Flat sparkling wine, a dusty bottle of port, a measure or two of vermouth turning rapidly to vinegar — even the most masterful mixologists are guilty of letting spirits, cocktail ingredients and liqueurs linger long past their best-before dates.
Spring is the perfect time to clear the decks, with as little waste as possible. Here’s how to repurpose leftover cocktail ingredients to good use!
Sparkling Wine
Has your sparkling wine lost its bubbles? Because wine has such a high volume of water, it will freeze — so why not make some ice cubes?
Simply pour your leftover sparkling wine into an ice cube tray, adding berries or edible flower petals for extra style, and leave to freeze. These are fantastic in sparkling wine-based cocktails like an Aperol Spritz, because as they melt they’ll enhance the flavour of the cocktail rather than water it down.
Vermouth
Even many keen cocktail maestros don’t know that vermouth, like wine, goes off — it will turn to vinegar after two or three months. On the bright side, because of this, it’s very easy to find a use for the dregs of a bottle!
Vermouth is a fantastic secret weapon in the kitchen; just use it how you would a splash of wine or vinegar. For example, red vermouth — be it intact or about to turn — will add depth of flavour to a tomato sauce the same way red wine or red wine vinegar might. Or, for an easy sauce, use it to deglaze a roasting tin or frying pan.
White vermouth, on the other hand, functions in much the same way as white wine or white wine vinegar. Try it in a salad dressing or a fish soup.
Sherry and Port
Sherry can run the gamut from sweet to dry, so what to do with the last few measures in your bottle (if you only managed a couple of glasses over Christmas) will depend on which style you have on hand. Wherever you find yourself, the kitchen is a good direction to go next!
Sweet sherries are delicious in trifles or even over ice cream, while dry sherries work well with chorizo — simply fry the sausage until crisp and add a tablespoon or two to the pan and serve with crusty bread. Ports, on the other hand, are a tasty addition to sauces. Add it to blue cheese sauces and mushroom-based sauces.
Cream Liqueur
Cream liqueurs are great in baking. For an easy swap, simply substitute cream liqueur for milk the next time you make the buttercream for one of your cupcakes or sponge cakes. You’ll require about 2.5 tablespoons of cream liqueur, 250g of icing sugar and 250g of unsalted butter to ice about 12 cupcakes or one cake. You can use lots of other liqueurs to make flavoured icings, like Chambord (raspberry), crème de mure (blackberry) and crème de menthe (mint) - a fun consequence of using different liqueurs is that they will give you different coloured icing too. Why not try our boozy chocolate orange cupcake recipe by following this link?
Spirits
Got a few odd half-and-quarter bottles of spirits laying around? It’s time to experiment with some infusions! Try adding different fruits, along with two tablespoons of sugar for each 250ml of liquid you have, resealing the bottle and setting it aside in a dark place to infuse. You can bulk up the amount in each infusion by blending different brands of relatively neutral spirits, like vodkas, together — the additional flavourings from the fruit will mask most of the spirit’s native flavours. You can find so many flavoured gin recipes that you can create at home by clicking the link here.
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