There is a particular cold that only turns up in the first week of November. Not the bright, clean cold of a winter morning, but a damp, woodsmoke-and-gunpowder cold that settles over a garden full of people with their chins tipped up at the sky. Bonfire Night asks a great deal of a drink. It has to go outdoors, survive a paper cup, warm you from the inside, and still taste of something by the time the last rocket has climbed and faded. A can of lager, with the best will in the world, is not quite equal to the evening.

The happy part is that the drinks built for cold hands and dark skies are exactly the ones Bonfire Night wants. You need two, really: one to hand round the fire while the sparklers are going, and one to keep back for the quiet half-hour after everyone has drifted home. Here is how to get both right.

The one you hand round

Start with spiced rum. It is the great outdoor spirit, built for exactly this: sweet enough to please a crowd, warming enough to matter, and forgiving enough to drink from whatever vessel is to hand. Most spiced rum reaches for vanilla and cinnamon and calls it a day. Mount Gay Bajan Spiced Rum is the one that actually thinks about it, its master blender building the thing around red grapefruit, clove and a little salted caramel, so it tastes like pudding rather than potpourri. Pour it over ice with cloudy apple juice and it becomes the drink of the night. Warm the apple first, add a knob of butter and a spoon of brown sugar, and you have hot buttered rum, which is the single most underrated thing you can make in a kitchen while fireworks go off in the garden.

If you would rather sip than mix, reach a shelf higher. Rey del Istmo 10 Year Old is Panamanian, aged a full decade, and drinks of toffee and dried fig with a little oak smoke on the finish. It costs about what a decent bottle of wine does and tastes like a good deal more. Hand it round neat, in whatever glasses you can find, and watch people quietly ask what it is.

Keep it simple, keep it warm

Two practical things make the whole evening better. The first is heat. A flask of something hot, made in the kitchen and carried out, is worth more than any amount of planning: hot buttered rum, a rum toddy, or simply spiced rum topped with hot apple will keep a crowd outdoors long after the cold would otherwise have sent them in. The second is to stop worrying about glassware. Bonfire Night is not the night for your good crystal. Enamel mugs, heatproof tumblers, even paper cups are all fine. The drink is there to warm your hands as much as anything, and a good spiced rum does not mind what it arrives in.

The dram for the fire

At some point the crowd thins, the fireworks stop, and the fire itself becomes the main event. This is whisky's moment, and specifically it is the moment for smoke. There is something almost too neat about drinking a smoky whisky beside an actual fire, but neatness is no crime, and the pairing is genuinely lovely: the woodsmoke in the glass and the woodsmoke in the air nodding to one another.

You have two directions to go. The first is sweet and sherried and forgiving, the whisky equivalent of a warm coat. Bonnington Sherry Cask comes from a young Edinburgh distillery that only started making spirit in 2019, and it wears that youth with real confidence: dried fruit, baking spice and a gentle nuttiness drawn from the sherry wood. It is the dram to pour for someone who thinks they do not like whisky, because it tastes of Christmas cake long before it tastes of anything difficult.

The other direction is full-throated smoke, and for that there is only one place to begin. Lagavulin 16 is the reference bottle for heavily peated whisky, the dram every other Islay smoke-monster is measured against. It is seaweed and bonfire and a deep, sweet smoulder that carries on long after you have swallowed. On a cold night, beside real flames, it comes close to perfect. Pour it neat, or with a single drop of water to coax it open, and give it a minute of your attention. It has earned it.

If you want the middle path, Starward Nova splits the difference beautifully. An Australian single malt matured entirely in red wine barrels, it carries a dark-berry richness, like a whisky that has been reading the wine list. Approachable, a little wild, and very easy to love on a dark evening.

Wine, children, and the ones not drinking

Not everyone wants a spirit in a cold garden, and that is easily solved. A big, warming red does lovely work on Bonfire Night: something with dark fruit and a little spice, served not too cold, the kind of bottle you would open beside a stew. Mulled wine is the obvious move and a good one, though it rewards a half-decent bottle and a light hand with the sugar. For anyone not drinking, warm cloudy apple juice with a cinnamon stick and a few cloves is the quiet hero of the evening, and it means the hot-buttered-rum crowd and the children are, for once, drinking more or less the same thing.

Last pour

Bonfire Night does not ask much of you. A fire, a dark sky, a handful of people willing to stand in the cold and make appreciative noises at some fireworks. But the drink matters more than it gets credit for, because it is the thing that keeps everyone outside a little longer, chins up, waiting for the next one. Hand round the spiced rum while the sky is loud. Keep the good dram back for when it is quiet. And let the fire do the rest.