On Saturday I put two of our bottles on a counter in a food hall in Kent. One is electric blue. The other glows orange. The man who buys the wine and spirits looked at them for about three seconds and booked a Halloween tasting on the spot.
He was right. Halloween is mostly sweets and plastic, and it could do with a drink for the grown ups.
Corpse Reviver No. Blue. The name does half the work. The Corpse Revivers were Victorian morning drinks, built to get you going after the night before, and Harry Craddock at the Savoy warned that four of them in swift succession would unrevive the corpse again. Ours is the version Jacob Briars made in New Zealand in 2007, with blue curaçao in place of the orange liqueur. The absinthe is already in the bottle. It's the ghost in the drink.
Naked & Famous. Equal parts mezcal, yellow Chartreuse, Aperol and our own sours, first made at Death & Co in New York in 2011. The mezcal brings smoke, which is exactly what the last night of October should smell of.
One the colour of a gas flame, one the colour of a pumpkin.
Neither needs anything from you but a cold glass. Put both bottles in the freezer in the afternoon and pour them straight into chilled coupes: a lemon twist on the Corpse Reviver, nothing on the Naked & Famous. Line the two up on the table and watch who reaches first.
Halloween is a Saturday this year. Order by Tuesday 27 October and they'll be with you in time.
This went out as our weekly letter on Tuesday 6 October 2026, with an order by date of the 24th; we have since extended it to Tuesday 27 October. We write one every Tuesday: history, craft, and the last metre. Straight up.
