Mixing a Tube Cocktail - London Bloggers Meet Up

What would you imagine that a cocktail based on the London Underground might look and taste like? Last night I spent some time with other bloggers at the monthly London Bloggers Meet Up discussing that question. We were all at Diageo's head office behind Oxford Street as we were about to be treated to some Smirnoff cocktails that had all been individually designed & personalised for ourselves and our blogs.

Quite a challenge I'd have thought as there were about fifty of us for starters and out blogs ranged from food to fashion - geeks to general science & events to elephants. Plus as with any room full of Londoners we came from all over the world, so nationality based drinks would be interesting.


I was chatting with Flashboy & we imagined that a Tube Cocktail would probably smell of sweat and wet coats. It would have bits of old food and McDonalds wrappers in it. There'd be no alcohol in it because of the drinks ban, or any alcohol might be something from a tramps can like Diamond White or Tennants Extra. It'd also be late, overpriced and I be forced to drink it pressed up against someone else.

Luckily my cocktail wasn't anything like that. It started with a base of raspberries and blueberries to match the Tube's Roundel.


The genius part was because they know I like my MOO cards, they thought how could they put some MOO'ness into it, so they added milk but the more cocktail friendly coconut milk!


The mixologist gave it all a mash-up, added a huge shot of vodka, shook, topped up with ginger ale and added a mint garnish et voila my Tube Cocktail was born.


It looked and tasted fantastic. I thought it was going to be really sweet as the mixologist let me taste it before the vodka, ice & ginger ale was added. But it was really refreshing & zingy.

You'll probably see stuff on Twitter & other blogs about how well planned & personalised the evening was. The PR company behind the event - Splendid - had really pulled out all the stops for this, as I truly didn't expect we'd all get personalised cocktails.

There was a book with notes and our photos & avatars, so the mixologists could talk through the cocktails with us & make sure we were happy with the ingredients (we could have easily been allergic to some of the fruit or spices). We all had Moscow Mules before hand, there was plenty of food so none of us were rolling around drunk & we got a generous goody bag of a bottle of Smirnoff & some cans of ginger ale so we could make Moscow Mules at home.

We're also going to get our cocktail recipes emailed to us today, so we can make them again.

There's a few more pictures including a cool Russian Doll cocktail shaker in my Flickr set of the night. Thanks so much to Smirnoff & Splendid for a fab night and to Andy Bargery who organised the monthly London Bloggers Meet Ups for choosing such great hosts.

Update - They emailed us all our personalised cocktails and here's my Mind the Gap Moscow Mule:


It rocked!