Warninks Advocaat
Advocaat: a rich Dutch egg liqueur of golden egg yolk, sugar, brandy and vanilla, thick and custard-smooth, with warm almond and caramel notes and a creamy, gently warming finish. Snowball ready.
Type
Country
Producer
Featured Flavours
Alcohol %
17.2%
Serving Size
- 25ml
Suggested with
In Cocktails
Warninks Advocaat
Advocaat pours slowly, thick and glossy, a rich buttercup yellow that looks more like fresh custard than anything you’d expect to find behind a bar. The nose is soft and comforting rather than spirity: warm vanilla, sweet egg-custard and a gentle waft of brandy, with a faint almond note in the background that recalls marzipan and baked pastry. It’s an aroma that belongs to winter kitchens and Christmas afternoons, and it tells you straight away that Advocaat is a liqueur built for indulgence rather than sharpness.
On the palate, Advocaat’s texture is the first thing that stands out. It’s velvety and full, coating the tongue the way a spoonful of crème anglaise would, with egg yolk giving it a richness no cream liqueur quite matches. The sweetness is generous but rounded, more like soft caramel and vanilla sugar than syrup, and the custard flavour is clean and fresh rather than eggy, the yolk reading as richness and body rather than as a flavour in its own right.
Underneath that creaminess, the brandy does quiet but important work. It brings a gentle warmth and a hint of dried fruit and oak that keep Advocaat from tasting like a pudding alone, adding depth and a grown-up edge to the sweetness. At around 14 to 20% ABV it’s softer than most spirits, so the alcohol warms rather than burns, sitting comfortably beneath the vanilla and almond notes and lifting them across the palate.
The finish is long, smooth and gently warming, with vanilla custard and a last trace of brandy lingering after the glass is set down. Advocaat is lovely sipped chilled on its own, or served in the Dutch way with a dollop of whipped cream and a spoon, but it is best known in Britain as the heart of the Snowball, topped with lemonade and a squeeze of lime for a light, fizzy, festive classic. It also makes a wonderful addition to coffee, hot chocolate or poured over ice cream.
In short: Advocaat: a rich Dutch egg liqueur of golden egg yolk, sugar, brandy and vanilla, thick and custard-smooth, with warm almond and caramel notes and a creamy, gently warming finish. Snowball ready.
Advocaat is a Dutch creation, and its most popular origin story begins thousands of miles from the Netherlands. In the seventeenth century, Dutch settlers in their South American colonies, around Recife in north-eastern Brazil and later Suriname, are said to have enjoyed a thick, creamy drink made from mashed avocado and spirits. When they returned home to a country where avocados didn’t grow, they recreated the same rich, smooth texture using the closest local equivalent they could find: egg yolks, sugar and brandy. Whether entirely true or not, the tale is widely repeated, and many believe the name Advocaat itself is a Dutch twist on the word avocado.
There is a second, more playful theory behind the name. In Dutch, “advocaat” also means lawyer, and some say the liqueur was once known as “advocatenborrel”, the lawyer’s drink, because its thick, soothing texture was thought to lubricate the throat before a long day of speaking in court. Either way, Advocaat became firmly established in the Netherlands and Belgium over the following centuries, a homemade and then commercially produced treat served at celebrations, in cafés with whipped cream, and as a staple of the Dutch Christmas and New Year table.
Advocaat found a particular home in Britain in the twentieth century, thanks largely to one drink: the Snowball. Mixing Advocaat with lemonade and a little lime juice created a frothy, light, sweet long drink that became a fixture of British Christmases from the 1950s onwards, peaking in popularity in the 1970s, when it was found at almost every family gathering and office party. For years it was teased as old-fashioned, but the Snowball and Advocaat have enjoyed a warm revival in recent years, with nostalgia and a love of festive classics bringing this golden Dutch liqueur back onto bar menus, including our own here in Cornwall.
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