Midway along the largely anonymous, largely amorphous mass that is Coal Drops Yard, is Le Café Alain Ducasse. It’s a saving grace, and a new high for high-end coffee in London. Here filter is made behind the swooping zinc counter with all the ceremony of a martini. The coffee — between £3–£15 — is extremely fine but try the cascara (the caffeinated cherry, of the coffee bean) ground in a huge marble pestle on the counter, and served up like whisky. Best consumed with Ducasse’s single origin ganaches from next door.

Head down to Winemakers’ South London outpost in Deptford which reopened, after a pause for breath, last month. Serious wines, curios and oddities, including grower champagnes from Jérôme Lefèvre of Eliane Delalot and Oliver Horiot. Soups, broths, herrings and game birds to mop up the juices.

White Christmasses may be thin on the ground but cream-based drinks certainly aren’t. Amid the veritable drifts of sweet, sickly and cloying, Rob Simpson’s silkily aloof Islay Cream — available at the The Clove Club Bar — looks deceptively like a glass of milk, until that peaty burn of Bruichladdich’s Port Charlotte drags its drinker somewhere deep. Chase it up with the sloe gin.

Innovative creations from the constantly questing minds at Peckham’s Aside. Owner Rob Dunne is also director at Old Spike Roastery, so watch out for drinks with coffee as an ingredient. A vegetal Vesper made with green-coffee infused vodka; a nutmeggy, whisky-cream capped Irish coffee; an espresso martini.  

Lyle’s is known for its extremely good take on caffeine, which becomes even better in December when Anna Higham’s pies — mince and quince — hit the bar counter. But the Pump Street hot chocolate, made with a ganache base, is less known. Take alongside a slug of bourbon, or keep it clean, before heading out into the night.

Spiced old fashioneds and mulled cider are bar specials this month. Hunker down in a dark corner with a couple of these and a warm suety pork pie. Pies are weekend only, and sell out by mid-afternoon, so time a beverage accordingly.

Austrian wine importer Newcomer is putting on a party at its wine bar/shop on 16 December, together with the like-minded Kiffe My Wines and Totem Wines. Salivate at walls lined with the extremely on-trend bottles of Christian Tschida, Preisinger et al., but pass on through to the garden for mulled wine and roasted chestnuts.

Quality Wines — the wine bar arm to The Quality Chop Shop and House — is barely out of the crèche, but already serious business. From Nick Bramham’s parmesan biscuit on in, via chopped liver toasts, fish soups with a rouille, partridge and cannolo, Gus Gluck’s wines are on hand to oil proceedings. Wines are in the name but there’s also a very good negroni hiding out in the wings, making devilishly good use of preserved green mandarin.