Instant Classy Cocktails

Sekforde mixers allow any of us to produce instant classy cocktails at home, while also being a refreshing drink in their own right.

Savvy drinkers have at last caught on to the fact that what you use as a mixer is just as important as the quality of the spirit you use, though a look at the supermarket shelves shows that what most people still want is either one of the big-name brands or a cheap store-brand alternative. These are fine if you’re only using a cheap spirit, but you can ruin a quality rum, gin or vodka, say, by drinking it with a cheap mixer.

In the USA in particular, many of the big-name brands use High Fructose Corn Syrup as a sweetener, and that is bad-bad-bad for you. In the UK and other countries, some of those brands do use alternatives to HFCS, but always check the labels on your mixers and do not buy anything with HFCS in it. The best mixers use all-natural ingredients, though sugar is of course a natural ingredient and you don’t want to consume too much of that.

Sekforde Rum Mixer

Which brings me to Sekforde’s range of four mixers. A look at the ingredients on their Lime, Mint and Cacao mixer (which you just know is going to be tasty from the sound of it), there are ‘No artificial flavourings, sweeteners or preservatives’. Which is good.

The ingredients include natural lime and mint flavours, rose extract and Ecuadorian cacao husk extract. Which is also good.

Things that are good for you don’t always taste good, though. In fact they can be bland and boring. Like tofu. Though one bartender did make me laugh when he described vodka as the tofu of the spirits world.

One sniff of this Sekforde mixer for rum tells you this is good stuff. The lime, the mint and the cacao are all there, but in very delicate aromas and nicely blended, so first you smell one, then another, then another.

Tasting Sekforde’s Rum Mixer

Tasting the mixer on its own is a delight, too. It’s exactly the same experience as smelling it… everything that’s on the label is in the taste, but very gently so as you swirl it around your mouth. ‘I could easily drink this on its own,’ my wife and tasting partner said. However, we only had one small 200ml bottle to both taste on its own and again taste with rum, so we had to be sparing.

Sekforde recommends this mixer for light rums and spiced rums, but just to put it to the test I tried it with a rum I’d recently received, called Mainbrace, which is a premium golden rum, so neither spiced nor light. It’s a mix of rums from Guyana and Martinique, and a quick sip before mixing told me this is a seriously good rum. OK, Sekforde, what have you got? Can your mixer also compliment a quality dark rum?

The answer is that it could. We put a small ice cube in a shot glass, with a splash of rum, and the rest of the Sekforde rum mixer. At the last minute we added some fresh lime juice and swirled the mix around. It was cocktail-making on a miniature scale but the result was so good! We felt we were drinking a sophisticated cocktail rather than simply rum and a mixer. There’s a bitter taste in there, a sweetness, some spiciness, and if I was served this in a bar I’d be happy to pay top price for it.

Instant Classy Cocktails at Home

So if you want to ‘dress to impress’ and serve some classy cocktails to special guests, this is one mixer (and there are others) that delivers the goods. If all you’ve got on your rum shelf is a bottle of Captain Morgan’s, this will perk it up no end, but if you up the ante and mix it with a premium rum, it will deliver a premium cocktail.

You just need to fudge the issue and claim it was a little something you knocked up yourself, with a bit of lime and mint and a few other secret ingredients. Or you could just come clean and tell people they need to buy some Sekforde mixers.

Why Sekforde?

Oh yes, where does this unusual name come from? Well, it’s just the name of the street that the company founder, Talula White, grew up on in London, named after Thomas Seckford. I looked it up. It’s in Clerkenwell, a great part of London where I’ve spent a lot of time over the years. Some of it in pubs, but not drinking cocktails as classy as this.

Other Sekforde Mixers

Sekforde has four mixers in its current range, the other three being:

• Sicilian Orange, Rosemary and Gentian, an ideal mixer for whisky and bourbon.
• Aromatic Raspberry, Rose and Sage, for mixing with gin or vodka.
• Prickly Pear, Fig and Cardamom, designed to mix with tequila or mezcal.

Where to Buy Sekforde Mixers

You can only buy Sekforde mixers in the UK at the moment, in places like Waitrose and Harvey Nichols, as well as in some of the best bars in the country. You can find details of where to buy them on the Sekforde website.