Less than a week to go and our invite to the BRIT Awards has still to drop through the letterbox of the 5pm Dining blog.

What’s going on? We’ve selected our frocks, picked our rocks and polished our bon mots for the red carpet interviews.

All we need is the invite.

And if it fails to come through, again, then we’ll just have to go for Plan B.

Which is recreating the party at home.

First up, we’ll need some NB Gin.

For the third year in a row, NB Gin will be a drinks sponsor at the official Sony BRIT Awards after-party.

And if it’s good enough for the Sony BRIT Awards after-party, it’s good enough for us. We’ve put a simple cocktail recipe at the foot of this post.

A couple of these and it will be much easier to pretend that we’re swapping hot goss with Skepta rather than watching proceedings on the sofa.

BRIT Awards on the bottle

Anyway, where were we?

To celebrate its association with the BRIT Awards, NB Gin will be served to music’s biggest stars from hand-etched BRIT-inspired bottles.

The bottles are hand-etched by East Lothian-based professional glassware designer Lydia Macdonald.

They have a BRITs-inspired B on the front with a sophisticated ‘limited edition’ message on the side.

The one-off NB Gin commissioned designs take approximately two hours per bottle to etch.

Co-founder of NB Gin, Viv Muir, said: ‘To be a drinks partner of the BRITS after-party three years in a row is fantastic.

‘We really wanted to celebrate it in style this year so we decided to etch a limited edition design on to 24 of our bottles. A dozen will be served at the party and we’ll be giving away some to our lucky fans on social media.

‘When we first started out, we were experimenting with botanicals using an old pressure cooker in our kitchen. Now, NB is recognised as one of the world’s finest gins and we even have the award to prove it.

‘Being selected for events like the BRITs… really does make all the hard work worthwhile and shows how respected the brand is on a world stage.’

NB Gin was launched by lawyers Viv and Steve Muir from North Berwick in 2013.

The craft gin quickly built up a reputation as one of Scotland’s finest gins and was voted the world’s best London Dry gin by the World Drinks Awards in 2015.

Win NB Gin BRIT bottle

To be in with a chance of winning one of the remaining BRITs-inspired limited edition NB Gin bottles, follow NB on Twitter and Facebook.

NB Gimlet

50ml NB Gin

25ml lime cordial

Can you get any easier than this?

The beauty of this cocktail is to always have the ratio of two parts gin to one part cordial.

While NB recommend lime cordial, we get good results with freshly squeezed lime juice and a dash of gomme syrup.

Whack all the ingredients in a shaker, or indeed a pint glass, and stir with three or four ice cubes.

Once everything is nice and frosty, strain it into a coupe glass. Garnish with a wedge of orange or grapefruit.

Sip gently while mentally going over your acceptance speech for British Album of the Year.