Did a chocolate not give you quite the kick you needed this cold Monday morning? Here are some alcoholic advent calendars to find around town or have as your own.
Wine: The Pop-up Advent Wine Shop
The pun-tastic ladies from roaming wine school A Grape Night In have created a walk-in advent calendar in the form of a pop-up shop in Covent Garden’s School of Wok. The shop is open until Christmas Eve selling a whole host of fine, festive and quaffable wines and wine-related gifts, while each day they’ll open a different door on their boozy calendar to reveal a wine that will be sampled free throughout the day. Surely worth a regular stop-in if you happen to work nearby. The advent calendar has its own (growing-by-the-day) blog, too.
Beer: BrewDog’s Advent Adventure
BrewDog’s Shoreditch bar is home to its advent calendar for the next month. Each day, the brewers will utter a secret code word via Twitter (at a random time) and the first person to come to the bar and give the magic word will win the contents of that day’s advent calendar door: beers, beer tasting sessions, vouchers and other beery things.
Whisky and Gin: Drinks by the Dram
These calendars from Drinks by the Dram come with a measure of gin or whisky for each day of December; they first started last year and are back with a vengeance (or at least a hangover threat). Aside from a good excuse for a daily tipple, what we particularly like is that these calendars are an opportunity to sample new and unusual distillates and by using the #Ginvent or #WhiskyAdvent hashtags on twitter, you can join in with daily live tastings, too. The calendars aren’t cheap (gin £99.95, whisky £149.95) but do include 24 miniatures. You can get them at Selfridges or Harvey Nichols.
More
- London cocktail guru Bar Chick is giving away bottles and bar vouchers everyday via an online advent calendar.
- Guess the film being re-created on Richmond pub The Orange Tree's YouTube channel for free pints and more.
- Dark Star Brewery have their own bottle-a-day advent calendar.
- Masters of Malt are selling rum, cognac and tequila advent calendars similar to the whisky and gin versions.
