Say hello to an old friend with this drink straight from the recipe book of Talen-Jei at the Bee & Barb in Riften, Skyrim.
You’ll need
- 1 oz brandy
- 8-10 muddled blackberries
- 3 oz red wine
- 1 oz honey and jalapeno simple syrup
Add the muddled blackberries and brandy to a mixing glass. Muddle thoroughly to combine. Fine strain into a shaker filled with ice. Add the red wine and honey & jalapeno simple syrup. Shake thoroughly until chilled. Strain into your preferred vessel. Garnish with a lemon and blackberry. Serve!
“Welcome to the Bee and Barb, milord. If I can interest you in one of our special drinks, you let me know.”
– Talen-Jei
It’s not often that you get an actual cocktail recipe spelled out for you in a game. That goes double for a fantasy game, and triple for a fantasy game set in such a supposedly “wild” and “savage” land as Skyrim. And yet, Talen-Jei of the Bee and Barb in Riften offers us not just one recipe, but three, one of which is the delightfully titled Velvet LeChance (named of course after Lucien Lechance of Oblivion Dark Brotherhood Fame).
His original recipe gives us the ingredients, but not the specific amounts. He wouldn’t want to make it too easy for all the budding Nord mixologists out there to steal his ideas, after all. He calls for blackberries, honey, spiced red wine and “just a hint of nightshade”. I’m all for experimenting with new flavours in my drinks, but I do draw the line at drinking literal poison.
That’s why I swapped out the nightshade for its cousin in the greater nightshade family: red chillis, specifically jalapenos. Combining it with honey in a simple syrup (rather than muddling it along with the blackberries) allows us to capture more of the spice from the seeds without too much extra effort.
Looking for other Elder Scrolls drinks? Try my take on Skooma.
You could also try using potato vodka (also a nightshade) or trying your luck with some kind of tomato infusion (also also a nightshade), but I like the added bite of the spice.
The only other adjustment was the addition of brandy, which you can feel free to leave out if you want to keep it authentically Skyrim. I like the added alcohol heat the brandy adds to the drink, and it matches up very nicely with the red wine (for obvious reasons).
Perhaps not precisely to the original recipe by Talen-Jei, but certainly the closest we can get without killing ourselves after a single sip! Best enjoyed in batches; treat this as you would a sangria and share it out with friends. It’s smooth, fruity and on the sweeter side – should be quite the crowd-pleaser if my friends are anything to judge by.
Just make sure you don’t go too hard on the spice or you might have a tastebud murder on your hands. Though to be honest, that sounds like it would only be appropriate for a drink named after an assassin…
Hope you enjoy!
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