Gary Law

There can’t be many people who’ve given their name to a cocktail, but Ronan Collins is one of them. Cocktail fans will be more familiar with the Tom Collins, a highball of gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup and soda water, but there’s a whole raft of other Collins out there too. Like the John Collins, which swaps the gin for bourbon, the rum-based Pedro Collins and the Pierre Collins made with cognac. There’s even a Phil Collins, for goodness’ sake.

The office Christmas party isn’t what it used to be. In these post-pandemic days of remote and hybrid working, many people can’t be bothered with them at all. A survey carried out by Good Housekeeping last month found that six out of 10 workers aim to give the annual shindig with colleagues a miss this year. And among those who do plan to go, it’s likely that a fair percentage won’t be indulging in alcohol. Free bar or not.

It’s time to raise a glass to Christmas.

The prospect of choosing wine to go with your Christmas dinner can be one of those things that sends your festive stress-ometer soaring into the red zone. But there’s really no need, because help is right here, with 12 suggestions from our Bottle of the Week expert Patricia Maginn that’ll easily fit the bill for Christmas dining.

Christmas is the one time of year when many of us like our celebration dinner to have as few food miles behind it as possible. We try to get our turkey from that farm shop down the road, maybe buy the gammon from a local rare breeds producer, and stock up on veg that’s been grown in fields close to home.

What were you doing during the third week in July? The chances are you weren’t thinking much about Christmas. But for staff at an ultra-modern production plant just off the M2 at Mallusk, the festive season was very much on their minds. Because it’s here that they make Baileys Original Irish Cream, and boy do they make a lot of it, especially in the run-up to Christmas.

Now that the excesses of Christmas and New Year are behind us, the thoughts of many people will inevitably turn to ways of eating and drinking a bit more healthily. For those who enjoy alcohol, we could be talking Dry January, which until quite recently would have seemed a pretty grim prospect, with nothing but sugary sweet soft drinks to slake a thirst for the next four weeks.

OK, I know this column is intended to be all about drinking, but just this once, as a nod to the month when many of us decide to give alcohol a rest, it’s going to be about not drinking.

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A couple of months ago, Dua Lipa sparked a flurry of interest on social media when she posted a video of herself drinking a ‘Dirty Diet Coke’, laced with pickle juice and the brine from a jar of jalapeño peppers. On the face of it, that might sound a pretty weird thing to do, revolting even, but what the singer was doing is actually nothing new. Her drink can be traced back to a tradition created by an Irish bartender in New York more than a century ago.