Category: Liqueur news

Autumn: When your cocktail cabinet needs fresh vibes.

Say goodbye to spritz, say hello to sipping fig liqueur from a flask on a wooded lane, with honey and spice.

Here’s how we pour our Liqueurs in Autumn.

What makes a good autumn cocktail liqueur?

Look for complex depth (dried fruit, caramel, jam), some punch (acidity, pepper & bitterness) and abv (because its cold).

That’s why we made Mouse Kingdom: liqueurs made for mice drinking cocktails in the 2020s; balanced liqueurs, so you can concentrate on the sparklers.

Our autumn shortlist

Fig and Honey (18%). Made with local honey from Manchester, rich with a huge mouthfeel and notes of candied peel, dates, raisins and warm, smoky molasses. The Whiskey Exchange

Pear & Peppercorn (18%). Rich honeyed Pear, with a subtle spice. Pear & Pepper 18% abv

Heart and Graft Coffee Liqueur (20%). A collaboration with Manchester roasters Heart and Graft, made with ethically sourced coffee, with honeycomb, nut and toffee deliciousness. Mouse Kingdom Coffee at The Whiskey Exchange

Quad Sec (40%). A boozy balanced citrus liqueur with grapefruit, lemon and orange, excellent in an Old Fashioned. Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs Quad Sec

Five autumn cocktails to shake

Taste and adjust – every mouse has their opinions.

1. Fig and Honey Old Fashioned

• 30ml bourbon (sub scotch or aged rum)
• 20ml Fig and Honey liqueur
• 2 dashes aromatic bitters

Mix in an old fashioned glass full with ice, stir for about 30 seconds, add more ice to brim and twist an orange zest over.

2. Dark Bramble

• 30ml Salford Honey Rum
• 20ml Dark Berries Liqueur
• 20ml lemon or lime juice

Build rum, dark berries, and juice over ice then churn with a spoon and add more ice if needed. Garnish with any berries you’ve been foraging and preserving for the winter.

3. Pear Spritz

• 50ml Pear & Peppercorn
• 50ml chilled dry sparkling wine
• 75ml sparkling (fizzy) water or soda

Mix everything in a wine glass over ice. Enjoy. Delicious sub for a hugo spritz. Garnish with a crack of black pepper.

4. Chocolate Orange Espresso Martini, Manchester Style

• 25ml Mouse Kingdom Quad sec
• 25ml Mouse Kingdom Coffee Liqueur
• 30ml fresh espresso

Shake very hard with ice, then fine strain into a delightfully chilled piece of stemware.

Garnish with three coffee beans and an orange zest.

5. Coffee Chilli Chicken

• 30ml Chicken Wing Liqueur
• 20ml Mouse Kingdom Coffee Liqueur
• 1 spoon high quality chilli oil

Build in your glass over ice, with a half-rim of red salt. Chicken, spice & funky acidity from coffee. Expect it to be oily, spicy, complicated and delicious.

Like Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs.

A Mouse treat for Bonfire night: A hot serve, add 30ml whisky, 30ml Fig and Honey and 20ml lemon juice to a mug, top with hot water, and garnish with a cinnamon stick, spice and a sparkler.

Hold the sparkler in your hand separately eh, don’t put it in the drink.

FAQ

What liqueurs are best for autumn cocktails?
Fig & honey, dark berries, coffee and richer more boozy liqueurs. They bring dried-fruit, jammy and toffee notes and abv that suit colder weather.

Can I drink these neat?
Yes. They are all delicious, and better over ice.

Are these liqueurs made in the UK?
Yes, we make ours by hand in Central Manchester.

Where can I buy them?
From Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs directly, or from stockists such as The Whisky Exchange.

Ready to stock the cabinet after the clocks go back? Browse the full range.

Please drink responsibly. 🐭

What’s the difference between Cointreau, the esteemed French Triple Sec, and Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec, our new Citrus Liqueur from Manchester, in the UK.

Short answers: Cointreau is a triple sec, it’s the most famous one, and yes, it tastes delicious. Here’s how it compares with Mouse Kingdom’s Quad Sec.

Is Cointreau a triple sec?

It is. “Triple sec” describes a style: a clear, orange-flavoured liqueur, usually bottled at around 40% ABV, but varying from around 20-40% abv. Cointreau is the best known in the category. It’s made from sweet and bitter orange peels, in Angers, France.

According to Difford’s Guide, it uses bitter orange peel from the Caribbean and sweet orange peel from Spain, with neutral alcohol from sugar beet, sugar and water. It contains 228g of sugar per litre.

So when a recipe says “triple sec”, Cointreau is a safe, reliable choice. That’s why it sits neatly in your drinks cabinet.

What is Quad Sec?

Quad sec is our reply to triple sec. When we first distilled it, it used pomelo peel, and dried orange, grapefruit and lemon sourced from around the Mediterranean.

In the last few years, we moved to sourcing our citrus from waste juiced citrus. We collect orange, grapefruit and lemon from Manchester’s bars on the day they juice. But we couldn’t source Pomelo as a waste source.

So we decided that being ethical with our ingredients was more important than a name.

So now Quad sec is just one better than triple sec. And it has a sugar content much lower than Cointreau, at 180g of sugar per litre.

Handmade in Central Manchester, with a full ingredient list on the label. UK law doesn’t require that for alcohol, we do it because you deserve to know what ends up in your Spicy Marg.

Cointreau vs Quad Sec at a glance

	Cointreau	Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec
Style	Classic triple sec	Drier triple sec, with more funk.
Citrus	Sweet and bitter orange peel	Grapefruit, lemon, orange, sourced from waste.
ABV	40%	40%
Size	70cl	70cl
Made in	Angers, France	Central Manchester, UK
Typical UK price	Roughly £30+ at many stockists (e.g. £31.50 at Oxford Wine), though prices vary	£25.25 at The Whisky Exchange
Ingredients on label	None	Full list on label

How different do they taste?

You know Cointreau: clean, round, orange-forward, with the balanced citrus people expect from a triple sec.

Quad Sec adds grapefruit, pomelo and lemon to the orange, so you should expect a more bittersweet and balanced citrus-led profile with a sharper, zestier edge. With underlying Grapefruit estery funk.

One of our reviews on The Whisky Exchange describes it as fresh, zesty and good in margaritas. But taste it yourself and judge accordingly. The Whisky Exchange

Which should you use?

Reach for Cointreau when you fancy something a bit sweeter and more reassuring.

Reach for Quad Sec when you want a livelier, more bittersweet edge:

• Margarita: the extra grapefruit and lemon suit tequila’s vegetal funk.
• Paloma: our distilled grapefruit peel echoes the grapefruit juice.
• Drier and more 2026 versions of any cocktail containing Triple Sec.

FAQ

Is Cointreau the same as triple sec?
Cointreau is a brand of triple sec. “Triple sec” is an orange liqueur and Cointreau is the most popular example.

Can I use Quad Sec instead of Cointreau?
Yes. Both are 40% and 70cl, so you can swap them in any triple sec cocktail. Expect a more adult and bittersweet result when pouring Quad sec.

Is Quad Sec cheaper than Cointreau?
Often slightly, depending on where you shop. Check current prices, as retailers vary.

Where can I buy Quad Sec?
Direct from Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs and from retailers like The Whisky Exchange.

Love Cointreau? Keep it. Want to see what recycled Mancunian citrus does to your next margarita? Try Quad Sec.

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Sources:

• Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec, The Whisky Exchange
• Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs
• Cointreau, The Whisky Exchange
• Cointreau, Difford’s Guide
• Cointreau l’Unique, LWC
• Cointreau, Oxford Wine

Salt rim, lime wedge: the Margarita is one of the best cocktails on the planet, and one of the most ordered, ever.

Nobody really knows who made the first. What nearly every version has in common is orange liqueur, and the quality of that liqueur is the difference between a Margarita that dreams and one that drags.

In this cocktail guide we delve into the history of the Margarita, where its orange liqueur originated, and share three classic recipes you can make at home with Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec, a handmade, drier orange liqueur from Manchester, UK.

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The History of the Margarita

What does “Margarita” mean?

Margarita is the Spanish word for daisy, and that is probably the best clue we have. The Daisy is a family of drinks built from a base spirit, citrus juice and a sweetener, a format that dates back to Victorian bartending.

Cocktail historian David Wondrich links the Margarita to the brandy Daisy, remade with tequila. In other words, the Margarita is most likely a tequila Daisy that took on a life of its own. For more on this theory, see Wikipedia’s Margarita entry.

The earliest printed clues

Long before anyone put the name Margarita on a menu, the recipe was already turning up in print:

• 1936: A newspaper mentions a “Tequila Daisy”, described in a Tijuana bar. This is the first specific mention of the drink that Difford’s Guide has found.
• 1937: The Café Royal Cocktail Book in London includes the Picador, whose proportions match the modern Margarita.
• 1939: The Cotton Club’s book of mixed drinks lists a Tequila Sour with the same ingredients, served in a salt-rimmed glass with a lime wedge and sweetened with Cointreau.
• September 1953: A California newspaper gives the earliest known mention of the Margarita by name.
• December 1953: Esquire publishes what is generally considered the first Margarita recipe: tequila, a dash of triple sec and half a lime or lemon.

So who invented the Margarita?

What wikipedia says:

• Pancho Morales, 1942, at Tommy’s Place in Ciudad Juárez, after bartending he became a milkman in the US.
• Danny Herrera, who made one for the dancer Marjorie King at Rancho La Gloria in Baja California, although that account has been challenged, its definitely the most engaging story.
• Margarita Sames, 1948, a Dallas socialite said to have mixed it at a party in Acapulco, probably a marketing move by Jose Cuervo.
• Santos Cruz, a bartender in Galveston, Texas, said to have created it for the singer Peggy Lee.
• Hussong’s Cantina in Ensenada, which markets itself as the home of the original. They have excellent SEO.

What you should take from this: Nobody really knows and the joy of a good drink is entirely in the myth & legend.

Why a Margarita needs a good orange liqueur

The traditional ratio is 2 parts tequila, 1 part orange liqueur and 1 part lime juice, and Simon Difford confirmed in his own 2007 book that his Margarita specification was 2:1:1.

The liqueur makes up a quarter of the drink, it matters enormously. A flat, cloying one drags the whole Margarita down. A brighter, drier one elevates.

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The History of Triple Sec

Where did triple sec come from?

Its extremely complicated. But tldr – Both the French and the Dutch established the Liqueur category and the standards. The Dutch first in the 1600s/1700s, and then France in the 1800s

Triple sec is an orange-flavoured liqueur that began in France, and grew out of, or realistically alongside a (slightly) older family of drinks: the curaçaos.

Bols made orange liqueurs by steeping dried peels from lahara oranges, including peels from the island of Curaçao, and those early versions were nothing like the liquid you consume today.

Modern triple sec entirely depends on your point of view.

(For more on the blue curaçao side of the family, see our guide to what blue curaçao is.)

Combier, Cointreau and the first triple secs

Two French names :

The house of Combier claims that Jean-Baptiste and Josephine Combier invented triple sec in 1834.

Cointreau launched its version in 1875.

What does “triple sec” actually mean?

Sec is French for dry, and triple is where the history begins to be confusing.

It definitely isn’t triple dry, because Cointreau contains minimum 230g of sugar per litre.

Some might say (oasis) it refers to three types of orange peel, others to “three times the flavour” of a standard curaçao, and others to a triple distillation, although you’d lose more flavour distilling three times, so not sure why they’d do that?

The answer is that nobody knows why triple sec is called triple sec.

How triple sec is traditionally made

Producers typically start with a neutral spirit from various agricultural products and steep citrus peel in it, then redistil.

Blend with filtered water, and sweeten with sugar.

Strengths range from around 20% to 40% ABV.

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What Makes a Good Triple Sec?

A triple sec has one job in a cocktail: to add complex bittersweet citrus and a touch of sweetness without taking over.

Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec:

• Made in Manchester, by hand. Mouse Kingdom has produced handmade liqueurs in Manchester since 2022.
• Rescued citrus. The citrus is collected weekly as juiced fruit from partner bars and restaurants in central Manchester, then cleaned, hand-sorted and infused straight into the next batch on the still. Read more : ethical production page.
• Orange, lemon and grapefruit. Because those are the ingredients we have on hand in our urban distillery.
• A drier balance. We balance at roughly 175 g/L of sugar, compared with around 230 g/L for large multinational liqueurs such as Cointreau. In the glass that means a punchier, more layered first sip.
• Real depth. Rich, baked citrus with tropical, estery high notes and a fruitcake-like bitterness at the finish.
• Full strength. 40% ABV in a 70cl bottle.

Because every batch is influenced by the weather, water temperature and the fruit itself, no two runs are exactly alike, and the label artwork changes with each limited run.

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Recipe 1: The Classic Margarita

This is the 2:1:1 Margarita, built on tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice, with the full background in the Difford’s Guide Margarita recipe.

Because Quad Sec is drier than most triple secs, you need very little extra sweetness, and the orange oils really come through.

Makes 1 | Glass: pre-chilled old-fashioned glass, filled with fresh ice

Ingredients

• 45ml reposado or blanco tequila (100% agave)
• 22.5ml Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec
• 22.5ml freshly squeezed lime juice
• 5ml agave syrup (optional, to taste)
• A pinch of salt or 2 drops of saline solution (optional)
• Lime wedge, to garnish

Method

1. Rim the glass with salt, moistening the outer edge with a lime wedge.
2. Add everything to a shaker filled with ice.
3. Shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds.
4. Strain over fresh ice and garnish with a lime wedge.

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Recipe 2: The Sidecar

The Sidecar is one of the great pre-war cocktails.

Its origins are debated too.

The first printed recipe appeared in 1922. Difford’s Guide has the full detective story.

This spec follows the older equal-parts style, bringing the Quad Sec and lemon up to match the cognac. If you fancy something boozier, we suggest subbing 50ml of cognac, and follow the below recipe.

Makes 1 | Glass: pre-chilled coupe, sugar-rimmed if you like

Ingredients

• 25ml Brandy/Cognac
• 25ml Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec
• 25ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 5ml rich (2:1) sugar syrup, to taste
• Lemon twist, to garnish

Method

1. Sugar rim: moisten the edge of the coupe with a little orange juice and dip it in sugar.
2. Add everything to a shaker filled with ice.
3. Shake well and fine strain into the chilled coupe.
4. Express a lemon twist over the drink and use it as the garnish.

Tip: Quad Sec’s drier profile means you may want a touch more syrup than you would with a sweeter liqueur. Taste and adjust.

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Recipe 3: The Cosmopolitan

The Cosmopolitan is a modern classic. Difford’s Guide traces its roots to 1970s San Francisco gay bars, with the drink perfected and popularised in 1990s New York, by Sex and the City.

Done well, it is crisp, tart and dry, which is exactly like us, at Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs.

Makes 1 | Glass: pre-chilled coupe

Ingredients

• 37.5ml vodka (or citron vodka)
• 22.5ml Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec
• 30ml cranberry juice
• 15ml freshly squeezed lime juice
• Orange zest twist, to garnish

Method

1. Add everything to a shaker filled with ice.
2. Shake hard and fine strain into a chilled coupe.
3. Express an orange twist over the top and float it as garnish.

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More Ways to Use Quad Sec

Excellent with tonic, delicious neat while cleaning the freezer.

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Tips for Better Triple Sec Cocktails

• Use fresh juice.
• Measure. These drinks live and die on ratio, so use a jigger.
• Chill your glass.
• Taste and adjust.
• Express the peel. The oils from a fresh twist lift the whole drink.

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Margarita and Triple Sec FAQs

Who invented the Margarita? Nobody knows. Several bartenders and socialites in Mexico and the United States have been credited, and most of the stories conflict.

What does Margarita mean? It is the Spanish word for daisy.

What is the classic Margarita ratio? 2 parts tequila, 1 part orange liqueur and 1 part lime juice.

What is triple sec? An orange-flavoured liqueur originating in France, used mainly in cocktails such as the Margarita, Sidecar and Cosmopolitan.

What is the difference between triple sec and curaçao? They’re the same. They are both citrus liqueurs with orange at the forefront. But every brand varies on abv, sugar content, and ingredients sourcing. So each bottle you taste will taste different.

Is Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec sweet? It is deliberately on the drier side. The brand balances it at around 175 g/L of sugar and acidity, versus around 230 g/L for large multinational liqueurs, giving a bittersweet, citrus-oil-forward flavour.

Can I use Quad Sec in place of Cointreau? Yes, in any recipe that calls for triple sec. Because it is drier, it will taste better.

How strong is Quad Sec? It is 40% ABV, and comes in a 70cl bottle.

Can you sip triple sec on its own? You can, and a drier, richer one like Quad Sec is more enjoyable over ice with a twist of orange than most. It is at its best, though, in a cocktail.

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Make Yours with Mouse Kingdom

From the Margarita to the Sidecar, a great cocktail starts with a great orange liqueur. Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec is handmade in Manchester from rescued citrus, with less sugar and more character. Pick up a bottle, squeeze some fresh citrus, and see how much an ethical triple sec changes your favourite drinks. For more recipes, visit the Mouse Kingdom recipes and news page.

Please drink responsibly. 18+ only.

Shop Mouse Kingdom Quad Sec

Baileys Original Irish Cream is the liqueur most people picture when they hear the word liqueur: Irish whiskey, chocolate powder and dairy cream blended into a smooth, sweet drink that comes in at 17% ABV. It first appeared in 1974 and is now the best-selling liqueur in the world.

For a Baby Guiness twist, try Manchester’s Mouse Kingdom, whose coffee liqueur is made from beans roasted locally at Heart and Graft, with cafetiere ground coffee brewed over 48 hours and blended with English wheat vodka.

To make one, fill a shot glass about two-thirds full with MK coffee liqueur, then gently float Baileys on top over the back of a spoon so it forms the head.

Shop Mouse Kingdom Coffee Liqueur

It’s a small, independent brand next to a global giant, which makes it a fitting starting point for a post about what “good business” means at very different scales.

thethreedrinkers

thewhiskyexchange

A Good Liqueur, But How Good is the Business behind it?

Baileys is a certified B Corporation. It first earned the badge in October 2022 and has since recertified, with a 13 point uplift and a score of 95.5. That’s a result for the world’s best selling liqueur.

It’s also worth asking what the badge can and can’t tell us about a business of Baileys’ size, especially when diageo is making decisions that don’t follow the same values.

What the score shows

B Corp certification assesses a company across five areas:

Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers.

Baileys publishes its breakdown. Workers is the strongest at 31.4, followed by environment at 26.6 and community at 21. Governance scored 11.7 out of 20, and customers came in lowest at 4.6.

The governance change is important. Baileys says it amended its legally binding Company Constitution to prioritise people and the planet alongside profit. That’s a structural commitment, not a slogan.

Their environmental work is substantive. The brand says it has run on 100% renewable electricity since 2008 and aims for fully recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2030.

The most meaningful part is the farm-level work with Tirlán, baileys farmer-owned dairy supplier, including the Sustainable Cream Initiative and the Sustainable Farming Academy. Dairy is where much of Baileys’ footprint sits, so that’s where effort counts.

The bigger question

Baileys doesn’t operate alone. It sits within Diageo, and recent news from the parent tells a story…

Diageo has removed responsible drinking and sustainability targets from the measures that determine long-term rewards for its management, and these previously made up 20% of senior executives’ long-term bonuses.

“The number of performance measures in the long-term plan is being cut from eight to three. The three that remain are earnings per share, cumulative cash flow and adjusted return on invested capital.”

This comes as new chief executive Sir Dave Lewis has begun a major restructure, with Diageo shedding nearly 2,000 employees in the past financial year.

It’s only fair to give Diageo’s side.

The chair has said that Spirit of Progress is no longer part of the long-term incentive plan, but the work done in recent years has embedded its priorities more deeply in the business and will remain a focus for the board.

The company also says the board will continue to set targets, monitor performance and report against all areas of ESG.

There’s a respectable argument that incentives are a blunt tool, and that once sustainability is part of how a business operates it no longer needs a bonus attached. Diageo also isn’t alone in stepping back from ESG-linked pay, which reflects a wider mood in corporate life, sadly.

What a company pays its leaders to achieve is one of the clearest signals of what it really prioritises.

Taking sustainability and responsible drinking out of that equation shifts them from binding targets to things the board could do, but probably wont. Probably.

Where the badge runs out

A B Corp score measures how well a company does relative to a framework of good practice.

It doesn’t measure whether the underlying model is sustainable in an absolute sense, and those are different questions.

What this means for the definition of B Corp

None of this means the people at Baileys aren’t trying, and much of what they’ve built is real.

B Corp certification only means something if it stays hard to earn and hard to keep, and if consumers can trust that the logo signals a fundamentally different way of doing business.

When a brand at the heart of a global drinks conglomerate carries the logo, while its parent strips sustainability from executive pay and pursues cost-cutting under financial pressure, many humans will ask what the badge is really certifying.

Some will decide it measures a company’s ability to score well on a questionnaire rather than its willingness to put its principles ahead of profit.

Once a badge is worn by everyone, it stops distinguishing anyone, and the B Corp movement should worry about that more than it worries about Baileys.

Every spring, for one short window, the woodlands around Manchester turn white and pungent with ramsons, wild garlic, Allium ursinum. Carpeting the forest floor before the tree canopy closes in and the season disappears as fast as it arrived. It’s one of the UK’s shortest, most-anticipated foraging windows, and it’s exactly why Mouse Kingdom’s Wild Garlic Liqueur only ever gets one small run a year.

Last year’s release sold out in exactly 7 days, and it’s easy to see why: an entirely savoury, green, authentic and unique liqueur. This year, the recipe returns with the same seasonal ethos, but another chapter in the Mouse Kingdom story.

The story so far

Mouse Kingdom has never been a brand that plays it safe. Since 2022, the Manchester-based liqueur maker — founded by veterans of The Alchemist bar group — has built a reputation on flavour-first liqueurs made with real, named ingredients (no small feat in a category where UK law doesn’t even require it), storybook packaging illustrated by human hands, and small, collectible print runs that sell out and never get repeated in quite the same way twice.

Wild Garlic was one of the boldest moves yet: a savoury liqueur in a category dominated by sugar and berries. It proved that Mouse Kingdom’s audience wanted more than sweetness, they wanted something with a sense of place and season.

What to expect this year

• Base spirit: UK-grown winter wheat vodka, in keeping with the rest of the Mouse Kingdom range
• Key ingredient: Foraged wild garlic (ramsons), picked earlier this year, with more sharp green acerbity.
• Character: Green, savoury and grassy up front, balanced with almost citrus acidity and a touch of gentle sweetness & salt so it stays sippable and mixable.
• ABV: 40%
• 70cl, limited print run

Suggested serves

The Ramson Martini 30ml Mouse Kingdom Wild Garlic Liqueur, 15ml Gin or Vodka, 15ml dry vermouth, stirred over ice, strained into a chilled coupe, garnished with a twist of lemon peel. A savoury twist on the classic dirty martini, no olive brine required.

Wild Garlic Bloody Mary Swap a measure of your usual base spirit for 25ml Mouse Kingdom Wild Garlic Liqueur in a classic Bloody Mary build — the liqueur’s natural savoury note does a lot of the seasoning work for you.

Savory Gin and Tonic Mix a measure of your usual base gin with 25ml Mouse Kingdom Wild Garlic Liqueur and add a savory tonic — garnish with herbs and spices.

Neat, or over ice. Served alongside premium charcuterie, olives, breads, cheeses & pickles.

Why it won’t last long

True to form, this is a limited release — once the wild garlic season ends, so does the batch. If last year’s run is anything to go by, it’ll be gone within the week. So pick up yours fast.

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Shop the Mouse Kingdom Wild Garlic Liqueur while stocks last.

Wild Garlic Liqueur ’26 release

If you’ve ever ordered a Blue Lagoon, a Blue Hawaiian, or wondered why a cocktail is glowing an electric shade of blue, you’ve met blue curaçao. It’s one of the most recognizable ingredients behind the bar and famous for its color as much as its flavor, but most people don’t actually know what it’s made from or where it comes from. Here’s everything you need to know.

The Origins: Curaçao the Island, Curaçao the Liqueur

Curaçao liqueur takes its name from the Caribbean island of Curaçao, off the coast of Venezuela. The island is home to the laraha citrus fruit, a bitter, inedible orange that grows almost nowhere else. Dutch settlers discovered that the dried peel of the laraha, despite the fruit itself being too bitter to eat, produced a fragrant oil once processed, and that oil became the base for a distinctive orange liqueur.

Traditional curaçao liqueur is made by macerating or distilling these dried orange peels with a neutral spirit, then sweetening the result. On its own, it’s a clear or amber-colored liqueur with a bittersweet orange flavor.

So Why Is It Blue?

Here’s the twist: curaçao isn’t naturally blue. The blue color is added, typically with a food-safe dye. The blue version was popularized in the mid-20th century as a marketing move — bartenders and brand producers realized that a vividly colored liqueur could make cocktails look as striking as they tasted, and “blue curaçao” was born as a category of its own.

Blue curaçao tastes essentially the same as standard (clear or orange) curaçao — orange peel, citrus, a touch of sweetness — the color is purely cosmetic. It’s what gives drinks like the Blue Hawaiian, Blue Lagoon, and Purple Rain their signature tropical-ocean hue.

What Does Blue Curaçao Taste Like?

Expect:

• Bright orange peel notes, both sweet and slightly bitter
• A clean, citrusy sweetness rather than a heavy, syrupy one
• Low-to-moderate alcohol content, usually in the 15–25% ABV range, making it easy to mix
• A triple-sec-adjacent flavor profile. Many people compare it directly to triple sec or orange curaçao, just blue

It’s typically used in small amounts as a mixer or modifier, not sipped on its own, though it can be enjoyed neat or on ice.

Common Uses for Blue Curaçao

• Cocktails: Blue Lagoon, Blue Hawaiian, Blue Margarita, Purple Rain, Screwball.
• Baking and desserts (cakes, macarons, drizzles) where a pop of blue is wanted
• Layered shots, thanks to its distinct color separating visually from other spirits

A Modern Alternative: Mouse Kingdom Blue Liqueur

If you’re shopping for blue curaçao today, you’ll likely come across Mouse Kingdom Blue Liqueur, a Manchester-made ethical citrus liqueur that’s positioned as a direct substitute. It’s built from winter wheat, lemon, grapefruit, and both bitter and sweet orange peel, giving it a citrus-forward profile designed to work as an alternative to traditional blue curacao in cocktails.

It’s also the only blue curacao made from rescued waste juiced fruit. Every week bars in Manchester juice, and on the day that they juice Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs collects the waste peel via ebike. The peel is hand sorted, cleaned and then goes straight into their 380L pot still to distil their next batch.

It’s bottled at 70cl and 20% ABV, and available both on their website, and the Whiskey Exchange, in the UK:

Blue Curacao Liqueur

Mouse Kingdom Blue on the Whiskey Exchange

What makes it a useful stand-in:

• Citrus complexity: Combining grapefruit and lemon alongside orange peel gives it a slightly more layered profile than some mass-market blue curaçaos, which can lean one-note sugary-orange.
• Drop-in usability: It’s designed to work in the same recipes — Blue Lagoons, Blue Margaritas, Purple Rains — without adjusting your ratios.
• Part of a wider range: Mouse Kingdom also produces liqueurs in flavors like strawberry, passion fruit, coffee, and orange marmalade quad sec, so if you like the blue one, there’s a broader lineup worth exploring for your home bar.

Blue Curaçao vs. Triple Sec vs. Regular Curaçao — What’s the Difference?

Liqueur	Color	Base Flavor	Common Use
Curaçao (traditional)	Clear/amber	Bitter orange peel	Classic cocktails, orange-forward drinks
Blue Curaçao	Bright blue	Same as above, dyed	Tropical/visual cocktails
Triple Sec	Clear	Sweeter orange	Margaritas, sours

In practice, blue curaçao and triple sec are close enough in flavor that they’re often used interchangeably as the real differentiator is color, not taste.

Quick FAQ

Is blue curaçao alcoholic?
Yes — most bottles range from 15–25% ABV, though this varies by brand.

Does blue curaçao stain?
The dye can stain light fabrics if spilled, so it’s worth being a little careful when pouring.

Can I substitute blue curaçao with something else?
Yes. Triple sec plus a drop of blue food coloring is a classic hack, or you can use a purpose-made alternative like Mouse Kingdom Blue Liqueur, which is formulated specifically to replace it in recipes.

Is blue curaçao vegan?
Most brands are, but always check the label, since some clarifying or coloring agents vary by producer.

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If you thought “chicken wing liqueur” was a joke someone made after one too many spicy margs, you’d be absolutely correct.

Manchester’s Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs has teamed up with dive bar and wing aficionistas Bunny Jackson’s to create exactly that — a chicken containing, oily, savoury, spicy chicken wing liqueur, built for cocktails and designed for arguments at the bar.

It’s EASILY the strangest liqueur launch of 2026, and it’s got the internet’s attention for good reason. Here’s everything you need to know: what’s in it, how it’s made, why the heck it exists, and three cocktails that you can make with it.

What Is Chicken Wing Liqueur, Exactly?

Bunny Jacksons Chicken Wing Liqueur is a 35% ABV spirit made by fat-washing & redistilling chicken wings, Bunny Jackson’s signature spice rub, and their house wing sauce into a UK winter wheat vodka base. The result is a rich, oily liqueur with a multilayered savoury and spice profile closer to gravy than a liqueur, and built specifically to be used in cocktails BUT its also pretty damn tasty sipped neat.

It’s available in a 700ml bottle as well as a 200ml mini, and, true to Mouse Kingdom’s reason to be, every label run is a limited one-off design, even though the flavour inside stays consistent bottle to bottle.

Why Did They Make a Chicken Wing Liqueur?

Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs isn’t your average distillery. Founded in Manchester by ex-bartender Felix, the brand has built its whole identity around honesty about ingredients other producers would never consider. Rescued citrus peel, and foraged ingredients already feature across their range, so a savoury, waste-conscious collaboration with a mancunian wing joint was always going to happen.

Bunny Jackson’s, the exceptional Manchester dive bar, is built around cheap, delicious wings, and whiskey, with no pretension.

This collaboration was “either going to make us millionaires, or send us to jail”.

It’s the only Chicken Wing Liqueur in the world, and it’s made to prove that savoury, umami-driven flavours belong behind the bar and in your drinks cabinet just as much as a bottle of rhubarb gin does.

How It’s Made: The Production Process

Chicken wing liqueur doesn’t come easy.

• Base spirit: UK-grown winter wheat vodka, which we use to infuse and redistill wing liq’.
• Fat-washing: Chicken wings are used to fat-wash the spirit, a technique where fat from a cooked ingredient is infused into alcohol, then filtered & frozen out, leaving behind the flavour without the oils.
• Redistillation. From the infused base deliciousness, we distil about 50% of the batch, to capture aromatics & spice.
• Flavour layering: Bunny Jackson’s own spice rub and wing sauce are cooked into the wings, along with red chilli, onion, sugar, and salt.
• Waste-conscious extras: Rescued onion peels, collected from bars across Manchester as part of Mouse Kingdom’s food waste collection scheme, add extra savoury depth.
• A touch of MSG: for the umami hit that makes it all gravy.

The finished liqueur contains celery, milk and sulphites, and may contain traces of all 14 major allergens due to the shared kitchen and bar ingredients involved, so please check the label carefully before serving to guests.

This isn’t a one-off publicity stunt production either — it fits Mouse Kingdom’s wider ethos of having fun in 2026, and you’ll find it available soon at the Whiskey Exchange!

3 Cocktails to Try With Chicken Wing Liqueur

This is not a simple liqueur. It’s distilled intentionally, to be poured in cocktails where a savoury, spiced backbone makes the drink. Here are three to start with:

1. Spicy Chicken Wing Margarita

A classic margarita gets a savoury, spiced overhaul. The chicken wing liqueur adds a smoky, umami depth that plays beautifully against lime and tequila, turning a familiar cocktail into something which will blow your mind.

You’ll need: 25ml tequila, 20ml lime juice, a couple of spoons of sugar (or 15ml of sugar syrup) and 25ml of Bunny Jacksons Chicken Wing Liqueur, we suggest a chilli-chicken-salt rim. But you can grab a red chilli and rub it round the rim of the glass after you shake it over ice.

2. The Ultimate Bloody Mary

If any cocktail was built to take a savoury liqueur, it’s the Bloody Mary. 50ml of chicken wing liqueur intensifies the umami, spice, and general “hair of the dog” energy of the drink — arguably its most natural home.

You’ll need: vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, lemon juice, 50ml of chicken wing liqueur, and whatever you fancy for your Bloody Mary garnish.

We suggest an actual chicken wing for garnish, sourced directly from bunnys.

3. The Dirtiest Martini You’ve Ever Had

Forget olive brine — this is a martini built for people who take “dirty” seriously. Chicken wing liqueur adds savoury weight and spice to a classic gin or vodka martini, making it richer, saltier, and considerably better.

You’ll need: 25ml ofgin or vodka, 15ml of dry vermouth, 25ml of of Bunny Jacksons Chicken Wing Liqueur & your usual brine, garnished with whatever exceptional olive or meaty treat you fancy.

Stirred and served ice cold in a chilled Martini glass.

Feeling brave? Mouse Kingdom themselves have floated a fourth idea on the product page: a blue cheese and chicken wing milkshake. You can find it at Bunnys now… If you dare.

Where to Buy Mouse Kingdom x Bunny Jacksons Chicken Wing Liqueur

The liqueur is available directly from Mouse Kingdom Liqueurs, based in central Manchester, in a 700ml full-size bottle and a 200ml mini, or you can grab a bottle at Bunny Jackson’s. As with all of our releases, expect limited label runs, small batches, and a strong chance it sells out so get there fast.

Drink responsibly, and have a wet wipe ready while you drink it.

Shop the Wing Liq here Mouse Kingdom Wing Liqueur.