Big-batch Christmas cocktails you can make before anyone arrives

Cocktails at a Christmas party are lovely until you’re the one making them. Ten people want an espresso martini at once and you spend the evening shaking. The answer is to make them in bulk the afternoon before, so serving one is a pour rather than a performance.

The rules for batching

• Add water to stirred drinks. A drink stirred over ice picks up about a fifth of its volume in water. If you’re pouring from a bottle, add that water yourself, or the drink tastes harsh.

• Add the fizz last. Lemonade, ginger ale and prosecco go in the glass or the jug just before serving, never the night before.

• Chill everything. The bottles, the mixers and, if there’s room, the glasses.

• Label the bottles. By ten o’clock, one red drink looks very like another.

Christmas punch (about 15 glasses)

500ml vodka, 1 litre cranberry juice and 500ml orange juice in a big bowl or jug, with sliced oranges and a handful of cranberries. Just before serving, add 1 litre of ginger ale and plenty of ice. It’s sweet, red and goes a long way.

Bottled Negroni (10 drinks)

250ml gin, 250ml Campari and 250ml sweet vermouth, plus 150ml water. Funnel it into a clean bottle and keep it in the fridge. To serve, pour about 90ml over one big ice cube and add a strip of orange peel.

Cranberry fizz (20 glasses)

Mix 500ml cranberry juice with 200ml triple sec in a jug and chill it. Pour a small splash into each flute and top with prosecco. Three bottles of prosecco will do 20 glasses.

Espresso martini, ready to shake (10 drinks)

500ml vodka, 250ml coffee liqueur and 250ml cold espresso, made on the day. Keep it in a bottle in the fridge. To serve, pour 100ml per drink into a shaker with ice, shake hard and strain. You can shake two at once. Shaking is what gives it the foam, so this is the one drink you can’t pour straight from the bottle.

Cranberry and rosemary spritz (no alcohol)

Cranberry juice, a squeeze of lime and soda water over ice, with a sprig of rosemary. Make a jug of the cranberry and lime and add the soda glass by glass. It looks as festive as anything else on the table, which matters to the people drinking it.

How much to make

Allow two cocktails per guest across an evening if there’s beer and wine too, and three if the cocktails are the main event. Make one more batch of the favourite than you think you need. For the rest of the day’s drinks, see how to run a home bar at Christmas.

Let guests order from their phones

Put the cocktails on a menu and let guests order from wherever they’re sitting. With Orders Up, each order lands on your phone with the drink and the table, so you’re pouring from the bottle rather than taking orders across the room.

Questions people ask

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