New cocktail has smokers sipping their cigarettes

Move over herbal cigarettes - a new cocktail dubbed the Nicotini allows smokers to drink their cigarettes.

Move over herbal cigarettes - a new cocktail dubbed the Nicotini allows smokers to drink their cigarettes.

The Nicotini is a nicotine-laced martini that packs all the punch of a nicotine rush and even provides a tobacco aftertaste.

It is currently sold in Florida and New York, where smoking bans are in place. But so far there are no plans to sell it in Dublin. Publicans, even the smokers among them, were not enthusiastic about the drink.

"It sounds horrible," said Mr David Carmody, of Messrs Maguire.

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"Who came up with that? Somehow I don't think it will have the same effect as sitting down with a cigarette," said Mr Enda Byrne, manager of Q Bar.

The Odeon, which counts martinis among its big sellers, was also not interested. A bartender said: "I hope people wouldn't be that desperate."

It took a Florida bartender a year of testing the concoction before achieving the right blend.

Tobacco leaves are soaked in vodka overnight, and then five other liquors are added to lessen the bitter taste. Add an olive and voila - a Nicotini.

The New York recipes call for vanilla vodka, Kahlua and a splash of "tobacco water".

Tobacco leaves can be soaked in any kind of alcohol, so the Nicotini can be reborn as a Black Russian, a Manhattan or anything else an enterprising bartender invents.

The creator of the drink said the Nicotini contains the same amount of nicotine as the patches or gums used to quit smoking.

So far the reaction in Dublin is anti-Nicotini, but there are upwards of 700 pubs in the city, and odds are that someone will be game.

"We'll see. We might all be selling them come January," Mr Byrne said.