Stay warm in the drink

SO, DID transatlantic oarsmen James Cracknell and Ben Fogle raised a Hogmanay glass or two of hot toddy, as their little craft wallowed somewhere between the Canary Islands and Antigua? We're assured so by The Glenlivet who, as one of the pair's sponsors in their bid to win the 2,937 miles Atlantic Rowing Race, obligingly provided the intrepid rowers with a supply.

The Glenlivet are making much of their "Atlantic Warmer" (see recipe below ), although, personally, I wouldn't adulterate a good single malt by mixing it with anything other than a microscopic drop of cold water. However, when it comes to toddy, Glenlivet can boast distinguished testimonials from no less than the extraordinary James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. In his characterisation as "the Shepherd" in Christopher North's popular 19th-century chronicle of conviviality Noctes Ambrosianae, he provides a glowing (and presumably unsolicited) testimonial for his favourite dram, which seems tailor-made for Atlantic rowers: "Gie me the real Glenlivet... and I well believe that I could mak' drinkable toddy out o' sea water."

He adds, famously, that "if a body could just fin' oot the exac' proper proportion o' quantity that ought to be drank every day... I verily trow that he micht leeve for ever... and that doctors and kirkyards would go out o' fashion."

Hot toddy's medicinal, if not quite immortality-inducing, qualities were endorsed by no less than our sainted discoverer of penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming who, when asked about a cure for the cold, replied simply: "A good gulp of hot whisky at bedtime - it's not very scientific, but it helps." Then consider that fine old Scots remedy for a cold: "Retire to bed, put hat on bottom of bed, drink hot toddy until you see two hats."

In her enduring classic, The Scots Kitchen, F Marian McNeill discourses at length on toddy, and quotes the 18th-century poet and author Allan Ramsay's suggestion the term was derived from "the Todian spring, ie, Tod's Well, on the side of Arthur's Seat", which supplied some of Edinburgh's drinking water. However, Chambers Dictionary less fancifully suggests it to be a corruption of the Hindi word tari, a drink of fermented palm sap.

What McNeill describes as a traditional recipe for toddy is straightforward, involving simply a generous measure of whisky, sugar and hot water (her "loaf" sugar and silver spoon are hardly mandatory).

The Glenlivet "Atlantic warmer", however, goes to town with lemon, honey cloves and cinnamon stick. However, being married to an Irishwoman, when it comes to toddy, I like to put an "e" in my whiskey (of the alphabetical rather than the chemical kind, I hasten to add).

For while in Scotland if you ask for toddy bar staff might offer you a tonic and enquire after the terrible cold you have, in Ireland every hostelry keeps an electric kettle (or microwave) behind the bar, with a ready supply of cloves and lemon slices.

I nurse happy memories of sitting in hospitable little howffs clinging precariously to Ireland's Atlantic seaboard, where the making of a hot whiskey, as they simply call it, is not a business to be rushed.

The glass is warmed, a teaspoon of sugar added with a few cloves and a slice of lemon.

The hot water and sugar are stirred together for a while before a drop of the hard stuff is decanted in - a tipple to be savoured on a cold evening while seated next to a gently smoking peat fire, with perhaps a fiddle or two in attendance. Or perhaps that is just me.

A water for the good life indeed.

TODDY RECIPES

F MARIAN MCNEILL'S RECIPE FOR HOT TODDY

Method

Pour boiling water slowly into a tumbler until about half full. Let the water remain until the crystal is thoroughly heated, then pour it out. Put in loaf sugar to taste with a glassful of boiling water. When melted put in half a glass of whisky and stir with a silver teaspoon. then add more boiling water, and finally another half glass of whisky. Stir and serve hot.

THE GLENLIVET ATLANTIC WARMER

Ingredients

50ml The Glenlivet 12-year-old single malt Scotch whisky

25ml fresh lemon juice

1 heaped teaspoon honey (light vanilla)

Hot water to taste

A lemon slice studded with five cloves and a cinnamon stick

Method

Warm a heavy-based whisky tumbler under hot water and put a metal spoon into it. Pour in the Glenlivet, add the fresh lemon juice and three-quarters fill with hot water. Add the honey and stir. Garnish with the clove-studded lemon slice and a cinnamon stick.

HOT WHISKEY

Ingredients

1 measure of Irish whiskey

2 teaspoons of white or brown sugar

2 slices of freshly cut lemon

6 cloves

8 ounces (or less) of boiling water

Method

Pour whiskey and sugar into a strong heatproof glass. Embed three to six cloves, according to taste, into each lemon slice and place in glass. Add the boiling water and stir until the sugar has dissolved.