It keeps not being spring, and I expect that in a few weeks' time it will keep not being summer, but I still like to mark the not-seasons by changing my drinking habits. I had my first bottle of rose (provencal) of the year the other week and followed it up with one from the Navarra region of Spain. I've even been ordering lagers and trying to drink them outside pubs at sodden, wooden-slatted tables (wearing full winter coat, scarf and gloves to keep out the bitter cold, naturally).
And now I have discovered some new drinks - Indian-influenced cocktails - that cry out for burning hot days when you emerge feeling rather high (in the gamey, rather than the Ecstasy sense) from the mugginess of the Tube, desperate for a thirst-slaking long drink.
Indians are not cocktail drinkers. They enjoy their beer and soft drinks, and sometimes whisky (which they make themselves - in fact, they have just raised the taxes on imported spirits to a top rate of 706 per cent to help the domestic market). But the drinks list at a new restaurant in Westminster called The Cinnamon Club takes classic cocktails as its starting point and uses exotic flavours such as lychee and watermelon to give a contemporary twist.
So, you have the choice of a classic bellini - champagne flavoured with fresh peach puree (never bother ordering a bellini that is made instead with peach liqueur or "nectar") - sitting alongside watermelon bellini. There is lychee martini. A guanabana cooler made with Absolut Kurrant, lime juice, soda, guava juice and banana (hence guanabana).
We very much liked the Mombay Breezer - mandarin vodka, freshly squeezed orange juice, lychee puree, cranberry juice and a splash of lime - partly because it was so very fresh and drinkable. "A first-date drink," said my friend, meaning that you'd drink more than you meant to, so as to steady the nerves and be tipped easily into bed afterwards.
But my favourite was the house speciality. It was Jackie O in liquid form - sleek and sophisticated, dressy and elegant, impressive and so irritatingly at ease with itself. And it broke the cocktail mould as I knew it.
It arrived in a martini glass and was separated into two neat layers - opaque white with a cocoa-coloured underbelly. The top layer tasted soothingly of cool milk, because that's what it was. Once I had swallowed, I realised there was quite a peppery kick to it and that the milk had been subtly perfumed with spices. The bartender said the base of the drink was thandai. The original thandai was, I later learnt, prepared with cannabis, almonds, spices and milk, and drunk on the night when Hindus worship Shiva, their most powerful god. Apparently, Shiva is considered so frightening that he is fed opium to numb his destructive potential. I wondered if human miscreants could claim to be possessed by Shiva and request similar treatment, but I am told not.
The concoction I was drinking did not contain cannabis, either, but it did include a liberal dose of mint-infused vodka, and the dark layer at the bottom was sticky coffee liqueur - kahlua. I loved the savoury edge the cardamom (one of the thandai spices) gave the milk. Cardamom and milk is actually a heavenly combination, to be found all over the place at the moment: Waitrose has a lovely Indian dessert of pressed curds flavoured with cardamom and pistachio, and I am addicted to Forest Hill's cardamom ice cream from Tesco.
The bartender was keeping his recipes close to his chest and would not say how to make this drink. He did reveal, however, that the secret of making lychee bellini taste of lychee lay not in using a great deal of pureed fruit ("It simply wouldn't taste of anything") but in mixing apple and pineapple juice to match the lychee flavour. The other way to bring out the taste of lychee, he said, was to steep the fruit peel in water and sugar to draw out the flavour.
Sometimes it astonishes even me to hear what extraordinary lengths people go to simply to put something in your glass.
The Cinnamon Club, 30 Great Smith Street, London SW1 (020 7222 5572)
