In our books a tutored tasting of the superior bitters in Master of Malt’s extensive portfolio would be a fabulous way to while away any evening but those clever chaps from the London Cocktail Society went and upped the ante for their latest outing. Imagine it; not only did we get to play wannabe alchemists playing with Master of Malt’s single ingredient bitters, there was also a fabulous prize up for grabs: the chance for the winning recipe to be put in production. Well, you didn’t need to ask us twice…

The setting was the brilliant downstairs room at Shaker & Company. It was decked out in full Benedictine regalia on that particular night but each month a different brand will take it over. For our purposes the retro school desks, wooden seats and dark, moody lighting worked perfectly – particularly when lined with the myriad apothecary bottles featuring the likes of juniper, black pepper, curacao, coffee and clove. After being warned about being too heavy-handed with the intensely dry angelica and the unbelievably hot naga chilli, the 14 teams set to work, aiming to create a winning recipe in 30 minutes. And yes, it was as tough as it sounds.

No sooner had we tasted a little bit of this and a little bit of that (one teeny droplet of each on the back of the hand), it was time to dream up something people might be willing to pay for. We didn’t do well. We knew that even before our mixture was put up for blind tasting. We’d like to pretend that was because we were called on to be judges but really, it was just that we didn’t get the balance right. Honestly, it’s so much harder than you might think.

With our judges hats on we offered up our palates to the 14 original recipes, each vying for the chance to have their creators faces immortalised on the winning bottle. Ben Ellefsen from Master of Malt led the proceedings, while Emma, Kate, Mark and yours truly brought up the rear. Apart from one or two dubious offerings (ours was probably among them) the overall standard was satisfyingly good but two mixtures really stood out.

Step forward Camille Hobby-Limon who came a very close second to a highly delighted Mike Wood, Kevin Bee and Victor Gembala who made up the Brick Lane team. Their winning concoction, inspired by curry (though not tasting of it) was further tweaked during an evening at Graphic bar, where the wonderful Sarah and Adam made some cocktails for the group to try them in, before some further additions were included. This final recipe is now in production.

London Cocktail Bitters are available to buy from Master of Malt now! Make sure you add a bottle to your cocktail lover’s Christmas stocking.

L.T.D turns cocktail snobbery on its head, flips it over and then takes it one step further. After years of cocktail imbibitions, you may well be able to navigate your way around a choice of 30 gins or more. At L.T.D, however, you can leave that sort of knowledge at the door. That’s because you’ll be drinking what the barman gives you and that’s a choice of precisely one base spirit per category. Yes, that’s right – just one vodka, one gin, one whiskey (and its not a bourbon or even rye), one tequila, one Cognac and one rum. And that’s it! But L.T.D’s Spartan approach to bartending doesn’t stop there. If you’re expecting Riedel glassware, think again. You’ll see the barman shaking your drink in a jam jar, taking the lid off and sticking a couple of straws in there for you. And that’s your drink, served up just like that. Welcome to L.T.D!

The London Cocktail Society (LCS) kindly organised an outing for its members to L.T.D on Halloween. The visit involved a little bit of fancy dress, a few tastings and a talk from cocktail master Dré Masso, the brains behind the bar concept/experiment. L.T.D in its current incarnation is a one off – what you might call a pop-up, but they prefer the term ‘bar experiment’ It’s based in the upstairs bar at The Social, 5 Little Portland Street and is being headed up by Dré Masso for just three months, running from 1st October 2011 until New Year’s eve, so there is still plenty of time to check it out and form your own opinions on the place.

For me the limited selection of spirits is intriguing. With such a selection you might expect to find a choice of the most revered luxury brands in the trade but no, the selection at L.T.D includes Stolichnaya Vodka, Beefeater Gin, Havana Club 7 Year Old Rum, Ocho Blanco Vintage Tequila, Courvoisier VS Cognac and (surprise of all surprises), Jameson Irish Whiskey! There are of course an abundance of bitters, fruit juices mixers and many other ingredients involved, however these have been decanted into green bottles so as not to detract focus from the 6 main spirits. This does mean that you can be safe in the knowledge that the menu contains a lot of classics and loads of the most popular cocktails at the moment. Whether they taste how you expect may be another matter though…

Before getting into the cocktails and how they taste, however, it seems only fair to explore the curious concept behind L.T.D. The story goes something like this: After 12 successful years the people behind The Social decided it was time for a bit of a change so they decided to let Dré Masso take over their upstairs bar and to give it a bit of a rethink. Dré is almost certainly what you’d call a safe pair of hands within the world of the cocktail. He’s been mixing drinks since he was a teenager and today he trades as a brand and bar consultant. He counts numerous very well recognised spirits brands and bars as his clients and has been awarded UK Bartender of the Year no less then three times! I get the feeling that after 15 years in the trade, when Dré was given the opportunity to shape L.T.D, he must have decided to use what must have been a metaphorical ‘blank sheet of paper’ to create something radical.

Dré decided to form L.T.D around a ‘…unique concept – just sell the best of the best.’ He wanted to focus on simplicity and quality – not boasting a vast selection of exotic spirits but rather focusing on just the very best in spirits. This approach was very much based on his belief that only a very limited selection of spirits is required to produce absolutely top-notch cocktails. To select the appropriate spirits he formed an independent tasting committee who were tasked (if that’s the right word) with blind tasting and debating a vast array of spirits both neat and mixed appropriately in cocktails. The only real limitation on the spirits sampled was that they had to be available for £20 or less per bottle at trade price. This actually still leaves a good degree of scope for choice and means that the spirits behind the bar are those that the average punter can enjoy without having to miss a mortgage payment – a sound principle in my mind. The result of this tasting process was the aforementioned selection of six, very much household brand, spirits that are served behind the bar today.

So, how did the cocktails actually taste?

While Dré welcomed us to his bar and explained the concept behind it, he treated us to a number of cocktails (not ones I’d have naturally chosen on my own volition) to allow us to experience the stocked spirits in action. Dré kindly allowed me to take one of his cocktail menus and supplied the photography so I can share some of the cocktails on offer with you:

	Fresca One and a half shots of tequila Half a shot of liqueur (strawberry, raspberry or apricot) One shot of lemon juice One teaspoon of agave syrup
	Armenian Plum One and a half shots of brandy Half a shot of apricot liqueur Tablespoon of apricot jam One shot of lemon juice
	Bumble Bee Two shots of gin Five raspberries One shot of lemon juice One teaspoon of honey water

I think the first thing that has to be said about these drinks is that they were all absolutely delicious, impeccably made and, as you can see from the images, presented as they might be if you found yourself serving up cocktails equipped only with what you could find in self-catered holiday accommodation. Of particular interest to me was the delightful effect of using sweetening agents including apricot jam and honey. Both flavours came through but were nowhere near as pronounced as one might expect – they worked exceptionally well in harmony with the cocktails’ overall flavour. The feedback from those I had the pleasure of sharing a table with was also positive. Someone, probably quite rightly, suggested that perhaps, with the distraction of spirits and trendy glassware choices taken away, it would be necessary for the barman to really focus attentions on getting all other ingredients and the ultimate flavour just right. I’m inclined to agree. If you can enjoy a cocktail from a jam jar, you can be sure it’s the flavours and nothing else that have impressed you.

In order to really give the choice of base spirits a test (the Jameson’s in particular), I decided to try out two firm favourites of mine, both of which are based on whiskey (normally bourbon). First up I tried a Manhattan. This, as stated on the menu, came sweet and was served, as one would expect, in a cocktail glass. I have to admit as far as sweet Manhattans go it was one of the best I’ve ever tried. I understand the brand of vermouth used was none other than Martini, so nothing extraordinary there. I followed this with a Julep, which again was excellent, something that I put down in part to the fine quality of fresh mint used. I did try several other cocktails, including a notably excellent Sazerac, but by this stage I was confident that what ever I ordered would be enjoyable and enjoyment, rather than critical analysis, was my only motivation for drinking the remainder of my cocktails. Having chatted to a number of the LCS members, I think my experience of L.T.D’s cocktails was more or less shared across the board.

As I said in opening, L.T.D really does turn cocktail snobbery on its head. Aside from a very pleasurable evening, one of the things I gained from my experience there was a real appreciation for the fact that great cocktails don’t have to be expensive or complicated. A modest home cocktail bar with a few good quality spirits can be used efficiently to turn out great drinks. In addition, most homes have what is required in terms of equipment, glassware, flavour modifiers and sweetening agents to serve up great tasting cocktails. For anyone who has spoken to Dré for any period of time this isn’t surprising at all, he’s an advocate of home cocktail making. This is why, along with accessible ingredients and glassware, the quantities on the menu are expressed as handfuls and teaspoons – making the cocktails as easy to make at home as an amateur as possible.

However, as accessible as the cocktails are, I do believe that the real determining factor in the quality of cocktails is the skill of the person making them, and professional bartenders obviously have a lot more skill and practice than general punters. This is why we continue to visit cocktail bars and I think that L.T.D does a fine job of demonstrating this point.

That just leaves me to offer a very big thanks to LCS for allowing me to join them and to Dré Masso for an enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Visit www.dremasso.com for more information on L.T.D and Dré Masso.

I have my Spirits WSET Diploma exam in a couple of months and so have signed myself up for a raft of Spirits tastings to help get up to speed.

First up on my list was the Bourbon evening at LAB (London Academy of Bartenders) with the London Cocktail Society on Bank Holiday Monday. London Cocktail Society is a great collection of cocktail fiends. The group is free to join and every month members are invited to exclusive tastings, cool cocktail bars or distillery visits.

The bourbon evening was hosted by Maker’s Mark brand ambassador, and Kentucky girl with an authentic Southern drawl, Jane Conner.

Maker’s Mark only has one whisky in the UK market and so instead of showing a range of different whiskies we wouldn’t be able to buy, Jane took us through a maturation tasting of Maker’s Mark, comparing and contrasting White Dog, Under Mature, Fully Mature and Over Mature examples of Maker’s Mark.

First Jane set the scene with a potted history of Bourbon and Maker’s Mark.

Bourbon was first created out of luck and necessity. In order to develop Kentucky in the 1770s, the ‘Corn Patch and Cabin Rights’ law was passed, it encouraged settlers to plant a corn patch and build a cabin in order to lay claim to 400 acres of land. A pretty good deal.

Corn is a bulky produce and due to the incentives to plant corn there was plenty of excess, excess which the Scottish, Irish and German immigrants knew they could distil into whisky. Kentucky was an ideal place to produce whisky due to its plentiful supply of both corn, and water – gallons of which is used as part of the distillation process. Kentucky was blessed with an iron-free water supply that was filtered through limestone soils. Water with a high iron content would have had the unfortunate result of turning the whisky black – worth checking if you are in a hard water area or not before you try topping up your Dad’s whisky with tap water. He will notice.

The Bourbon we know today was created by a ‘little bit of smarts and a lot of luck, according to Jane.

The whisky that came straight off the stills was a clear, liquid with a distinctive bite. This whisky was shipped shipped down South in barrels.

These barrels had often been used to house everything from vegetables to fish, so in order to sanitise them the insides of the barrels were burned. This charring caramelised the wood, and whisky spending six months or so on the Mississippi in these freshly charred barrels came out a darker with a smokey, caramel nose by the time it reached New Orleans.

The French settlers in New Orleans loved this dark tipple, the colour reminded them of Cognac. This whiskey came in barrels branded Bourbon County and soon the locals in New Orleans were asking for Bourbon.

Bourbon has had a chequered past but the Temperance movement dealt it a body blow when it passed prohibition in 1919; overnight 216 bourbon distillers closed down.

When Prohibition was repealed 14 years later in 1933, only 60 bourbon distillers reopened. By that time the US was awash, with Scotch, Gin and other international spirits.

Bourbon couldn’t catch up quick enough, it needed to be aged for a number of years and so literally couldn’t be created fast enough once the distilleries reopened. Many bourbons producers cut corners in order to get to market swiftly, releasing spirit too young with bags of ‘bourbon bite’, or adding iodine or wood chips to replicate the dark brown colour gained through ageing.

Distilleries closed again during World War Two and when they reopened, yet again there was not the time or money to make good bourbon. Bourbon got labelled a poor man’s whisky and the nation’s tastes had moved onto more neutral spirits like vodka and gin.

Today there are only nine distilleries left in the state of Kentucky, a product of the post-prohibition hangover.

Nowadays, Bourbon has stricter production laws than any other form of whisky to help guarantee quality and protect Bourbon’s signature full bodied spirit with lashings flavour – vanilla, coconut, toffe and spice.

1. It must be made in America

2. Must be aged for two years in new charred oak barrels – a damn expensive business each barrel costs around $130, Makers Mark use 1,000 of these barrels per week and sell them onto Scotch producers for $60 when they’re done. There are currently 6 million barrels ageing in Kentucky. 99.6% of Scotch whisky touches a bourbon barrel at some point in its life.

Because of the fact Bourbon is aged in newly charred barrels, it does not age as long as some other whiskies, too much oak can be a bad thing especially with wheat-based whiskies.

3. No additions, no caramel, no colouring. Canadian whiskeys can add 9.09% other ‘imported mature liquids’ translating as wine, port, sherry, bourbon rum etc – although this is only usually done with the cheaper blends.

4. It must be distilled to no higher than 80% abv and aged at no more than 62.5% abv in new, charred oak barrels for a minimum of two years

5. It must be made of a minimum of 51% corn, with the rest being made up of other grains. Most Bourbons have 70-80% corn.

Corn is light and provides Bourbons signature soft sweetness, rye adds character, personality and bite, malted barley is argued by some to provide a biscuity sweetness although many believe it is only added to the mash bill for its enzymes. Wheat, when added, gives a gentle roundness to a bourbon and honey notes.

Bill Samuels decided to forgoe the rye and instead used wheat to make his bourbon.

With the backdrop of a struggling market for Bourbon, in 1953 Bill Samuels went against the grain, excuse the pun, and started to create Maker’s Mark a premium Bourbon. His family had previously made whisky but had sold up years ago.

Bill wanted to create a sipping bourbon of quality, he had three requirements for his liquid:

1. It should not have the ‘Bourbon Bite’, Bill wanted a smooth tipple

2. It should be full-flavoured

3. The flavour should be forward on the tongue, round and with a creamy lingering finish

In 1959, Maker’s Mark produced the first premium bottle of Bourbon. It was Bill Samuel’s wife who first hand dipped the whisky bottle in hot red wax, a practice which is still done by hand today. It didn’t really catch on straight away as the world had taken a liking to blanded, neutral spirits but once flavour made a comeback in the early 80s, Maker’s Mark was finally sold outside Kentucky for the first time and today we are enjoying it in the UK.

MAKER’S MARK MATURATION TASTING

WHITE DOG

The white dog is the newly distilled spirit, so called because ‘it is white and will bite you like a dog’.

It smells of corn and freshly baked bread. On the palate it is earthy and a little chewy, almost nutty. It has got that ‘Bourbon Bite’ they talk of, but you know I actually quite like this, I was expecting it to be harsher.

UNDER-MATURE

This is the same bourbon after it has spent a year in barrel, it has got some colour and is now a medium brown hue. It smells of caramel with hints of vanilla and honey. The taste moves forward on the tongue, but is still a little harsh on the throat.

FULLY MATURE

Aged for 6 years and 3 months on average, it is richer with lots of vanilla. It smells like a Creme Brulee with cream, toffee, caramel. It is smooth and full flavoured with a round creamy flavour and long lingering finish.

OVER MATURE – 10 years old

This smells amazing, bags of caramel, wood and dried fruit. But on the palate it is not balanced, the wood has taken over and it is bitter, flat and hits the back of the throat.

Wheat doesn’t handle wood as well as rye and so a wheat whiskey will rarely be aged for as long.

Thanks for my friend and drinking buddy Ben Norum coming with me and for diving straight into a Bourbon Tasting after a week in Ibiza. Hard Core!

One of the continuing themes of this blog is a sentence at the start vaguely conforming to a pattern of ‘One of the boozes I don’t know well is X and it was lovely when Y asked me along to try some for REASON Z’. So, assume that I’ve done that again with X=light rum, Y=The London Cocktail Society and REASON Z is basement bar Bourne & Hollingsworth choosing their house pouring rum, and we can then move on from this opening paragraph.

Despite having heard a bit about it over the last year or so I’d still not made it over to Bourne & Hollingsworth and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The reviews seem rather polarised, with complaints about it getting packed leading to long waits at the bar (justified – it’s a small room with a small bar, with most of the space taken up by an open area for people to mill around in front of the bar) and that they charge too much for drinks which generally are distinguished by being served in teacups (unjustified – if you are going to a decent cocktail bar in London and are complaining about paying £7.50 for a cocktail no matter what type of receptacle it’s served in then you are probably in the wrong kind of bar. Bourne & Hollingsworth’s drinks quality certainly push it into the £7 a go bracket of London cocktail bars). It’s small and a great place, I suspect, on weekdays, but based on a Saturday night I can see it quickly turning into my idea of packed bar hell. But then again, I do hate people…

The London Cocktail Society’s role was a simple one – find a discerning crowd of cocktail drinkers to come down to the bar on a Saturday night and then taste their way through the candidates for the new house pouring rum – Ron Barcelo, Flor de Caña and El Dorado. To add a bit more competitiveness to the evening we were also joined by brand ambassadors from two of the three rums, with bar boss Dino Koletsas taking on the role of El Dorado’s rep, who couldn’t make it along that night. Along with the three in contention we also had a glass of Mount Gay Eclipse, their current golden pouring rum.

We started the evening with Dino giving us a history of rum. I’ve wittered about this before (and have at least one other post in the pipe with yet another history attached) so I won’t go into it much other than to mention a couple of specific pieces that have somehow not come up in previous tastings I’ve been to. First up is the slave trade. I’m not sure how this hadn’t appeared quite so strongly on my radar before, but it’s been part of every discussion about rum I’ve had since. The Caribbean and its sugar plantations were not only the centre of the rum trade but also of the use of slaves, and rum was connected with it not only through production but also as a key part of trade. Rum was used as currency to buy slaves but was also used to fill the holds of ships before they departed eastwards again, making sure that there was never an empty hold going to waste. More research needed.

Secondly is the effect of prohibition on rum production in North America. I hadn’t realised that there were a good number of rum distilleries in the USA before the Volstead act came into force, but the rise of the Temperance movement and the various other backgrounds reasons for Prohibition hit the US and rum fell by the wayside. This led to a strong trade between the Caribbean and South American countries and the US, now that there was little domestic rum production. However, Prohibition killed that, on the legal end of things at least, and led to a large amount of smuggling of rum into the US. This was easier than with many spirits due to the land border with Mexico meaning that it wasn’t necessary to ship booze in by land and sea.The post-prohibition cocktail boom was led by the poor quality of spirits, with drinks combinations originally designed to hide the flavours of bad booze, but rum quickly returned as a premium spirit and a key element of many cocktails.

Thirdly was a reason behind one of the evolutions in rum styles over time. In earlier rum production the use of pot stills and inconsistent product led to heavy aging in an attempt to produce a drinkable spirit, which gives us the world of dark and golden rums on the market. However, the switch to continuous distillation and modern quality control allowed lighter styles of rum to be produced, leading to the popularity of white rum as a spirit category. That bit of exposition leads into the plan for the evening – try out three quite different white rums and choose which one we thought the bar should be stocking.

We started off with Ron Barcelo Gran Platinum, a relatively new rum to the UK market that I had appear on my desk a couple of weeks back to put up on our website. It’s from the Dominican Republic, where there are currently three main rum producers – Brugal, Ron Bermudas and Ron Barcelo. It’s a family a owned company founded by a pair of Majorcan brothers, Julian and Andreas, who set up a distillery in 1929 in the town of San Domingo. Then in 1930, just as they were getting going, the island was hit by a massive hurricane which destroyed the town and the distillery. Andreas gave up on the place as a bad deal and moved to Puerto Rico but Julian stayed on and started selling rum made by other people. For 16 years he travelled round the island selling from the back of his truck until he’d raised enough money for a new distillery, which was built in 1946 by the Osama river. By 1980 his rum was the most popular in the Dominican Republic, overtaking its older competitors, and in 1982 Julian died leaving the company to his son José. He started growing the business internationally, exporting to the USA and Spain with the success helped along by the 1980s rum boom and Mojitos flying off the backbar. By 1994 they were exporting to 10 countries and by 2009 (with some extra Spanish investment helping them along the way) they’d reached 50 countries.

The UK range consists of 4 rums:

* Añejo – aged up to 6 years
* Gran Añejo – aged up to 8 years

* Imperial – aged up to 10 years
* Gran Platinum – aged up to 8 years

All the rums are agricole style, made from sugar cane juice rather than molasses, and the cane growing, rum production and bottling all happens in the Dominican Republic. They distill in a continuous still and take the spirit off at 96.3%, producing about 50k litres per day. The rum is aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels (Heaven Hill?) for at least 18 months, 6 months longer than the Dominican legal minimum of 1 year.

The Gran Platinum is the most recent addition to the range, introduced into the Dominican Republic in 2009 and the UK earlier this year. It is a response the continued rise of rum as a cocktail ingredient, often calling for a lighter flavoured and coloured rum that won’t dominate the palate or alter the look of the drink too much. It is a version of the Gran Añejo filtered through charcoal before bottling to remove the colour as well as some of the heavier flavours picked up from the wood. On the nose it was very light, with pithy lemon and vodka like spiritiness. To taste there was more, with sweet coconut and a buttery, silky mouthfeel – all in all a reminiscent of a lightly sweetened coconut vodka.

The second rum was from Flor de Caña – a Nicaraguan rum, but made in the lighter Cuban style. The distillery is in the north-west of the country in Chichigulpa and was built in the 1890s to produce rums under a number of different names. In the 1950s they started producing Flor de Caña for the local market, moving to export in the 1990s. The company is family owned and the current master distiller has been with them for 39 years, his predecessor ‘only’ having managed 30… As one of the major industries in the area they have put quite a lot back into the local economy, investing in schools and hospitals as well as building industries around the by-products of rum distillation, including paper mills and electricity plants.

The Nicaraguan climate is quite different to the Caribbean, drier and cooler, which gives it more similar yearly evaporation rates of maturing spirit to Scotland – ~3% per year as opposed to ~10% on the islands. This allows Flor de Caña to be matured for longer without getting too woody – while maturation in wooden casks in hot climates is often referred to as ‘maturing’ the spirit faster, it’s only allowing the wood to have an affect faster, which isn’t quite the same: John Hansell made some comments recently about this on his blog. However, the country does also have quite a big variation between day and nighttime temperatures, which causes the porous casks to work more actively than usual, with the spirit being driven in and out of the wood as it expands and contracts as the temperature changes. All of this gives Flor de Caña a good chance to develop interesting flavours during its years in the barrel.

The way that the Flor de Caña rums are named and produced is also slightly different, with each rum being blended in small 20-30 barrel batches from casks of the same age – in other words, if the rum is listed as being a 12 year old, all of the rum in it is 12 years old. In order to keep flavour consistent between batches they use warehouse location to change the way that the rums develop – different heights up the rack in different parts of different warehouses will give different temperatures and humidities leading to enough variation in the finished rums to allow the master blender scope to create the flavour profile they need. In another difference to the maturation of many other rums they top up the barrels each year, replacing the spirit that has evaporated with more similarly aged spirit to keep the headspace in the barrel low to stop an acceleration in evaporation by keeping the surface area in contact with air to a minimum.

The rum is based on molasses and they distill to a lowish 78-80% to retain some of the cane spirit’s flavour. They then use a mixture of 80% bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill and 20% Canadian whiskey barrels to mature the rums for their regular range between 4 and 18 years. They make both a white and gold 4 year old and then 7, 12, 15 and 18 year old rums bottled with no artificial colouring or other additives, and dilute to bottling strength with local water.

We were trying the filtered 4 year old, the white rum in their line-up – similar to the golden 4 year old that it’s based on, but with less of the woodiness as well as none of the colour. On the nose there was coconut again like with the Ron Barcelo, but it was joined with butter and limey citrus. To taste it was lightly sweet with banana cream, coconut and a touch of sweet liquorice.

Third on the list was El Dorado, from Guyana. There’s quite a lot of rum heritage in Guyana, starting with the British settlement of areas near the Demerera river in the mid-1700s and continuing to the present day. Sugar cane and rum production both need water and trade routes, making the river regions perfect and distilleries sprung up all over the place. The British left in 1966 and over time the distilleries and sugar plantations combined until the 1980s, when the remaining distilleries consolidated under the banner of the state owned Demerera Distillers Ltd. This consolidation did lead to the closing of many distilleries, but their distilling equipment was packed up and moved to one location, allowing them to produce rums of all the various styles that were once produced across all the distilleries.

El Dorado is molasses based, using local sugar cane, and has a 22-26 hour fermentation using an introduced cultured yeast rather than the spontaneous fermentation that some distillers use. Their blends are made up of rums from a couple of the many stills at the Demerera distillery, maybe even including spirit from their wooden still, the last one still in use in the Caribbean today.

We were trying the 3 year old, which is matured for at least 3 years in Kentucky whiskey barrels and is then double charcoal filtered, to remove colour and some of the heavier flavours, and then bottled. On the nose it had banana, sweet fruit and caramel. To taste it had milk, sour cream, sugar and coconut – a similar but much bigger flavour than the last three.

To round out the tasting we also tried the Mount Gay Eclipse, Bourne and Hollingsworth’s current house pour golden rum. I have a bit of a history with Mount Gay, as in my rum drinking days (before I got so heavily into whisky) it was my standard tipple and the first years of my working life were fuelled by late night Paramount comedy channel programmes and Mount Gay Old Fashioneds – still one of my favourite drinks of all time.

Mount Gay is from Barbados and claims to be the oldest rum brand in the world, tracing its heritage back to 1703 (even though it may have been renamed to Mount Gay in the late 1700s). It’s named after Sir John Gay Alleyne, owner of the distillery in the mid-1700s, who later became an MP in the Bajan government and Speaker of the House. It is the biggest rum in Barbados and one of the only ones exported from the island, although there are a bunch of locally distributed spirits as well. They produce a variety of rums, but we stuck with the standard golden expression – Eclipse. On the nose it had vanilla, honey, fruit stones and demerera sugar, with a palate of cream, caramel, pepper, ginger and a bitter end. Still one of my favourite rums, although as I try more brands I am being tempted away.

Having tasted the rums we were invited to cross the barstaffs’ palms with silver and order one of a number of drinks that they’d put on for the night, each with a user-selectable rum component to allow us to compare the different spirits in a cocktail as well as neat – as Bourne & Hollingsworth are a cocktail bar mixability is rather important. Before trying the cocktails we discussed how thought the rums would perform and came up with our predictions:

* The Barcelo was lightly flavoured, so would be easier to make cocktails with, as the flavour would not overpower the other ingredients.
* The Flor de Cana was tastier on its own but might not work so well in all rum cocktails.
* The El Dorado was a great sipping rum, but its strong flavours would clash in a mixed drink.

We decided to stick with the Flor de Cana and El Dorado as we thought the Barcelo would get a bit lost. First up we tried The Airmail – rum shaken with lemon juice and acacia honey, topped up with champagne. This was a bit of a washout on the rum front, with the champagne and lemon killing all of the others flavours and giving us a sweet and citrusy fizzy drink in a flute. We followed it with a Rum Cobbler – rum and port stirred with lemon juice, liqueurs and fruit, served in a tin cup over crushed ice. This was much more successful and despite my initial guess that the Flor de Cana would win here the El Dorado sang, with its creamy taste and texture adding rather a lot to the cocktail. After a bit of discussion it looked like it wasn’t only the Cobbler that suited the El Dorado and I duly cast my vote for it. We’re still waiting for the results but scuttlebutt suggests that the El Dorado was the overwhelming winner – a noble victory.

In May, the nice people at The Balvenie set up an special treat for whisky lovers just next to Covent Garden in London. A temporary installation in the space that used to be an antiquarian bookstore, these ‘pop-ups’ are becoming a trend. In this case whisky fans would have a month’s window of opportunity to come by the Balvenie Whisky Den to get a special chance to sample some of the Balvenie line, and learn a bit more about it. Even better, the Balvenie folks arranged a special evening for the LCS to come and pay a visit. I was particularly interested as whisky is one of weaker areas of my spirits knowledge and this seemed an excellent place to try to shore that up.

The old bookstore had been stripped down to the walls and the new furnishings were constructed out of long thin timbers and staves (the pieces of wood that make up barrels). The effect was to give the place a feel somewhere in-between a pirate ship and a garden shed (in a good way!). We all gathered in the upstairs where we were given a chance to try some of the Balvenie’s lines. A double-wooded 12, their signature 12 blend, and a lovely 15-year old (my personal favourite.) We got to hear a little bit more about the history of the company and the whisky, some of which was literally all around us, as it turns out the timbers they used for the décor were from old whiskey barrels.

After a bit more chatting we were taken downstairs where the furnishings were even more elaborate. But the real surprise was that were were invited to participate in a blend-off. We broke into teams and each team was given three bottles of whiskey, one of the each of the three single-malt whiskeys which are blended to make the Balvenie signature 12. Our task, blend our own signature!

balvenie whisky den

Those who remember the great triumph of the Christmas party at Callooh Callay will know that I am not one to back down from such a challenge. My team therefore set out to create a blend to take on all challengers. It was a bit touch and go, towards the end one of my fellow team mates noticed the flat middle of the flavour curve of our blend and suggested just the thing to fix it…so feeling quite positive about the blend we passed our creation along to the judges. As it turns out, our confidence was fully justified, as we won!

The LCS retired upstairs to um… further research the remains of our endeavours. My team and I got to have another dram at the bar as a victory lap reward for our performance in the mixing.

Quite a great evening out, and a very good introduction to both the Balvenie and whisky in general. Many thanks to The Balvenie folks for hosting us!

When we said blind we meant it, as we gave no indications as to what the gins on the menu for the night were. This was because we wanted to strip away any trace of marketing and focus on the contents of the bottle. On the night there were the 3 gins that our members had voted as their favourite and a couple of sneaky additions from Mark, Kate and I.

As everyone began to arrive, the very lovely Adam from behind the bar handed out welcome G&T’s, each made using one of the 5 gins. These had been decanted into plain bottles so that there was no indication as to what they were….ooo the intrigue!

On the tasting table there were a further 5 wine bottles filled with the gins and around 300 tasting glasses sat lined up side by side (yes I did stick the stickers on each of them!). We made up some tasting sheets so that people could write down their thoughts and tasting notes, and also record their top 5 in order of preference.

Once everyone had arrived the tasting began, and Mark and I handed around the various samples of gin. They were colour coded so that red=1, orange=2, yellow=3, green=4 and blue=5. The task was not an easy one, as not only did we want our members to rank the gins in order of preference, but we also wanted them to have a guess as to which gin they were drinking.

We realise that ranking the gins and trying to guess what they were was a particularly difficult task as we were asking people to drink the gin neat, which we realise isn’t the usual way most people drink gin!! However we were really happy to see everyone getting involved and exploring the gin category – which is what we intended the evening to do.

The scores were tallied up and the final result was:

1 – Tanquaray 10
2 – Sipsmith
3 – No 3
4 – Hendricks
5 – Bombay Sapphire

Whilst this was the final result there was a lot of variety as to peoples rankings and loads of interesting comments – each gin had it’s fans and those that were less enthusiastic. The winner, Tanqueray 10 received a lot of praise for being smooth and well-balanced, although even this heavyweight received some negative comments as well.

Adam then whipped us up some White ladies with each of the gins. A lovely and very unexpected twist to the evening, the preferred gin in this case seemed to be Sipsmith, but again there was a lot of variation.

The night aimed to get people thinking more about their choice of gins, and giving them an opportunity to talk about and explore the category. I feel it really succeeded and I’m thrilled.

We would like to say a huge thank you to graphic for hosting, to the lovely Adam for being the perfect bartender on the evening, and to the wonderful Sarah for helping us to organise everything. Also massive thanks to Tanquaray, Sipsmith, No 3, Hendricks and Bombay Sapphire for providing the gin!

Dan works for Four Roses bourbon, and also runs a blog called Bitters and Twisted. I imagine there’s very little you’d want to know about bourbon that this man doesn’t know! A veritable fountain of knowledge we were all looking forward to an evening learning loads about this wonderful category!

Academy were kind enough to give us most of the downstairs space for the evening, and Dan took up residency behind the bar to make us some fab cocktails. Made in jam jars we had the choice of a mint julep, kentucky lemonade and something yummy with peach, the name of which escapes me now! Aimed at being quick and simple to make (he was tending bar solo!), they were perfect for the evening and fantastically yummy too.

Part way through the night Dan talked through bourbon, it’s heritage, production methods, and the Four Roses brand specifically whilst we tasted the range starting with the Yellow Label (40% ABV). It was interesting to see opinion divided between whether people preferred the small batch (45% ABV) or single barrel (50% ABV).

A fantastically fun and educational evening all round we’d like to thank the guys at Academy for giving us the space, and the super awesome Dan for both tending stick and imparting some of his vast wisdom upon us.

Keen to give the night a bit of a LCS twist, there were interesting plans for each of the three rooms.  The main bar hosted the LCS Swap Shop where members brought along their homemade potions to test out on each other.  This proved very successful and more than a little ‘interesting’ with home made bacon bourbon, damson gin, strawberry ratafia and Christmas liquer amongst others on offer.

The Jub Jub played host to the wonderful Andrea Montague and her Drinkatorium where members were treated to a bespoke cocktail created especially for them having answered a small questionnaire about their drinking preferences.  This was quite a feat considering our members have been known to be a little demanding on occasion.  We were no match for Andrea however, who mixed perfectly executed drink after drink to much acclaim.

The highlight of the evening was without a doubt the Ready Steady Shake competition.  Members were randomly assigned into small teams and given a box of mystery ingredients.  Each team then had to mix up a cocktail against the clock.  With ingredients ranging from white rum and oranges right through to cat food and cockles, there were certainly some interesting results! The pressure was certainly on with some fab prizes to be won, but our members were more than up to the challenge and came up with some great drinks.

All in all, it was a fantastic evening that really set the bar for our future parties.  A big thanks to everyone at Callooh Callay who did an amazing job at hosting us and organising the competition.  A big thanks also to our sponsors who provided all sorts of treats for the members goody bags (after all a Christmas party is nothing without a goody bag to take home!). Thanks to: The Loft bar, Gerry’s, Haymans Gin, Chase Vodka, Luxardo Sambuca, The Nightjar.

The spirit is poured into the belly of Prudence (their beautiful copper still), which acts much like a kettle. She holds 300 litres of liquid, which produces no more than 250 bottles of each spirit in each distillation run (when these guys say small batch they aren’t joking!). As the liquid is heated vapours begin to rise up through a pipe known as a swan’s neck (as Prudence is a tight fit the neck grazes the ceiling!). It is a beautifully shaped piece of kit, so much so that Sipsmith use the shape in their motif.

Away from the heat of the belly of the still the vapours begin to condense and fall down another pipe into a cooling chamber where they become liquid again. The copper wall of this chamber absorbs the liquid’s soft fatty acids, a process which Sam attributes to giving the spirit it’s character.

After being held for a short time to ensure as many of the fatty acids are absorbed as possible, the liquid is heated to evaporate once more, before passing through a condenser and becoming liquid again. It then sits in the spirit safe (a fairly traditional feature in distilling) where it is ‘cut’. This involves removing the initial product (the head) and the end of the product (the tail) which are of poor quality. The distillate from the middle of the process is retained (the heart) and is pure enough that it doesn’t need filtered. 40% of the heart is kept, diluted and bottled – their vodka – and the remaining 60% goes on to make the gin. Usually the heads and the tails are recycled and fed back into the belly of the still for re-distillation, however Sipsmith believe that this would compromise the quality of their spirit and discard them (Sam told us there are plans afoot to use this waste as fuel for a company car: a vod-car – genius!).

The 10 botanicals used in Sipsmith gin are:

Macedonian juniper, Bulgarian coriander, French angelica root, Spanish liquorice root, Italian orris root, Spanish ground almond, Chinese cassia bark, Madagascan cinnamon, Sevillian orange peel and Spanish lemon peel.

Sipsmith is the only producer in Europe who use the ‘one shot’ gin method which involves distilling the botanicals with the spirit rather than making a concentrate which is blended with the neutral spirit. This is a more expensive way to produce the spirit, however Sam and his team believe it produces a better final product.

Prudence needs to be altered before she is ready for gin distillation though, as if the spirit were to enter the final condenser the taste from the botanicals would be affected. The botanicals are then left overnight in her belly at 75 degrees so they can release their flavour, before once again making their (shorter) journey though the still. Once in the spirit safe again the liquid is cut to remove the heads and the tails, and the remaining heart is blended with Lydwell Spring mineral water (the source of The Thames) and bottled.

Prudence (their still) was gleaming at the back of the room and the remaining space was full of stock, raw sprits, ingredients and bottles – the remnants of previous experiments! Further exploration confirmed that this one large room was pretty much it: when they say small batch they really aren’t joking!!

Our lucky members began to arrive, most of them equally baffled with the location, and then a rather flustered Sam Galsworthy (co-founder of Sipsmith) turned up. To apologise for his (very slight) lateness he made us all G&T’s: he was more than forgiven! He then started to talk us through his background in the industry and how the brand came to be in a tiny shed in Hammersmith! It was an absolute pleasure to listen to his stories, he is such a great story teller and full of passion for what he does. Setting up a distillery (surprisingly) isn’t quite as straightforward as you’d think and there were a few trials and tribulations along the way, however these made the story all the more interesting…

Firstly Prudence is a purely copper still, which is very unusual, and cost more than a few bob, especially as the cost of copper soared during her build. Secondly *someone* didn’t measure the height of the ceiling correctly (it slopes) so she nearly didn’t fit when she arrived. The problems didn’t stop there though…as the government hadn’t written a distillers licence for so long they virtually had to invent the process, and then when it finally arrived it was dated incorrectly for a year in the future. However despite all of the problems they encountered along the way they have two stunning spirits to show for it…trust me, they truly are something special.

As we moved onto tasting their vodka Sam talked us through the history of the building itself. It turns out that the ‘shed’ has quite the history in terms of spirits and distilling, with Sam commenting that in a way it has ‘always known what it wanted to be’. It was once home to the esteemed whisky expert Michael Jackson (apparently his desk sat where Prudence does now), and before that it housed a micro-brewery for a local pub. However, in it’s latest reincarnation it can be proud of the fact that it houses one of only two gin distilleries in London, and the first new gin distillery in England for over two hundred years!

Click here to read more about the distillation process at Sipsmith.

After tasting the vodka we moved onto the gin. Sipsmith gin is made using 10 different botanicals:

Macedonian juniper, Bulgarian coriander, French angelica root, Spanish liquorice root, Italian orris root, Spanish ground almond, Chinese cassia bark, Madagascan cinnamon, Sevillian orange peel and Spanish lemon peel.

Sam began to pull down jars of these botanicals from his shelves. We were invited the crush juniper berries between our fingers, and smell and feel many of the other botanicals one by one. We then tasted the gin straight, and finally in a good old fashioned G&T.

The bottles for both the gin and the vodka are fab, with reassuringly heavy bottoms and have beautiful labels which include the swans head motif. The bottles are sealed with wax and unsealed with a black ribbon underneath which makes them very satisfying to open for the first time. The cork stopper also gives a pop when you open it every time, one of the best sounds in the world if you ask me! Another nice touch is the unique batch number on each bottle. If you enter this number on their website you will see a photo and caption which relates to the time that each batch was ‘born’. Personal favourites are LDG/001 which is when Fairfax’s daughter was born and LDG/044 which is dedicated to Hogarth’s depictions of Gin Lane, and because it was the first batch of Sipsmith I ever tried!

This winter Sipsmith have made a Sloe Gin, which was pretty special too. However the star of the evening had to be the mustard vodka! The result of an experiment with some mustard powder we were very lucky to be given the opportunity to try it. It had quite a kick to it as it was the final cut (undiluted) vodka in the bottle and was therefore pretty strong. Then there was the mustardy kick which was really warming and pretty damn yummy, and I would imagine pretty awesome in a bloody mary – I think I speak for everyone there when I implore Sam and the guys to make more of this stuff!

On behalf of the LCS I would like to thank Sam for his very kind hospitality, sharing some great stories with us, and letting us sample some of his more unusual experiments! We’re sure to be back in the future as we’d love all of our members to experience the wonderful Sipsmith distillery!