Après-Ski

Coming in from the cold

There is a specific kind of cold that settles in after a day outdoors — in your fingers, your cheeks, the back of your neck — and only a warm drink seems to reach it. Après-ski is built around that thaw. The boots come off, the fire is lit, and what you want is something with weight to it, a mug you can wrap both hands around while the feeling returns to your fingers.

What to pour

This is no place for delicate measures. A hot toddy is the reliable opener, its honey and lemon cutting cleanly through tiredness, while a hot buttered rum brings a richer, almost dessert-like comfort for those who have earned it. For a gentler round, warm mulled apple cider carries all the spice with a little less spirit, and a mug of spiked hot chocolate rarely goes unclaimed in a room full of cold, happy people.

Hot Apple Gin is quickly taking over the slopes

If you have been to a mountain bar in the last couple of seasons you have probably already seen it. Hot Apple Gin — a ready-to-serve warm gin-based apple & spice drink — has been winning over the après-ski scene at a noticeable pace. Lighter than a hot buttered rum, cleaner than a mulled wine, and idiot-proof in the way an end-of-day drink really needs to be: open the bottle, warm gently, pour. No ratios to remember after six hours of skiing.

It sits naturally between a hot toddy and a mulled cider — apple, gin, cinnamon, served at the right side of warm — and has become the modern alternative for those who find rum too heavy after a long day. There’s an alcohol-free version too, Hot Apple Gin 0.0, for the driver and for anyone alternating glasses.

Keeping it convivial

Après-ski is sociable by nature, so think in batches rather than single serves. A pot of mulled cider kept warm on the hob, ladled out as people drift in, keeps the host in the room instead of stuck at the stove. Serve everything warm rather than scalding, around 60°C, set out a bowl of orange wedges and cinnamon sticks, and let people help themselves. The drinks are good, but the gathering around them is the point.