Coronation No. 1

Novice

The Coronation No. 1 is two fortified wines in equal measure, seasoned with a barspoon of maraschino and a couple of dashes of orange bitters. There is no spirit in it at all, which makes it about a third the strength of a Martini and a great deal more useful across a long evening. The name belongs to a family of drinks written for royal occasions, and this one is usually placed at Edward VII's coronation in 1902. The date is traditional rather than documented, but the manners fit: it is restrained, dry and built for repetition rather than effect. The structure is the same one the Bamboo and the Adonis use, aromatised wine talking to fortified wine, with the maraschino as the difference. A very small amount of cherry funk lifts two austere wines into something that reads as an occasion. That is the whole trick, and it is worth a barspoon of anyone's time.

StirredClassicAperitifLow-ABVSessionable

Glassware: Nick & Nora Glass

Garnish: Lemon Twist

Ingredients

Serves

Fino Sherry

45ml

Bone dry and slightly saline, and only good cold and recently opened. Amontillado makes a nuttier, rounder version if you want the drink to suit autumn rather than a summer afternoon.

Dry Vermouth

45ml

An equal partner rather than a modifier, so the bottle matters as much as the sherry does. Keep it in the fridge and buy the smallest size you can find.

Maraschino Liqueur

5ml

Five millilitres, measured. Maraschino is pungent and slightly funky, and at a teaspoon more it stops lifting the wines and starts sitting on top of them.

Orange Bitters

2 dashes

Two dashes for lift. Orange works better than aromatic bitters here because clove and cinnamon would weigh down a drink that has no spirit to carry them.

Instructions

Add the fino, dry vermouth, maraschino and orange bitters to a mixing glass.

Fill with cubed ice and stir for 20 seconds: wine chills faster than spirit.

Strain into a chilled Nick and Nora glass.

Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.

Expert Tip

Both bottles need to be fresh and cold. There is nothing in this drink to hide behind: no spirit, no citrus, no sugar beyond five millilitres. A vermouth that has been open on a warm surface for a month will taste exactly as tired as it is, and so will a fino that has been standing about. Buy small bottles and keep both in the fridge. Half bottles of vermouth exist for precisely this reason, and fino sherry is a white wine that happens to be fortified, so it goes the same way an open Chablis does. Stir for twenty seconds rather than twenty-five. Wine chills faster than spirit, and over-diluting something already this light leaves you with cold water and a nice smell.

Flavour Profile

SalineHerbalCherryDryDelicate

Where It Comes From

Coronation cocktails were a small genre. Bar books of the period carried several, written to mark royal occasions and numbered when more than one survived, and the No.1 is the version that reached the Savoy Cocktail Book and stayed in print.

Edward VII's coronation in 1902 is the occasion most accounts attach to it. That attribution is traditional rather than evidenced, and it is worth saying so: the drink's style is consistent with the period, but no document ties the recipe to the day.

Two Wines and No Spirit

Fino sherry and dry vermouth are both wine, both fortified and both dry, which sounds like a recipe for something monotonous. It is not, because they are dry in different directions. Fino is saline and mineral, shaped by the flor yeast it ages under. Vermouth is herbal and faintly bitter, shaped by whatever the producer steeps in it.

Put them at equal measure and each one fills in what the other lacks. The sherry gives the drink a savoury spine; the vermouth gives it aromatics. Neither is strong enough to overrun the other, which is why the ratio is one to one rather than the two to one a Martini would use.

The Maraschino Barspoon

Five millilitres of maraschino is the entire difference between this and a Bamboo. It is not there for sweetness, though it does sweeten slightly. It is there for the funk: maraschino is made from whole Marasca cherries including the stones, and it carries a faintly medicinal, almondy note that neither wine has.

That note gives two flat, dry wines something to point at. Add more and it takes over, because maraschino is one of the loudest bottles on any back bar.

Why It Is Worth Making Now

Low-strength drinking was rediscovered about a decade ago and treated as an innovation. It was not. The Edwardians drank through occasions that ran for hours and wrote recipes accordingly, and the Coronation No. 1 is one of them: aromatic enough to hold attention, light enough that a third glass is not a decision.

Anyone building a low-alcohol list now will find the period bar books did most of the work already. The only thing that has really changed is the vocabulary: what a 1930s bar book filed under appetiser cocktails, a modern menu files under low-ABV, and the recipes are largely interchangeable.

How to Serve It

Stirred, strained into a chilled Nick and Nora, lemon twist expressed over the surface and dropped in. The twist is not optional. At this strength the aromatics are doing most of the work, and lemon oil is the brightest thing available to them.

Fino keeps it pale and saline; amontillado turns it darker and nuttier. Both are correct.

The Spirit

Maraschino Liqueur

A clear liqueur distilled from whole Marasca cherries, stones and all. The pits are the point: they carry the almond note that makes it taste nutty and floral rather than fruity, and anyone expecting cherry sweetness from the bottle is in for a surprise.

Learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Coronation No. 1?

Equal measures of fino sherry and dry vermouth with five millilitres of maraschino and two dashes of orange bitters, stirred and served up. It contains no spirit, which makes it roughly a third the strength of a Martini.

Which coronation is it named after?

Edward VII’s in 1902, by most accounts. The attribution is traditional rather than documented: coronation drinks were a small genre of the period and this is the one the Savoy Cocktail Book preserved, without recording which occasion prompted it.

Should I use fino or amontillado?

Fino keeps it pale, saline and bright, which suits the drink’s aperitif character. Amontillado is nuttier and heavier and turns it into an autumn drink. Both work; fino is the version to make first because it shows the structure more clearly.

How strong is it?

Around a third of a gin Martini. Both main ingredients are fortified wine at roughly fifteen to eighteen per cent, and the maraschino is too small a measure to change that. It is designed to be poured more than once.

Master the Techniques

Stirring vs Shaking: When to Use Each Technique

Bamboo

The Bamboo was created by Louis Eppinger at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama around 1890, making it one of the earliest documented low-ABV cocktails and one of the first drinks of note created outside Europe or North America. Eppinger was a German-born bartender who ran the Grand Hotel bar for decades, and the travellers who passed through carried his drinks back with them. The Bamboo was the most enduring of them. Equal parts dry sherry and dry vermouth with orange bitters, stirred and served cold. The format sits in the Martini family, spirit-forward and stirred, but the absence of a distilled base produces something considerably lighter and more delicate than anything built on gin or whiskey. It asks for attention rather than demanding it. Fino or manzanilla performs best: dry, saline and nutty in a way that gives the drink genuine complexity at a fraction of the alcohol. The sherry choice changes the Bamboo more than any other variable in the build.

Adonis

The Adonis was created at the Hoffman House bar in New York in 1884 to celebrate the extraordinary run of the Broadway musical of the same name, which became one of the longest-running shows of the nineteenth century. It is a two-spirit build of dry sherry and sweet vermouth with orange bitters, stirred and served cold, and one of the earliest documented low-ABV cocktails in the American canon. Where its close relative the Bamboo is dry, saline and mineral, the Adonis is softer, rounder and more fruit-forward. The sweet vermouth introduces a warmth and body that dry vermouth does not, and the result sits more comfortably after a meal than before one. The choice between the two is largely a question of when they are being drunk. Fino or manzanilla sherry is the correct call. Its dry, saline character is the counterweight the vermouth's sweetness needs, and an amontillado pushes the drink toward richness at the cost of the delicacy that makes it interesting.

Blackthorn

The Blackthorn is a Manhattan built on sloe gin instead of whiskey. Sloe gin, sweet vermouth and orange bitters, stirred cold and served up. The sloe brings plum and almond where rye would bring spice, and the vermouth doubles the fruit rather than cutting against it. What arrives has a Manhattan's shape and about half its strength. Several drinks answer to Blackthorn. The old manuals also carry an Irish whiskey version built with dry vermouth and absinthe, and the two share a name rather than a recipe. Both take it from the blackthorn bush, which is where sloes come from. This is the sloe one. The low proof is the whole character. Sloe gin pours at around 25%, so the drink lands gentler than its silhouette suggests. That makes it a genuine second drink of the evening, where a Manhattan would end one. It also makes your choice of bottle matter more than usual: with only vermouth and bitters alongside it, the sloe gin is most of what you taste.