This has become the most popular cocktail in all of the restaurants and we often serve it instead of Champagne when we do parties. It was devised when I gave Jonathan Jeffrey, our manager at the Oyster & Fish House in Lyme Regis, a jar of Julian Temperley’s morello cherries steeped in his apple eau-de-vie. On my next visit to Lyme, I noticed ‘Hix Fix’ scribed on the window. ‘So what’s that then?’ I asked. ‘A Champagne cocktail made with those cherries,’ Johnny informed me. As I glanced around the room, I noticed there was a Hix Fix on almost every table. I later bought some old-fashioned Champagne saucers, ‘Marie Antoinette 32B cups’ and the Hix Fix took off. Keith Floyd enjoyed a couple before his last lunch at the Oyster & Fish House shortly before he sadly passed away.
