The first cold evening always arrives without warning. One week you are still pretending the garden furniture has a future, and the next you are home in the dark by six, coat damp, hands pink, wanting something that meets you at the door. Not a glass of something cold. Not another cup of tea. Something warm and a little bit boozy, sweet enough to feel like a treat and stiff enough to count. The hot toddy has been that drink for three hundred years, and it deserves a good deal more respect than we tend to give it.

The drink we file under the wrong heading

We have done the toddy a quiet disservice. Somewhere along the way it got shelved next to the paracetamol, a thing you only make when your throat hurts and your nose has staged a walkout. Useful, medicinal, faintly joyless. That is a shame, because a well made toddy is one of the great small pleasures of the colder months, no sniffle required. Think of it less as a remedy and more as a nightcap that happens to be kind to you: whisky, honey, lemon and hot water, assembled in about ninety seconds and sipped slowly while the radiator ticks back to life.

Three centuries of getting warm

The toddy is old, and its story is gloriously tangled. The word itself most likely travelled from India, where tari described the fermented sap of the palmyra palm, a drink British traders met in the seventeenth century and carried home in the mouth if not the glass. Scotland did the rest. By the eighteenth century a toddy meant spirit, sugar and hot water, and the story goes that the finest versions used soft spring water from Tod's Well on Edinburgh's Castle Hill, which is either a lovely coincidence or a very good piece of marketing. Either way, the Scots claimed it, warmed it and made it theirs. Robert Burns is said to have been partial to one, which is the eighteenth-century equivalent of a celebrity endorsement.

The four things it needs, and the one rule

Strip it back and a toddy is almost embarrassingly simple. You need a good whisky, a spoonful of honey, the juice of half a lemon and hot water. That is the whole cast. Get the proportions roughly right, a double measure of whisky, a generous teaspoon of honey and the lemon, then top with hot water, and you cannot go far wrong.

There is one rule, and it matters more than any garnish: never pour furiously boiling water over the whisky. Water straight off a rolling boil scorches the spirit, drives off the very aromatics you paid for and leaves you with something harsh and flat. Let the kettle settle for a minute first. You want the water hot enough to loosen the honey and warm your hands through the glass, not hot enough to cook the drink.

The whisky question

Here is the good news: a toddy is no place for your rarest bottle. The honey and lemon will smother the finer details of anything truly precious, so save the Macallan for the armchair and reach for something friendlier. What you want is a whisky with warmth and a little sweetness of its own: nothing so delicate that it vanishes, and nothing so smoky that the whole thing tastes like a bonfire (unless a smoky toddy is your idea of heaven, in which case go carefully and enjoy).

A gentle, honeyed blend is the safe and lovely choice. Suntory Toki almost seems built for the job, all soft green apple and light vanilla, a whisky that works with honey rather than against it. If you want a toddy with more to say, a sherried single malt brings dried fruit, spice and a deeper note that suits the season down to the ground. The Bonnington Sherry Cask is exactly that: young, confident and full of the baked-fruit warmth a toddy loves.

Two bottles, two moods: the easy everyday pour and the one with a little more autumn in it. Either will make a toddy you actually look forward to, rather than one you endure.

How to build one, properly

Warm the glass first. A heatproof tumbler, or a proper toddy glass with a handle, is ideal; run it under the hot tap for a moment so the drink does not lose its heat the instant it lands. Spoon in the honey and add the lemon juice, then a short splash of hot water, and stir until the honey has completely dissolved. This is the step people skip, and it is why their toddies end up with a sad sweet puddle at the bottom. Now add the whisky, top with hot water, and stir once more. Finish with a lemon wheel studded with a few cloves and, if you are feeling seasonal, a cinnamon stick to stir with and to scent the steam.

From there, the toddy is yours to play with. A coin of fresh ginger turns up the heat and does wonders when the weather is truly foul. A strip of orange peel nudges it towards Christmas. Swap the honey for a spoonful of marmalade and you have breakfast's revenge. And if whisky is not your spirit, an aged rum or a good Cognac both make a superb toddy, a little rounder and more festive. The template does not mind.

The right night for it

The beauty of the toddy is its timing. It is the drink for the exact moment autumn announces itself: the first night you close the windows, the walk home when your breath shows, the hour after dinner when a second glass of red feels like too much but the evening is not quite ready to end. It asks for nothing you do not already have in the cupboard and rewards you out of all proportion to the effort.

So do not wait for a cold to give you permission. The nights are drawing in, the kettle is on, and the whisky is right there. Pour one because the season has turned, and because you can. That, in the end, is the only prescription a toddy has ever really needed.