Espresso Martini Gift Set Back in Stock Early After Selling Out Before Last Christmas

Boozy Cocktails has brought forward production of the set, which ran dry on 20 December last year, and says festive stock will be fully in place by early November this time.

STOCKPORT, UK / ACCESS Newswire / September 6, 2026 / Boozy has started producing its Espresso Martini gift set earlier than usual for Christmas 2026, after the product sold out on 20 December last year at the height of the shopping season.

The set pairs a 500ml pouch of the company’s Espresso Martini at 12% ABV with a cocktail shaker and two martini glasses, and sells for £44.95. It is Boozy’s best-selling line by a distance and holds a 4.7 star rating from 47 reviews on Amazon UK. In the run up to Christmas 2025 it was shifting 24 units a day before stock ran out entirely.

Founder Dave Baddeley said the shortfall was a supply problem rather than a demand one, and that the fix was to start earlier.

“Selling out sounds like a nice problem until you see what it actually costs you,” he said. “Those were the five busiest shopping days of the year and we were watching people land on an empty listing. Nobody waits until January to buy a Christmas present. They just buy somebody else’s.”

The timing of the sell-out was no accident, because Christmas is the Espresso Martini’s season. Google Trends shows UK searches for the drink climbing through November and peaking in December year after year, and an analysis of Google and social data by the drinks agency Wilde Toast found the Espresso Martini and the Negroni were the two cocktails with notable spikes at Christmas, while the Aperol Spritz and Hugo Spritz owned the summer. The scale of the interest is considerable in its own right. The drink attracted 932,000 online searches in the twelve months to November 2024, and it sits tied with the Negroni as the most searched cocktail in the UK at around 74,000 searches a month. A dark, rich, after-dinner drink that doubles as dessert and pairs a kick of caffeine with the toast, it fits the season in a way a spritz never will.

It is also a British invention, which is not widely known. The Espresso Martini was created in London in the mid 1980s by the bartender Dick Bradsell at the Soho Brasserie, which had just installed a new coffee machine next to his station. A young model asked him for a drink that would wake her up, phrasing the rest of the request in terms that have become one of the most repeated stories in bartending, and Bradsell answered with fresh espresso, vodka and coffee liqueur served over ice. He called it the Vodka Espresso, and it took on the Martini name, the stemmed glass and the three coffee bean garnish during the cocktail revival of the 1990s. Bradsell spent years refining the recipe before settling on the balance the drink is known for today.

Forty years on, Baddeley argues it is also the cocktail that makes the most sense ready made. “The thing about an Espresso Martini is that the defining ingredient needs a machine,” he said. “You can make a Mojito in any kitchen in Britain, but hardly anyone has a fresh double shot of espresso to hand at nine o’clock on Christmas Eve, and instant coffee ruins it. We do all the blending ourselves in Stockport so the person opening the box only has to shake it over ice and pour. That is why the shaker and the proper glasses are in there. It is the whole serve, not just a bottle.”

The drink’s audience keeps widening. Research published by Bacardi found 48 per cent of Gen Z drinkers would choose an Espresso Martini over coffee at the end of a meal, against 20 per cent of those over 45. Baddeley said the gift market is where that interest shows up most clearly. “It has become the safe present for somebody you like but do not know all that well. It is recognisable, it does not need explaining, and if it turns up with proper glasses in the box it does not look like a last minute buy.”

The set is available direct from boozy.co.uk. Festive stock for Amazon UK is due to be in place from early November.

Media Contact: David Baddeley
Phone: 07736 205472

SOURCE: Boozy Cocktails

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