Reis Raki — Aslan Sütü

Aslan sütü. Lion's milk. That's what raki becomes the moment water hits it — clear one second, cloudy-white the next — and it's the only cocktail on this list that makes itself.

There's no recipe here, only a ritual. Two fingers of Reis into a tall, slim glass. One part cold water, poured slowly, and watch it bloom. Then ice, if you want it — after the water, never before. Every Turkish uncle alive will explain why. Let him.

What's in the glass is aniseed, clean and bold, with a soft sweetness underneath and a long warm finish that doesn't hurry off. Reis is twice distilled the traditional way, because the people who handed us this recipe never cut a corner in their lives, and we weren't about to start.

Now the part people get wrong. Raki does not travel alone. On the table beside it, always, a plate of white cheese and a bowl of cold watermelon. Not a garnish. Not a suggestion. The feta is salty and sharp and makes the aniseed sing; the watermelon is cold and sweet and resets your palate for the next sip. Salt, sweet, sip. That rhythm has been running for five hundred years, and it hasn't needed improving yet. Olives if you've got them. Melon, bread, whatever's in the fridge. But the cheese and the watermelon are the law.

Set it up properly and the drink does the rest. It's sipped, not shot. It holds the night open rather than closing it — carries the talk from politics to poetry to "do you remember when" and back again, while the kids fall asleep on the couch and nobody looks at the time.

We grew up inside that ritual in a commission flat in Richmond. This is it, bottled.

One glass. One story. A little more feta. Then another of each.

Şerefe. To the ones who taught us how.