My shameful cocktail secret hails from the longest running cocktailbar in Copenhagen outside of hotel bars. All you need to know to see the interior in your minds eye is the bar’s name: MexiBar.

Normally I would never admit, that I have partaken and even enjoyed a drink from the Dark Ages of Mixology, but Whitney of Tipicular Fixin’s l eaves me with no choice with her MxMo theme: Drink of Shame:

So, you’re a certified, mixologist, craft-tender, bar chef, or fine spirit enthusiast…now. But, there was a time when you only ordered Long Island Iced Tea. Or, maybe you always made the Jello shots for your frat? Perhaps you’re the reason that your local had an Island Oasis machine for so long? Rye & Ginger? Vodka Seven? Someone was ordering these things. Your street cred would be ruined if you ordered or (gasp) served one now, but don’t you miss it, just a little? Wouldn’t you love to have one more Jolly Rancher? A chance to drink a mudslide without shame? We all made questionable drink choices in our past, the popular drinks from 1970 to the year 2000 were a cheap, sugary mess. Now is the time to resurrect your favourite drink from the time before modern Mixology. Give a new life to the drink… maybe you need to use fresh ingredients, or you can try elevating the spirits. Make everything from scratch or remove an offending ingredient. Do whatever you can to bring back and legitimize a drink you used to love.

So let me introduce you to MexiBar: It opened sometime in the early 1990’s, it’s still running and must be be very close to it’s 25th anniversary.

The bar serves a few old classics made with great speed but no real love and many, many drinks of the 80’s variety with lot’s of vodka, cream, garishly coloured “fruit” juice and the garnish is often umbrellas and hanging monkeys.

For a few years that was the choice you had in Copenhagen if you didn’t want to go to a hotel bar to get a cocktail.

So we chose Mexibar. And regardless of how often I tried to make “good” choice when ordering at some point during the evening I started to drink Pink Cadillacs.

According to the bar menu it’s a mix of gin, vodka, Malibu, cream, grenadine, pineapple and orange juice topped off with bitter lemon.

So that’s what I had to work with.

Since I refuse to buy Malibu on the grounds of being a snob I left a good amount of fresh coconut squares steep in Plantation 3 Star white rum for 10 days.

I also decided to get a little more taste into the drink by using a good, clean dill aquavit instead of vodka. Homemade Grenadine, check, a decent bitter lemon, check, and of cause fresh juice. And to add to my overwhelming snobbery: Organic Cream.

Time to mix:

• 3 cl gin - I used Tanqueray
• 3 cl dill aquavit - I used D Argentum from Den Ny Spritfabrik - you could use vodka instead
• 1,5 cl coconut rum - if using Malibu I would say up the amount of gin to 4,5 cl
• 3 cl fresh pineapple juice
• 3 cl fresh orange juice
• 2 cl grenadine - I bring fresh pomegranate juice to a boil with half the amount of sugar, strain and cool it.
• 3 cl heavy cream
• 5-6 cl of bitter lemon

Measure everything but the bitter lemon into a shaker, shake hard with plenty of ice, strain into a hurricane glass and top off with bitter lemon.

Garnish with orange slice and pineapple tops and every piece of 80’s drinks paraphernalia you can lay your hands on.

The taste? Sweet like candy although the bitter lemon saves it from being undrinkable to my superior and evolved taste buds. But dang we had fun at MexiBar.