Recently I was taken to Bar High Five, a wonderful underground bar in Ginza, Tokyo, where they really know how to make a cocktail or two. Actually that's an understatement. They have hundreds of bottles behind the bar. I'm no mathematician, but even I can say with a degree of certainty that that's a lot of potential combinations, ranging from the super-fashionable Old Fashioned to the plain out of fashion. 

The big wheel keeps on turning, and as is the way of things, flavours come in and out of favour. 

Right now, we are in a bitter mood. Maybe it fits with these dark times. Maybe it's a way of reclaiming alcohol for grown-ups: nothing says 'acquired taste' like bitters. I like to think of them as adding a wry dimension to a drink: a note of circumspection, regret or even cynicism. 

Bar High Five made me a mean Negroni. The Negroni has long been one of my favourite drinks, and is presently so modish as to be in danger of going the way of the Cosmopolitan. This one, however, eschewed the Campari in favour of Fernet Branca, a drink that on its own tastes like the most fragrant, romantic herbal tincture mixed fifty-fifty with ox bile. Like all bitters, it's irresistible to those of a grumpy persuasion and has that pleasingly quasi-medicinal quality (bitters, after all, were originally an to aid digestion). What the drink lost in gorgeous ruby colour, it gained in sophisticated, intriguing depth. It was like discovering a treasure in your attic: fusty on the surface, with lustre beneath. 

What of the other bitters in the flavour family? There's Campari. There's Angostura, of course. Made with gentian, a fact that appeals hugely to the D.H. Lawrence fan in me, Angostura is the Hyde to citrus's Jekyll. Peychaud's bitters is a good one, hailing from New Orleans, more syrupy, and completing the essential Sazerac. 

The good folk at the venerable Gerry's on Old Compton Street are pretty well placed to comment on trends. Apart from gin (‘Please! No more!’ says manager Allen Daly), the two big trends they're seeing are red vermouth, and bitters. ‘Sweet and sticky is definitely not the thing,’ says his colleague Marcus. And if you're after a bitterer shade of vermouth, Antica Formula does the job. 

Who wants sweet and cloying? That's for next year. For surely, it will come around again. Meantime, let us revel and rejoice in bitterness.