After featuring a drink incorporating that most villainous of the cocktail’s adversaries, beer, this week marks a return to the more discerning cocktail lover in your midst. Although OUCA’s Port & Policy night is well-known for the many gallons of port consumed in its boozy proceedings, there is in fact such a thing as a port cocktail – the most famous of which is the Porto Flip.
This week, I pledge to my good friend, the Association’s President, to introduce the Porto Flip onto the OUCA menu for the coming Sunday and I promise to come along to cause some of my usual Cai-os.
Unlike many things associated with OUCA the principle ingredient is ruby port, which is the cheapest form of port available. You can buy it at Sainsbury’s for £7 for its own-brand ruby port but I would recommend paying the extra £3 for Cockburn’s which is one of the big names in Port, in case you were wondering.
The Porto Flip also has the dubious quality of being one of those cocktails incorporating eggs into the mix – to the shock of many less experienced/hard cocktail fanatics. Yet fret not – when mixed thoroughly the Porto Flip produces a fine froth on the top of the drink that gives it an acrobatic title. It is an IBA Official Cocktail, meaning that it is one bartending contestants make for the World Cocktail Championships, where they compete to be crowned the World’s Best Bartender.
The cocktail was first written about in 1862 in a book called ‘How to Mix Wines’, and despite the conventional wisdom that rules against mixing wine and spirits, the Porto Flip makes for a particularly delicious exception. That being said, I doubt that cocktails are anybody’s usual pre-drinking favourite –even I am not that hardcore.
8 parts porto (ruby port)
3 parts brandy
1 egg yolk, whisked
Dash of Nutmeg
