No longer just a tipple for Summer days and balmy nights — this festive snifter is giving the classic spritz a righteous renaissance in time for the Winter party season.
This bibulous masterpiece comes from the awfully English eatery, Ochre at the historic National Gallery, where bar manager Rossella has taken inspiration from an artwork in the gallery that’s described as one of the most staggeringly impressive portraits of the whole Renaissance period — The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.
This remarkably realistic picture was painted in 1533 — the year of Elizabeth I’s birth — and it’s thought to have been commissioned by Anne Boleyn as gift to one of the subjects in the painting, French Ambassador to the Tudor court, Jean de Dinteville.
As well as being a rare double portrait — the other gentleman pictured being Georges de Selve — the painting is particularly notable for its composition of rather lifelike objects including various scientific instruments from the 16th century for measuring time and space such as sundials, a torquetum, a shepherd’s dial and a celestial globe.
The painting also features one of the best-known examples of anamorphosis in a painting of the time — a skewed perspective of a skull which appears in the correct proportion if viewed from specific angles.
And this mind-bendingly tasty cocktail is equally notable for its rich composition and is also irrefutably more than the sum of its parts — crafted with a complexity of flavours representing the intricacy and vibrance of the original oil painting.
Cambar House and her team have expressed their own artistry by combining Broken Clock Vodka with bittersweet Aperol, a homemade sherbet made from tangy grapefruit peel and have lengthened the drink with The London Essence pomelo and pepper tonic to add some long-lasting effervescence.
It’s a fitting festive spritz to celebrate with whether you’re visiting Ochre for a Christmas shindig or simply popping in for a cocktail before painting the town red this December.
