Recommended The Bar-Tender's Guide by Jerry Thomas (1862, p.79) — Jerry Thomas 1862
| 1 whole | lemon peel — lemon peel | base |
| 1 whole | Soda water — soda-water | dilution |
| 2 oz | sherry — sherry | modifier |
| 1 whole | Claret wine — claret | other |
| nutmeg — nutmeg | other | |
| 1 whole | Verbena — verbena | other |
| sugar — white pounded sugar | sweetener |
- Add the fine lemon peel, sugar, sherry, and claret together.
- Add a sprig of verbena and the soda-water.
- For cup service, strain and ice it well.
- For mull service, heat it and serve hot.
Garnish: Lemon peel and verbena
Ice: Iced for cup service
- Nose
- Lemon peel and verbena give the claret a lifted aromatic edge.
- Palate
- Cold, it drinks as a brightened aromatic wine cup; hot, it shifts toward a softer mulled expression without abandoning the same base.
- Finish
- The finish varies by service, but remains citrusy, vinous, and gently seasoned.
- Summary
- A remarkably flexible wine service that makes the border between cup and mull unusually explicit.
This entry is especially valuable because Thomas preserves both service paths in one recipe. It shows how fluid the boundaries could be between seasonal cold cup and warming mull, which is exactly the kind of historical overlap that later drink taxonomies tend to flatten.
The choice of hot or cold service is not cosmetic. It changes the drink's aromatic register and social use, while the underlying composition stays recognisably the same.
Few Thomas entries reveal family overlap as cleanly as this one. It is a strong example of one base recipe radiating into two adjacent service traditions.