Recipe

• 3 parts vodka

• 2 parts limoncello

• 1 part lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Add a twist of lemon zest.

I was out in an Italian restaurant in St Andrews on Thursday, and I was delighted by the cocktails that were offered. After a strong recommendation, I tried the "limoncello martini" in lieu of pudding, and was impressed enough that I decided to make one myself.

The taste is all about the limoncello. On its own it's a lovely liqueur, but it's very strongly flavoured and in larger quantities it's quite overpowering. Here, it plays the role of "sweet" in a classic sour cocktail, and the other ingredients provide a stage for it to shine magnificently -- the vodka gives a strong boozy hit with utterly neutral flavour, and the lemon juice offsets the sweet and bitter zesty tastes of the limoncello in a very natural way. If you like limoncello, you'll like this.

I object to the slapping of the label "martini" on anything that comes in a cocktail glass -- see for example the espresso martini, the French martini and the pornstar martini, none of which have actual Italian vermouth anywhere near them. It seems to be a lazy naming scheme originating from patronising marketing people who think that the public won't buy anything they haven't heard of. Many of these names are now established, but since this one's new, I'm going to refer to this as what it really is: a limoncello sour.