Best get a hold of St Jiub, because there’s been a resurgence of the most irritating enemy in video games to ever grace our screens.
You’ll need
- 1 oz (30ml) whiskey
- 1 oz (30ml) brandy
- .50 oz (15ml) Campari
- .50 oz (15ml) red wine simple syrup
- .50 oz (15ml) lemon juice
Add all ingredients to a shaker filled with ice. Shake thoroughly to chill. Strain into your vessel. Keep an eye on the sky. Serve!
Only for the bravest of souls, we have the “Cliff Racer” which is Firebrand Wine, Cyrodiilic Brandy, Flin and Sujamma.
– Talen-Jei, bartender of the Bee & Barb
Cliff racers in The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind were fast, numerous and impossible to reliably hit. They earned a reputation for being incredibly irritating to fight; a reputation so virulent that it made the journey from the ashlands of Morrowind to the snows of Skyrim and spawned an equally potent cocktail.
Talen-Jei of the Bee & Barb in Riften presents us with the Cliff Racer: a drink that requires mixing some of the most potent liquors available to create the Tamrielic version of a Long Island Iced Tea.
And, luckily for us, he’s kind enough to spell out its ingredients for us to recreate in real life: brandy, wine, whiskey and ‘sujamma’. The first three are easy, but what’s that ‘sujamma’ stuff all about? What would be the real life equivalent?
Looking for more recreations of these Talen-Jei originals? Check out the Velvet LeChance next.
The answer to that question is… complicated.
There’s no real description of what Sujamma is or what it’s made from anywhere in any game. The best we get are hints.
The Elder Scrolls Online has a crafting recipe for Sujamma that calls for wheat, lemon and comberry—a pinkish-red berry that is apparently quite bitter.
The Skyrim Dragonborn expansion includes a quest where you help a local bartender distribute his Sujamma to try and drum up more customers. He says that he’s changed some of the ingredients. So that probably means it has distinct recipes depending on where you are in Morrowind. Maybe it’s a gin, or a vodka, or even just a flavoured moonshine.
Morrowind files describe it as a potent, bitter liquor that is popular with the local Dark Elves.
Combine all those sources together and we know that sujamma is:
- Strong
- Bitter
- Red
- Different according to region.
To me, that says it’s probably close to an amaro, a class of Italian apertif. That’s red, bitter and has a variety of different recipes depending on where you are in Italy. Plus it’s much loved by the locals, just like Sujamma is. Eureka!
We’re using Campari, probably the most popular amaro in the world, because it’s accessible and has that distinct bitterness that is apparently a prevailing part of Sujamma’s flavour profile.
With all that out of the way, we can finally actually make the Cliff Racer! Irritating enemy to fight, but damn tasty as a drink. Definitely a slow sipper, lots of red jam notes from the wine, slightly on the sweeter side. Drink after dinner, definitely not before.
Talen-Jei definitely knows what he’s doing. Cheers!
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