TWO LIQUID CONCOCTIONS, BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY

IN OUR GLASS WHERE WE LAY OUR SCENE...

Milk, tea, citrus and spirit—where the mutiny is actually true love.

The milk punch—to be clearer (pun intended), the English milk punch—is one of the most romantic stories of two unlikely suitors coming together.

The historic method formulated in the 1700s combines spirit, tea, citrus juice, and warm milk to instantly create curdling. Good curdling.

The (good) curdled mixture is then strained resulting in a clarified cocktail void of colour, tannins, and viscosity but full of flavour.

This ancient clarification method delivers a well-rounded, elegant drink embodying the flavour of every element.

First ever Bottled Cocktail you might ask?

Panettone and milk punch are Christmas devotees in many cultures, so it was a no brainer to bring the two together for our debut seasonal cocktail.

We sourced the best quality panettone from pan legends, All Are Welcome Bakery, Northcote, who wholly understand the sacred loaf, and we immersed it in our debut milk punch run.

In Italy, panettone is revered and eaten leading up to Christmas through January. The sweet bread sits with hot drinks, it sits with Prosecco, it sits alone, between meals. The tall, naturally leavened bread, packed with fruit and candied citrus peel is presented ceremoniously on tables, it’s gifted, it’s coveted, it’s for everyone—across all classes.

It’s steeped in Italian Christmas tradition the way eggnog or milk punch is to other western cultures.

We steeped it in milk.

The brief: to create a clarified milk punch that embodies the taste of Christmas. The spice, the fruit, the panettone. But to be clean and elegant, not heavy. So, using the historic English (clarified) milk punch recipe as a beacon, we lead with milk, but with a twist—our beloved panettone.

First base: panettone + milk

The panettone it’s lightly toasted, to awaken the “baked goods” flavour we literally drop it into gallons of milk, where it sits for two hours. The panettone is strained from the milk leaving delicious, panettone flavoured milk—an epic base for our Milk Punch.

Second base: spirit blend

For this, we make up a Shan Cha tea, Taiwanese wild amber tea (shortbread, apricot and malt). We add this to a spirit base, made up of Gospel Solar Rye, made locally in Brunswick (caramel, stewed plum and orchard fruit); Pennyweight Gold, sweet wine from well-ripened white grapes which is fortified with brandy spirit, and aged for up to 7 years in old oak barrels. The sweet wine weaves in some luscious sticky notes and lastly Marionette Orange Curacao adds a layer of confected orange and sweet resin notes.

To finish the second base, we add fresh lemon and orange juice, which will be the motivator for the clarification: the mutiny, the magic.

Finally, the magic

(…where uncivil curdling makes civil cocktails clean)

With the two base liquids complete (the spirit and citrus mix and the milk) we *very slowly* add the spirit to the milk.

The milk reacts straightaway with the acid and splits the liquid. We give it half an hour to settle then start to filter using a layer of cheese cloth, with a micro coffee filter on top. This Bottled Cocktail is a clear, clean, elegant cocktail packed with flavour.

Cup by cup, this operation takes hours. Our 200 litre batch took days.