My favourite drink is having a festive moment - and I couldn't be happier
A nutty liqueur witha a300-year-old history is a favourite at this time of year, writes Rosalind Erskine, and it’s becoming increasingly popular in cocktails.
Christmas is the one time of the year when obscure and, frankly, seldom-opened bottles of liqueur or spirits get a dusting off. When else do you reach for Advocaat? A favourite of mine, which sadly rarely sees the light of day until early December, is Frangelico.
Based on the history of the monks in the Piedmont region who distilled liqueurs some 300 years ago using local produce, including hazelnuts, Frangelico was named for the hermit monk, Fra Angelico.
Exported to America in the 1970s, the liqueur is made from toasted Tonda Gentile hazelnuts (a Piedmont specialty), distilled and then infused with coffee, cocoa, and vanilla extracts as well as other ‘secret ingredients’ before being aged in oak casks (I’ll pay my life savings to the first Scotch distillery that uses one of these for finishing whisky in).
The distinctive brown bottle has been designed to look like a monk in a habit, with a small rope cord tied around the middle. I use it for feeding the Christmas cake and pudding, and often drink it after a meal as it’s mercifully not too strong (about 20% abv, which as someone very used to whisky, is positively non alcoholic).
Therefore, it’s with great happiness that I’ve seen my favourite hazelnut drink popping up on festive cocktail menus this month.
My favourite coffee shop, 1841 on Hyndland Road, recently announced a Frangelico hot chocolate, available now, while down the road at Crabshakk at the Botanics has introduced a Nollaig Shona cocktail, which has Kinder Bueno infused Jameson, maraschino, Frangelico, chocolate bitters and pistachio dust.
Edinburgh’s Copper Blossom bar also has a Frangelico drink on their seasonal list. The Nickin’ Nolan drink was created, and named, after the theft of the bar’s eight-foot Christmas nutcracker statue, named Nolan.
To help restore some festive cheer in the run up to Christmas, Copper Blossom is donating £5 from the sale of every ‘Nickin’ Nolan’ cocktail to children’s charity, Cash for Kids.
The ‘Nickin’ Nolan’ is decadent, dessert-driven rum cocktail that marries Caribbean warmth with gourmet patisserie aromatics. Ingredients include Bumbu Rum, Frangelico, Tonka, chocolate, and vanilla foam. It’s sweet but not clawingly so, and you can really taste the hazelnutty goodness from Frangelico.
My preferred serve at home will always be neat over ice or occasionally in an espresso martini or coffee. I’m not amazing at at-home cocktails, but The Good Spirit Company has, once again, come up trumps with their range of batched, pre-bottled drinks.
Their Ambassador’s Ball is inspired by Ferro Rocher chocolates and is a boozy little bundle of Planteray Original Dark Rum, Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry Rum, Frangelico, Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao a la Vanille and The Bitter Truth Chocolate Bitters.
With so many hazelnut dessert-style drinks on offer this Christmas, would it be too much to hope that the hazelnut is for 2026 what the pistachio was for 2025? Will we see a viral chocolate trend, and be sipping on nutty infused matcha? If so, I will have more than one annual occasion to pop open the Frangelico bottle, and rediscover my love of its sweet contents.
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