100ml dry sparkling wine

Stir the orange liqueur and cranberry juice with plenty of ice to ensure they’re extremely cold, then strain into a champagne flute and top up with sparkling wine. Garnish with real cranberries and a sprig of rosemary if you’re feeling Christmassy.

There is something faintly trashy about this drink but considering it dates back to the 18th century or thereabouts, you can reassure yourself that it’s a venerable sort of trashy. You can vary the spices in the sugar syrup as you desire; I rather like the vaguely Scandi combination of cardamom and cinnamon. This can also be served hot – just bung it in a mug in the microwave.

• 15ml cinnamon-infused syrup (golden sugar, cinnamon sticks)

• 50ml brandy

• 125ml full-fat milk

• Dash vanilla extract (optional)

• Nutmeg

For the cinnamon syrup, warm two-parts golden sugar to one-part water in a pan and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add three or four crushed cinnamon sticks to the mix. Bring the mixture to the boil, lower the heat, cover and let it simmer for three minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the whole thing cool for a couple of hours. Strain and decant.

For the drink itself, put the ingredients in a shaker with just a single ice cube and “whip shake” for 30 seconds or so – this will make it nice and frothy. Now throw in more ice, give it another three-second shake to cool it and strain through a tea-strainer into a pretty glass. Grate some fresh nutmeg over the top.

I invented this cocktail when I was in a tight spot once and it’s been one of my favourite special occasion drinks ever since. The emergency? I opened a bottle of fancy German riesling before dinner, not realising it was the really sweet sort – too sweet for anything other than dessert. So I decided to use it sparingly as the sweetening element in a sour-type cocktail instead. Married with brandy, it became like an ultra-decadent version of the Sidecar, which is pretty decadent as it is.

I’ve tried the formula since with Jurançon and Sauternes and it’s been just as good, though beware – you may need to tweak the specs a little bit depending on the residual sugar in the wine. (A dash of sugar syrup may help things along).

• 40ml brandy

• 20ml dessert wine

• 10ml fresh lemon juice

• Lemon zest

Place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, fill halfway with ice, and shake until your fingers go cold. Now fine-strain (through a tea strainer) into a child cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon zest twist.

This avant-garde combination of Espresso & Tonic first appeared on the menu at the Koppi café in Helsinborg, Sweden in 2007. It has become a European café staple and, once you get over the conceptual oddness, it makes perfect sense. Coffee brings bitterness and depth, the tonic brings complimentary bitterness but also a little sparkle. Think of it as the non-drinking person’s espresso martini.

• Orange

• 150ml tonic water

• 1 double espresso

Fill a large glass (about 350ml) full of ice. Wedge an orange wheel in there, too. Pour in the tonic and leave it for a moment while you make a double espresso. Now pour the hot espresso on top – if you hold the tip of a dessert spoon to the side of the glass and gently trickle the coffee in via the spoon, it should sit attractively on top of the tonic water.

The Revolver was invented by American bartender Mr Jon Santer in the early 2000s and became a cult drink at Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco, in part due to its flaming orange garnish. You might think of it as a coffee Manhattan. Kahlúa (rum-based) and the now discontinued Patrón XO Café (tequila-based) are the coffee liqueurs you’re most likely to have lurking in the back of your cupboard. Grand Brulot, which uses a base of proper VSOP cognac, is particularly good here, I find. The bartending fraternity will hate me for this but I reckon a teaspoon of orange liqueur (such as Cointreau) is usually an improvement on orange bitters.

• 50ml bourbon (or rye)

• 15ml coffee liqueur

• Dash orange bitters