How do you achieve stupefaction heavy enough to obliterate the Christmas ordeal, and yet light enough to leave no headache afterwards? Corney & Barrow has provided an answer. Each of its potions is hugely intoxicating and impeccably clean. Start with the sherry in the morning, polish off the port after lunch, take a swig of the brandy whenever the little buggers start screaming, wake up to a stiff whiskey, put them peremptorily to bed, and then get down to the real business of Christmas, with a bonfire fierce enough to consume the entire heap of plastic rubbish around the Christmas tree.
Sherry at its worst falls apart in the mouth, becoming bad brandy and worse white wine. But at its best it justifies the centuries of experiment and prayer that led to its discovery. C&B's fino is delicate and harmonious. We will not be drinking it at Christmas, only because we drank the whole bottle last week. With its cigar-box aroma and dry quince taste, it provided pre-prandial, post-children life support for all of three days.
Tawny port is a drink that few people appreciate. Matured in wood, blended across years like sherry in the solera, it loses the deep ruby colour and fiery taste of the standard product without acquiring the depth and complexity of a vintage wine. The result is delicate, nutty, soothing and digestible. You can drink a whole bottle without precipitating a headache, and with a properly mature example, such as this one, it is a crime to drink less. This is the perfect accompaniment to Christmas pudding and the best way to stretch your tolerance of the brats to the point where sleep relieves you of the need for it.
C&B's cognac has the characteristics I associate with the vintage version: smooth, cask-flavoured, abounding in hazelnut aromas, and entirely free from that initial alcoholic whoosh which, in cheap brandies, is like a sudden splash of petrol in the face. Again full marks for cleanliness: a few glasses helped our evening along without leaving a trace the next day.
As for the ten-year-old single malt from Knappogue Castle, it is an eloquent testimony to the virtues of Irish whiskey. As smooth as blarney on the tongue, as long as an Irish ballad on the taste, as multifarious in its aroma as Finnegans Wake, it is surely one of the finest things to come out of Ireland since Sophie's hunter, Aunt Emeralds - who arrived, incidentally, with that odd name, lifted from Midnight's Children. One day, Aunt Emeralds hit her knee while jumping a dry-stone wall. If the skin breaks, this leads to lameness and swelling - unless whiskey is applied to the wound. Thanks to an Irishman with a hip flask she was lucky: so will you be, if someone applies this wonderful drink to the psychic wounds of Christmas.
