There is a particular kind of Saturday morning that arrives before every August bank holiday. The weather forecast has firmed up, someone has suggested a barbecue, the guest list has quietly doubled, and you are now responsible for feeding and watering fourteen people in three days time. This piece is for that moment. It is a practical guide to sorting last minute bank holiday drinks in London without joining a queue behind someone buying the last four bottles of prosecco in the postcode.
The August bank holiday falls on Monday 31 August this year, which gives you a three-day window and a very predictable pattern of demand. Knowing that pattern is most of the battle.
Two things happen at once. First, London empties and refills unpredictably, so shops stock to a forecast that is frequently wrong. Second, everyone decides to host on the same two days, and they decide late, because nobody commits to an outdoor plan in Britain until the forecast is more or less settled.
The result is that supermarket shelves thin out in a specific order rather than uniformly. Nobody runs out of everything. They run out of the obvious things, and the obvious things are precisely what you were planning to buy.
In rough order: ice, then chilled lager in multipacks, then prosecco, then chilled rose, then mixers, then decent tonic. Notice how many of those are chilled rather than ambient. Shops can have plenty of stock in the back and still have nothing cold on the shelf by Sunday lunchtime, which is no use at all if you are serving in two hours.
Spirits are the exception. Gin, vodka, whisky and rum rarely sell out, because people buy a bottle rather than a case and the turnover is slower. If your plan depends on something being cold, though, assume you will need to chill it yourself.
If you have no time to think, this covers a mixed gathering of around fifteen people across an afternoon and evening. Two cases of lager, with something crisp like Peroni, Asahi or Corona doing the heavy lifting and a few Guinness or Stella for the people who want something with more body. Four bottles of chilled white and three of rose. Two bottles of a lighter red, because someone always wants one even in August. One bottle of gin, one of vodka, and enough tonic and soda that you are not rationing.
Add two bottles of sparkling for arrivals, and a generous non-alcoholic option that is not just warm lemonade. If you would rather not assemble it piece by piece, a pre-mixed case does the thinking for you and arrives as one delivery.
This is where most last-minute hosting goes wrong. A domestic fridge packed with warm cans takes two to three hours to bring them properly cold, and it will chill nothing else in the meantime.
The reliable fix is an ice bath: ice, cold water and a good handful of salt in a bucket or a clean washing-up bowl. Water conducts heat far better than air, so full contact with the bottle does in twelve minutes what a fridge does in two hours. Keep the bath topped up through the day and use it as your serving station rather than shuttling bottles back and forth.
Buy more ice than feels sensible. A rough guide is one kilo per person for a warm afternoon, and that is before you factor in anything you are chilling rather than serving.
The temptation with last minute bank holiday drinks is to under-order on the grounds that you can always nip out. On a bank holiday Monday in London, nipping out is exactly what several thousand other people are also doing, and the shop nearest you will have been stripped since Sunday.
A better approach is to order the bulk of it the day before, chill overnight, and treat any mid-party shortfall as a delivery rather than an expedition. We run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, bank holidays included, so a 4pm Monday order is no different from a Tuesday afternoon one. Worth checking our delivery areas in advance so you are not finding out mid-party.
Weather changes what people drink more than any other factor. A hot, still bank holiday shifts consumption heavily towards cold beer, cider and soft drinks, and away from red wine and spirits almost entirely. A grey, cool one does the reverse: the red wine disappears and people move indoors and settle in.
If the forecast is genuinely uncertain, weight your order towards beer and white wine, which are useful in either scenario, and hold back on the reds and the heavier spirits until you can see what Monday looks like. It is far easier to add than to be left with a case of something nobody touched.
Left it late? That is the ordinary state of bank holiday hosting, not a failure of planning. We deliver right across London within the M25 in 30 to 45 minutes, at any hour, on any day of the year, with gift wrapping and a personalised message available at checkout if the order is heading somewhere other than your own kitchen. Browse the full range, place the order, and get back to the barbecue.
Please drink responsibly. Drinks House 247 operates a Challenge 21 policy - you must be 18 or over to order, and our drivers will ask for photo ID if you look under 21.
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