What the Going Out team are drinking this Christmas ?

Christmas “cheer” — that thinly-veiled allusion to being gently sloshed through most of December. This is the time of year where slight stumbles are a given; when soft slurring is par for the course on any given Wednesday.

There are different ways to do it. There is the chap who drinks pints of Boddingtons into the double figures and puts it on Twitter. There are the lost heel brigade, the Guinness purists, the ones big into the shots.

Douglas Blyde

I will finish with a style which is hard enough to find in Champagne, let alone within the M25, being Ratafia Champenois (£36.75, yapp.co.uk). Fanatical producer Gilles Dumangin makes his Bakewell slice, milk chocolate, and marmalade scented elixir by blending the barely fermented grape juice from various vintages with brandy, all matured in barrels for an unspecified amount of time. A cross between tawny Port, Madeira, and grappa, this is a very fine friend to mature, crystalline cheeses and may be served out at seasonal outdoor temperature.