The Institute for Alcoholic Experimentation

Wind-up monkey not included

I like a monkey as much as the next man (more than many, if I’m honest), so I was happy to try Monkey 47 gin, handled in the UK by Spirit Cartel, who also do Four Roses bourbon. The principle hype is its 47 botanicals—seizing the crown from The Botanist, with its mere 35—but it also has an unusual provenance and an exotic back story.

The tale starts at the end of World War II when Wing Commander Montgomery Collins is posted to help run the British Sector of Berlin. A man of varied and fickle interests, he is saddened by the destruction around him and helps the effort to rebuild Berlin Zoo by sponsoring a monkey called Max. He leaves the Air Force in 1951 and, sparked by an urge to learn the art of watchmaking he moves to the Northern Black Forest region. Unfortunately he proves to have little talent for it, despite his love of watches, so he decides to open a guesthouse which he names Zum wilden Affen (The Wild Monkey—not really something that promises opulent comfort and a restful night’s sleep, but there you go). He is also depicted as having an Englishman’s love of gin and, as juniper is an abundant local ingredient in the renowned Black Forest ham, he starts tinkering with his own recipe, combining spices redolent of his upbringing as the son of a diplomat in India with local forest plants.

The story jumps forward to the early 2000s when renovation of the guesthouse turns up a wooden box containing a bottle of Monty’s gin, labelled “Max the Monkey—Schwarzwald Dry Gin”, with a letter explaining its recipe. Businessman Alexander Stein, after a career in telecommunications with postings around the world, including north and south America, returns to his home in Baden-Würtemberg. He hears the story of Monty and his gin and decides to recreate it.

Of course one takes all this with a pinch of salt, but the modern gin is made by distiller Christoph Keller at the Stählemühle distillery in Oberen Hegau. They admit that they made many changes to Monty’s recipe, which they variously describe as “rudimentary” and “eccentric”, but it does include many ingredients from the forest region, such as spruce, blackthorn, elderflower and bramble leaves, and they place a particular emphasis on the very soft local spring water and the “secret weapon” of fresh cranberries.* (Apparently Alex and Christoph distilled 120 botanicals individually and tasted them in isolation.) Distillation is in very small batches and the process uses both maceration and steam extraction, where alcohol vapour passes through baskets of botanicals, and the finished distillate is aged for three months in earthenware containers before being diluted to 47% ABV with that local spring water.

An Aviation made with Monkey 47

The packaging plays up the heritage aspect: the label is designed like a Victorian postage stamp, with serrated edges, plain paper and just two spot-printed colours. The squat, brown glass bottle is apparently based on an old pharmacy bottle that Stein found while out walking. The stopper is cork, at first glance just a plain one jammed in the top, but in fact it has a metal band halfway down that provides a finite travel into the bottle.

So what does it taste like? Can you pick up all 47 botanicals? No, of course not, but it is certainly complex. For me, juniper is not the first thing that leaps out, but limes, or rather a blend of limes and spices that really reminds me of lime pickle, then juniper and marmalade. There’s a heavy florality that is almost cloying, with coriander seed, lemon sherbet, juicy leafiness or stemminess like geranium, and something woody like cassia.

On the tongue the gin is relatively sweet and smooth for its 47%, with citrus to the fore, plus chocolate, something leafy like watercress, parma violets, orange peel, maybe a hint of cherry. And that lime pickle thing again.

In a Martini with Noilly Prat it is a natural companion to what is quite a citric vermouth; that floral element comes out along with strong coriander notes. But it is also very good with Belsazar Dry (and surely not because they are both German), making a juicy, fresh and balanced cocktail. A Negroni with Monkey 47, Campari and Martini Rosso is fruity and perfumed, perhaps a little cloying but with a strongly bitter aftertaste. In a G&T citrus and coriander spice are to the fore, with a wood-dry finish. As I suspected, the gin makes a good Aviation (gin, lemon juice, maraschino and crème de violette), with that citrus fruit sitting comfortably with the lemon and the gin’s florality at ease with the violette and cherry fruit. It also makes a predictably easy Gimlet (gin and lime cordial), with all those lime flavours sitting comfortably with each other.

It’s an intriguing gin with a strong impact from an unusual flavour profile. Despite the heritage tale, it went through 100 test formulas, accompanied by evaluative tastings with “renowned barkeepers”, so it is clearly engineered for a particular purpose, rather than just being a faithful presentation of a curio from the past. To me it falls into the category of gins that use sweet or floral flavours to make the spirit more approachable neat and perhaps woo consumers who are not naturally drawn to gin. It’s not going to become an everyday gin for me, partly because I personally prefer something more juniper-driven, and partly because it is £37 for just 50cl. But it is causing a lot of ripples, and it does have a picture of a monkey holding a sprig of jasmine on it, which counts for a lot.

* Judging by the “Encyclopedia Botanica” on the website the botanical bill also includes coriander, angelica, nutmeg, grains of paradise, common vervain, jasmine, camomile, marsh mallow and musk mallow.

I was on holiday in Venice last month, staying in a self-catering apartment. On the first night we sloped into a supermarket for supplies and I was intrigued to see that the only gin they sold apart from Gordon’s was this, something called Hansard.

Such is the perceived “Britishness” of gin in many parts of the world (probably more those that don’t have so much of an indigenous gin habit) that the name didn’t really surprise me. (For those who don’t know, Hansard is the journal of record in the UK parliament.) Let’s not forget the name and label of Castle Bridge gin from Ghana. It is clearly labelled as “London Dry Gin”, but the front label also adds: “Produced according with traditional recipe [sic], from neutral spirit with the addition of juniper distillate.”

This is at once disarmingly frank and intriguing. So it has just the one botanical? It would be perfectly legitimate to make a multi-shot distillation with just juniper, then add more neutral spirit to dilute the botanical intensity, plus water to get the ABV down, and still justifiably call it a London Dry Gin. And, let’s face it, this stuff is €4.99 for a 70cl bottle, so they are clearly sparing a lot of expense in the manufacture.

The Italians may not be great gin drinkers but this is, after all, the nation that created the Negroni, and local bars are full of the usual international brands, such as Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray, as well as more exotic marques that I recognise from home. So who is Hansard aimed at? It is made on an industrial estate in Finale Emilia, Modena, by Casoni Fabbricazione Liquori S.P.A., a family firm dating back to 1814, who produce a range of spirits, liqueurs and amari. Why is the front label in English?* It could be aimed at tourists, but I suspect it is simply to give it an impression of being an import from Britain (in a market where most products actually are).

I can’t find out anything online about the brand, and the ingredients are simply given as “water, alcohol and gin distillate”. I can certainly believe that it has just one botanical, as juniper notes rise up, along with a distinct note of caraway and anise sweetness (which I could believe is an element of the juniper character), and maybe a hint of sweet orange? It is smooth enough on the tongue but dry, with an element of sugar flavour, but not sweetness. Overall it does not seem terribly strongly flavoured at all.**

It makes an unexciting G&T, adding dryness and bitterness to the tonic but not much else apart from subdued caraway. In a Martini with Noilly Prat you mostly get the vermouth; as with the tonic, if you add more gin to get a balance, it just drags down the taste of the other ingredient.

Perhaps appropriately, the best use I’ve found is in a Negroni—up against the powerful flavours of the Campari and red vermouth it serves the useful role of adding strength (though note that it is only 38% ABV), damping the sweetness and injecting a bit of juniper/caraway steel. But of course there are plenty of gins that do a better job, and if you keep adding more gin to see what happens eventually it starts to fall flat again. I also start to notice that dry sugar taste coming through, perhaps from the base spirit.

I’m not much impressed by Hansard. Although it is not rough as such, I find it rather unbalanced and, despite possibly having just one botanical, not much like gin.

*And why does no one doing this ever get an English speaker to proofread the label?

** When I initially opened the bottle I got juniper and anise/caraway. I then poured a hefty slug into a glass and covered it with clingfilm before giving the bottle to DBS. These notes are mostly made later from the sample in the glass, so it is possible that the flavour has lessened. I certainly get more caraway now than juniper but it is not strongly flavoured of anything.

Despite the plethora of gin-based cocktails out there, I’m sure that most of the world’s gin gets guzzled in combination with tonic water. This combination stems from the days of the Raj, when British Army officers and East India Company employees were issued with quinine to ward off malaria, and found its intense bitterness could be mollified by mixing it with gin, water, sugar and lime. They developed a taste for the drink, and modern tonic water contains the quinine, water, sugar and citrus elements.

Although various attempts have been made to produce quinine syrups or concentrates, it’s surprising that (given the bloom of exotic gins on the market) no has tried putting quinine in gin itself, until now: 1897 Quinine Gin from Maverick Drinks uses cinchona bark, the source of natural quinine, as a botanical.

The other botanicals are juniper, coriander, angelica, orange, lemon, nutmeg, cassia, cinnamon, orris and liquorice—which are macerated and traditionally distilled in a copper pot still—plus pink and white grapefruit peel and lemon peel which are cold-distilled separately with the cinchona. In this latter process, instead of using heat to boil off the alcohol, a vacuum pump is used to reduce the pressure inside the vessel to the point where the alcohol evaporates. Adherents feel that by not “cooking” your botanicals you extract a different, and more natural, flavour from them. Oxley gin uses vacuum distillation and has a similar emphasis on fresh citrus. When you reduce the pressure to the point of evaporation, the temperature naturally drops—in the case of Oxley it drops to -5 degrees Celsius. Sacred Gin also uses vacuum distillation, but distiller Ian Hart uses a warm water bath to keep it at room temperature. Whereas Oxley macerates all the botanicals together and distils in one shot, Sacred botanicals are all macerated and distilled separately then blended (Ian does this so that different botanicals can be macerated for different lengths of time). So 1897 Quinine Gin is a hybrid: clearly the producers felt that the benefits of cold distillation (in this case at room temperature) were felt with the citrus, but not with the other botanicals. (I gather that cold distilling juniper gives a much gentler, grassier flavour than the sharp pine resin character we are used to.) It is bottled at 45.8% ABV.

The number in the gin’s name is the year in which Sir Ronald Ross discovered the parasite in mosquitoes that causes malaria, paving the way to an effective treatment.* The day of his discovery, 20th August, is apparently World Mosquito Day. Of course the fever-fighting properties of quinine had been known for a long time before that,** but Ross’s discovery in theory meant that insecticides could be used to curb the spread of the disease. In fact mosquitoes have proved good an evolving resistance to these, and even today a child dies every minute from malaria. Consequently, half the profits from sales of this gin (at least £5 per bottle—enough to buy, deliver and install a mosquito net) are donated to the charity Malaria No More UK.

Note the intriguing embossed background pattern. No explanation is offered

The gin comes in a handsome rectangular bottle that combines weighty opulence with a rough-hewn, artisanal quality. The cap is dipped in black wax and the labels are black and silver. The front label, which is elaborately embossed (including a background pattern that I at first took for the veins of a leaf but which turned out, on closer inspection, to be a geometric design that to me suggests African textiles or decorative woven baskets) features a stylised cinchona tree. The border features lines from Ross’s poem.*

So what does quinine in a gin taste like? Not so easy to say: we seldom encounter it on its own, and most of us just know it as being bitter. Yet, as Ian Hart once showed me, it is easy enough to distil out the bitter elements from a bitter ingredients (he gave me macerations of hops and gentian to taste—very bitter—and then distillations of the same macerations—not bitter at all). I’ve got a bottle of the Battersea Quinine Cordial, an experimental quinine syrup made by Hendrick’s a few years ago: it has a sort of heady, dusty, woody, aromatic smell to it, like some vermouths or cocktail bitters, and a rubbery floral element on the tongue—plus a pronounced bitter finish. (But I should point out that this product also contains orange flower, lavender and holy thistle as well as cinchona bark.) Maverick describe the bark as adding an “ethereal flavour and floral aroma” to their gin.

A GT Turbo made with 1897 Quinine Gin and Battersea Quinine Cordial

Sniffing the bottle of Quinine Gin I’m hit first by orange and grapefruit, then spices—cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg—and sandalwood, plus something floral and a hint of chocolate. In a glass you get a delicate and distinctly sweet balance of juniper with juicy orange, something leafy and a parma-violet floral weight. You expect it to be sweet and heavy on the tongue but it fact it is dry with a slightly bitter finish. It has poise in the way it subtly balances juicy, fruity citrus, woody spice with a dry chocolate finish, and heavy floral elements. The sinus-clearing resinous character of juniper is definitely there, but this is not a juniper-led gin. Citrus is what dominates.

I try it in a few obvious cocktails. It makes a lush, perfumed Martini, and this is a great way to appreciate the gin. It also works well in an Aviation, with its citrus and floral elements sitting perfectly happily with the violet and lemon ingredients. I expected that it would get rather lost in a Negroni, but in fact the fruity/floral character shines through, balancing nicely with the bitterness of the Campari to produce a mellow, thoughtful version of the drink.

Ironically, one drink that I did not think worked so well was a gin and tonic. It will vary depending on what tonic you use (perhaps the clean, blank canvas of 1724 might be more forgiving), but with Schweppes I found that the lack of juniper thrust made the gin get a bit lost. Better to appreciate this gin in a Martini, and it would probably make a good Gin Old Fashioned too.

On the subject of which, since I’ve got the Battersea Quinine Cordial out, I can’t resist trying a GT Turbo. I think this may have been invented at Purl, but it combines gin with tonic syrup and some lime juice to make a short drink that is meant to be a sort of compressed G&T. The end result will depend on the syrup you use (and there is no standard here), but with 50ml of Quinine Gin, 20ml Battersea Cordial and 20ml lime juice you get something that is indeed oddly like a condensed G&T, with a sharp, cleansing bitterness that fans of Campari will appreciate. The fruitiness of the gin is a good foil to the woody dryness of the tonic syrup. On paper we’re in the same ballpark as the Corpse Reviver No.2—short, sweet and sour, citrus and a bit herbal (particularly if you use a quinated amaro like Cocchi Americano or China Martini)—but this is altogether leaner and with a nettle-y asceticism, more about the bitter high notes.

1897 Quinine Gin is available online from Mast of Malt and Amazon at about £40 for 70cl.

*He was so chuffed that it prompted him to write a poem:

This day relenting God
Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God
Be praised. At His command,

Seeking his secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death.

I know this little thing
A myriad men will save.
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory, O grave?

The last two lines are from Corinthians 15:55. I suspect few boffins write poetry when they have a major breakthrough these days; they probably tweet about it instead. Not sure which is better.

** It was in use to fight malaria in Rome in 1631. The South American nations where cinchona grew naturally tried to band the export of seeds but eventually they were smuggled out. By the time of Ross’s discovery quinine production was at its peak in the Dutch colony of Java, fuelling the colonialist tendencies of the West. The Second World War cut the British off from the supply, leading them to develop synthetic alternatives. Since 2006 quinine has no longer been recommended by the World Health Organisation as a first-line treatment for malaria.

Bognor Gothic the font

A friend recently asked me to come up with a cocktail to go with a new font he had created.

You read that right. I don’t suppose many fonts come with a recommended cocktail, but you know what these creative types* are like. I suppose that, while many classic typefaces were developed to solve practical typesetting problems, others were intended to evoke emotions or associations in the viewer, so perhaps a prescribed drink might help achieve this effect.

To give you an idea of the mood, here is a room in my friend's
house done up in a Victorian Gothic/Arts & Crafts style

My friend lives in Bognor Regis, a town on the south coast of England. It became a fashionable resort in Victorian times and was later favoured by King George V for its healthy sea air, hence the “Regis” suffix. The font is called Bognor Gothic and seems to be a modern nod to the Victorian reinvention of the Gothic. This is what he has to say on the subject:

As Montmartre is to Paris and Soho is to London, so North Bersted is to Bognor Regis. Therefore it is no wonder that Bognor Gothic springs from this quaint “artists quarter” of the sprawling metropolis. It is deeply rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement, being a fine hand-crafted font brought about through a combination of both the belief in the integrity of the artisan and the eschewing of modern technology—albeit through the mechanism of not being arsed to Google other Gothic fonts. Bognor Gothic is a product of its environment, the desolate and blasted landscape of the Victorian seaside town, like the bleak moors but with more arcades and chip shops. Less “Wuthering Heights” and more “Withering Lows.”**

So something self-consciously rustic, artisanal and Victorian. “Our money is on something involving dark rum and absinthe,” he adds.

The Victorian angle put me in mind of some sort of punch or purl, a kind of ale infused with wormwood—particularly the variety that grows in coastal salt marshes—which used to be popular in Victorian times. The wormwood seems to have played the same role as a bittering agent as hops do today. Later the term purl was used for a mulled blend of ale, gin, sugar and spices. Simon Difford lists purl in his cocktail guide as simply gin and ale.

Monin's gingerbread syrup:
doesn't work here

Cocktails with beer are pretty trendy these days,*** presumably going hand in hand with the explosion of “craft” ales. So I start off with gin and beer, using Fuller’s London Pride simply because I have some in the house. Then I add some absinthe (La Fée Parisienne, the new formulation) in accordance with my friend’s suggestion, and as a nod to the original wormwood flavour in purl.

As for the spices, the simplest way to get them in is a spiced syrup. I happen to have some of Monin’s gingerbread syrup, so I experiment with that, but I have to abandon it in the end as it has too dominating a flavour. I don’t know how they make it, but it doesn’t just taste of gingerbread spices—ginger and cinnamon—but somehow of gingerbread. So instead I make an experimental quantity of simple syrup (100ml sugar and 50ml water heated in a pan till it dissolves) with about a teaspoon of Schwartz mixed spice (ground cinnamon, coriander seed, caraway seed, nutmeg, ginger and cloves) plus a few extra whole cloves.

I found that if you start with a double measure (50ml) of gin then you probably don’t want much more than 300ml beer before you start to lose the flavour of the gin. Absinthe always makes its presence felt, and I found that half a teaspoon was ample. A couple of teaspoons of the syrup got those mulling spices involved, and I chose to add a teaspoon of lemon juice for a tartness to balance the sweetness of the sugar. I tried it at room temperature though you could mull it—preferably by plunging a red-hot poker into it in the traditional way.

The Bognor Gothic No.1

The Bognor Gothic No.1
6 shots ale
2 shots gin
2 tsp mixed spice syrup
1 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp absinthe
Combine ingredients in a glass and stir gently.

It’s an interesting drink, with all the flavours discernible at the same time. Whether or not you’ll actually like it depends in the first instance on whether you like absinthe, which is a pretty divisive taste. Or beer, for that matter: between the beer and the absinthe there is a noticeable bitterness to this cocktail, as well as the sweet and sour “cocktaily” elements too.

London Pride has quite a caramel character to it, which made me wonder if the same cocktail might indeed work with dark rum instead of gin. I tried it with some Bacardi Carta Negra, but for some reason I didn’t think it worked so well. It may be that beer and rum aren’t comfortable bedfellows after all, so I decided to backtrack and start again with rum and absinthe as my friend had originally suggested. I didn’t find anything intrinsically quarrelsome here, so I then tried to bring in some spice again, this time using The King’s Ginger liqueur, then lime juice to balance its sweetness (and for a nautical nod).

The Bognor Gothic No.2

The Bognor Gothic No.2
2½ shots dark rum
¾ shot The King’s Ginger
½ shot lime juice
½ tsp absinthe
Shake with ice and serve in some sort of chalice, pewter tankard or hand-turned wooden bowl. Or a cocktail glass.

You may have to play around with the proportions depending on what rum you use. There is actually an existing cocktail called a Green Swizzle (mentioned in the P.G. Woodhouse story The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy) which is probably similar—I say “probably” as there doesn’t seem to be much agreement and Woodhouse doesn't name the ingredients—but with almond-flavoured falernum instead of the ginger liqueur (some modern versions use crème de menthe to get the colour and no absinthe) and presumably with white rum to allow it to be green. And you are also not far from the classic Dark ‘n’ Stormy, mixing dark rum, lime juice and ginger beer.

Once again the absinthe will divide people: Mrs H. hates the stuff, so I tried making one without it but for some reason it didn’t really add up to much, even after I added a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters (which went nicely with the ginger). I suspected it exposed the relatively mild flavour of Bacardi Carta Negra as a “dark” rum, and that one with more of a raspy pot-still character might work better. So I try the experiment again using Myer’s dark Jamaican rum and, although it is different, I again think that the absinthe-free version doesn’t quite come together but the full-on version does.

I couldn’t really say whether this cocktail will help you appreciate the font better, but it leaves me wondering what drinks should accompany other fonts. Times? Something establishment like a whisky and soda, I think. Courier, the classic monospaced typewriter font? Whatever a war correspondent drinks—a cup of cold coffee or anything from a hipflask with a dent from a bullet in it. Slab serif fonts remind me of politically correct textbooks from the late Seventies or early Eighties, so perhaps a Harvey Wallbanger (though the people who wrote those books probably drank chlorophyll smoothies or Fairtrade real ale with twigs floating in it). Gill Sans is one of my favourite fonts and it always reminds me of wartime information posters. What did they drink in the Blitz..?

Any other suggestions gratefully received!

Times

Courier

Slab serif font American Typewriter. Check out Rockwell too

Gill Sans

* Pardon the pun…

** On the subject of Victorian novels, Bognor—or rather the purpose-built resort of Hothampton developed there by speculator Sir Richard Hotham—is believed to be portrayed in Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon.

*** At a bar in St John's Square called The Bear (now closed down) I had an unlikely-sounding but very successful cocktail of gin, IPA beer and sauvignon blanc wine.

I first encountered Elephant Gin at a pop-up German-themed bar in the basement
of Herman Ze German restaurant in Charlotte Street during London Cocktail
Week last October. You can see that this is bottle 564 from a batch named after an
elephant called Igor. The glass shows that this is a gin to be sipped and
savoured; the lid is there to keep in the precious aromas, I was told

In a crowded marketplace gins increasingly seem to be using a quirky back-story, unusual botanicals or some other gimmick to grab our attention. Elephant Gin is the second German gin I’ve tried in recent months and, like Monkey 47, it has an animal theme. But where Monkey 47 uses botanicals from the Black Forest region where it is made, Elephant is actually all about Africa. And where the monkey in question was an individual called Max from a zoo, Elephant Gin is named after the whole species—in fact 15% of the profits are donated to two charities that work to protect African elephants from ivory poaching. Having said that, each batch of 800 bottles is named after a particular elephant that one of the charities has helped, so every label has the name and number handwritten on it.

This is how the gin is presented, hankering after the Golden Age of exploration

The makers were apparently inspired by their own travels in the continent, and the imagery is designed to evoke the Victorian heyday of exploration, with a front label reminiscent an old postage stamp (featuring an elephant clutching a bottle of gin in its trunk) and a vintage map on the back label. The bottle is specially made, stoppered with natural cork and decorated with twine and an embossed seal, and does feel like something taken on safari. Of course Europeans in the Victorian era did not exactly treat the Dark Continent with reverence, and would have been more likely to bag elephants as trophies than protect them, but perhaps the gin is an attempt to make amends for the colonial past…

Unsurprisingly, the 14 botanicals include a number from Africa: citric baobab from Malawi (boasting more vitamin C than oranges, it says here, though how much of that survives into the gin I don’t know), bitter floral African Wormwood, devil’s claw, said to have healing properties, blackcurrant-like buchu and herbaceous lion’s tail, all from South Africa. In this respect the product has more in common with Whitley Neill, another African-inspired gin that also uses baobab (and also gives some of its profits to African charities). Elephant also uses fresh apples from an orchard near the distillery outside Hamburg, which slightly confuses the image, plus elderflower, ginger, pimento, lavender and pine needles from the Salzburger Mountains, as well as the more conventional cassia and sweet orange peel, plus juniper, of course.

It’s clear that this gin is not just about gimmickry—it would have been easy to use a tried-and-tested set of botanicals then add one or two token African elements. But the fact that there are so many unusual ingredients, plus an absence of many typical gin botanicals, such as coriander, orris or angelica, shows that the whole thing has been put together from the ground up and the botanical selection is all about the flavour.

Even the 10cl sample bottle mimics the style and
quality of the full-size vessel

The botanicals are handpicked and macerated for 24 hours. It’s a one-shot distillation (as opposed to multi-shot, where a botanically intense “concentrate” is produced which is then diluted down with alcohol)* with a relatively small “heart” of the distillate selected for use (i.e. the best bit—the first liquid out of a pot still is discarded, as is the last, and how much of the central cut you use is a balance of quality against cost). The gin is diluted with local spring water down to 45% ABV. The end result is not cheap, at around £30 for just 50cl. (My sample is only 10cl, so I wasn’t able to try it in many different serves.)

The first thing I get on sniffing the bottle is a floral, marshmallow sweetness combined with a juiciness. (How a smell can be juicy is hard to say—I expect it reminds me of fruit that I know to be juicy.) There is warm ginger, zingy, sherbet citrus, blackcurrant, earthy spice. It’s an elegant, perfumed, structured aroma, but quite subtle. It is sweetish on the tongue, and smooth for a 45% gin, with fruit interplaying with herbaceous notes, the impression of sweetness fencing with dry spice and a tweak of bitterness on the tip of your tongue. It doesn’t strike me as particularly juniper-driven.

Some of the seals say "Made in Germany" while others
show a Zulu shield and spears, and the date 1802, an
emblem that is also moulded into the bottle. This
commemorates the year that botanist Heinrich Stark
mounted an important expedition. I can't find out much
about him, though

As it happens I have some Whitley Neill to hand so I try it for comparison. It is much more juniper-dominated on the nose; on the palate it is also sweet and fruity, but more stern and muscular. Elephant is considerably softer and more delicate.

Add a bit of tonic water (but not too much) and the character remains broadly the same, though for the first time I get a taste of apple, joining the sweet citrus and dry, perfumed spice. But Elephant Gin won’t take too much tonic water before its subtleties are swamped. (By comparison Whitley Neill is well adapted to a G&T with its strong juniper element making its presence easily felt.) The prescribed garnish is a slice of apple and it does go well, slotting in easily with the gin’s own flavours.** Finally, I try one of the recommended cocktails, the White Tusk (a version of the White Lady): 50ml Elephant Gin, 15ml lemon juice, 10ml Cointreau, 10ml sugar syrup and 10ml egg white. It is dominated by sweetness and the orange flavour of the Cointreau, but the gin’s own characteristics do seep through; I’m tempted to describe them as appley but it may just be the apple garnish from the last drink making me think that way.

* Proponents of single-shot distillation evidently feel that multi-shot is a compromise that sacrifices quality. However, m’colleague DBS conducted a test recently, with the help of Anne Brock from Jensen, where they made various gin batches using single- and multi-shot techniques and blind tasted them. Broadly speaking the result was that the single-shot samples were not preferred to the rest. See the report at http://distilling.uberflip.com/i/622468-distiller-winter-16/91.

** All new gins seem to have to come with a prescribed garnish—and this is never something normal like a slice of lemon. (Nor is it ever recommended that no garnish is necessary.) It seems that this is viewed as an essential part of establishing the product’s character and place in the market. I have a bit of a suspicion of garnishes in general—I feel that if the product doesn’t taste at its best without the added flavour of the garnish, then why not make it with that flavour in it to start off with? (OK, I accept that, for example, the taste of a slice of fresh apple probably can’t be replicated by macerating apple in the spirit then distilling it, even with cold, vacuum distillation.) Generally speaking the prescribed garnish is usually one of the gin’s botanicals anyway. Likewise, my suspicions—and my hackles—are raised in a bar when I am presented with a cocktail that has a small tree sprouting from the top, frequently rendering it almost impossible to drink without poking your eye out. If the vessel is also something opaque, like a bamboo log or hollowed-out monkey skull, then between that and the plug of garnish you find that you can’t actually see the liquid you are drinking, which I find disconcerting. Recently I was served a cocktail with a smouldering cinnamon stick balanced horizontally across the top. WTF? Even the barman seemed a bit sheepish about this, since you couldn’t pick the glass up without the stick rolling off, and if it didn’t then it would probably burn you (or set fire to your moustache if you had one). In case you’re wondering, burning cinnamon smoke does smell lightly of cinnamon (I’ve just set fire to a cinnamon stick to check), so I’m sure this aroma was supposed to be part of the experience, but I don’t remember being able to pick up on this at the time.

The Armin Strom Cognac Watch: you can see the transparent capsule at the
5 o'clock position, containing a drop of 1762 Cognac

I’ve been contacted again by Wealth Solutions, those crazy Polish people behind the special 1953 Glenfarclas whisky bottling for the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012. This time they’ve bought themselves a bottle of 1762 Gautier Cognac, bottled in 1840 and believed to be the oldest bottle ever sold at public auction. Bonhams of New York presented the bottle with an estimate of $20,000–25,000, but in the end it went for a whopping $60,000.

When a wine or spirit is that old and that expensive, many purchasers will have no intention of drinking it, but will keep it intact as an investment. Wealth Solutions, however, opened the bottle at a special ceremony last November, and decanted it into flacons. I don’t know if any of this will get tasted, but their current project is much more bizarre. They have teamed up with high-end Swiss watch manufacturer Armin Strom to product a wristwatch that actually contains a drop of the 1762 Cognac.

The precious Gautier, the oldest authenticated bottle of Cognac
ever sold at auction

At this point I think we need to step back and think about what is going on here. I don’t know what these watches—due to be launched next month at watch show Baselworld 2016—will cost, as price is very much “on application” and ordinary Armin Strom timepieces seem to be in the $10,000+ arena. Yet the person who buys one will never know what this rare spirit tastes like. The drop is sealed in a sapphire crystal capsule*—which is just as well, of course, otherwise it would evaporate in a matter of hours. So you’ll never know its aroma either. (Although, again, having a watch that made you smell of brandy might raise a few eyebrows at that 9am board meeting.)

No, this is very much a matter of simply knowing the brandy is there. The whole high-end watch market has always been a bit mystifying to me. I like to wear vintage watches, simply because I like the idea that this thing was on someone’s wrist in the 1920s or 1930s and has been ticking away ever since. (I have a pocket watch that, from the engraved dedication inside, looks like it was presented as a gift to “R.B.S.” on 22nd July 1931, perhaps celebrating retirement: these are the sorts of human stories that you can muse upon.) They can be purchased on eBay for £40 and I’m not too bothered that they might not keep the best time and regularly break down altogether.

The underside of the watch, showing the
engraving of a bunch of grapes

On the other end of the scale are watches like Armin Strom’s. I’m sure they keep very good time, but then so does a cheap digital watch you can buy for a fiver from a petrol station. With these watches it is about the difficulty of making them mechanically, and Strom specialises in “skeleton” designs where everything is hollow and exposed so you can see the workings. To my eye this actually makes them rather hard to read, but that is not the point—the point is that it is difficult and expensive. In fact, with such watches I suspect that the asking price is far in excess of what is needed to reflect the cost of manufacture. Here we are in the realm of things that need to be expensive just so that rich people can conspicuously consume them. That is the Wealth Solution—as if wealth is a problem that needs to be solved. For some people nothing is intrinsically expensive enough: so they must agree that certain items will be designated as expensive so they can vie to own them. Walking around with a drop of the world’s oldest Cognac inside your watch feels a bit like adorning yourself with a crystal reliquary containing a relic of a saint—in the hope that you will be mystically healed by the patron saint of the Painfully Wealthy.

For the record, the watch has 117 components, 20 jewels, a manual-winding mechanism that will run for five days, and a hand-engraved image of a bunch of grapes on the underside. It is available in stainless steel, titanium and rose gold finishes and comes with a blue alligator strap. (And you thought blue alligators were extinct.)

It seems a shame for this spirit to be sealed away untasted, but of course only 40 of these watches are going to be made, so that is only 40 drops of the stuff that has been earmarked. We’ll have to wait and see that happens to the rest of it (unless the wags at Wealth Solutions flamed it over their Christmas pudding two months ago for a bet). It makes you wonder how far you could take this idea—limited edition designer trainers where the uppers are stitched together from a newly discovered canvas by Rembrandt? Or a novelty gear stick ornament for your sports car with a crystal dome containing your initials spelled out in illuminated letters cut from the Book of Kells? Or an iPhone case containing a fine slice of Einstein’s brain tissue?

In the meantime, I notice from the lush photos of the Armin Strom timepiece that the tiny phial of 1792 Cognac seems to have an air bubble in it, so at least your wristwatch has the bonus that it can double as a spirit level.

* The capsule is placed at the five o’clock position on the dial. I’m curious as to whether this was deliberate—are they suggesting that 5pm is the hour when a gentleman puts down his tools, calls it a day and relaxes with a bracing droplet of 250-year-old brandy?

The Wealth Solutions crew opening their bottle in November. You don't want to make these people angry.

I have a few friends who belong to the East India Club, a private members’ club in London with a long history. Originally set up for employees of the East India Company and officers in the Army and Navy, who might need a base in London while away from their far-flung posts, in the 1930s it absorbed the Sports Club, and then in the 1970s (a tough time for many clubs, when membership of such establishments was at its least fashionable) the Public Schools Club and the Devonshire Club as well. Today there aren’t any real criteria for joining but I think the people I know who belong joined because their schools had been among those originally part of the Public Schools Club. There is no particular connection with East India, but I was interested to hear a couple of references to an “East India Club Cocktail” served at the bar.

In fact it turned out to be simply an “East India Cocktail”, and this is something with quite a history, though there are several approaches to it. It can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century when it seems to have been enjoyed by Englishmen out in the colonies. Though the East India Club would have been in existence by this time (founded in the mid-19th century), it is more likely that the cocktail was devised in one of the “American Bars” in fashionable Grand Hotels of the region.* Recipes vary but it always seems to be Cognac based.

The earliest reference is in Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartender’s Manual from 1882, where a double measure of Cognac is augmented by small amounts of curaçao, maraschino, bitters and pineapple syrup. You might think that the use of pineapple syrup rather than juice is simply a necessary expedient the further you get from the source of pineapples, but O.H. Byron’s The Modern Bartender’s Guide (1884) has a recipe that is essentially the same as Johnson’s except that it uses raspberry syrup instead of pineapple. This may well have evolved from Johnson’s version, but it does show that both pineapple and raspberry versions have been around for a long while.

The use of pineapple syrup certainly persisted into the Golden Age of Cocktails, as Robert Vermeire and Harry MacElhone, writing in the 1920s, specify it. But the Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930 gives the ingredients as brandy, curaçao, bitters and pineapple juice. as does Cocktails by Jimmy of Ciro’s (1930) and the Café Royal Cocktail Book (1937, an attempt to codify “correct” recipes by the United Kingdom Bartenders Guild). Perhaps the juice had just become more widely available by this stage, though a couple of sources from this time, and also David Embury writing in the 1940s, suggest that maraschino can be use instead of the pineapple juice, which would suggest it is just there to add a bit of fruity sweetness.

In fact the use of pineapple juice in cocktails does not just add the flavour of pineapples but, when vigorously shaken, adds a rich, silky, foamy texture. However, for me this cocktail is primarily about the combination of Cognac and pineapple flavours, which I think go very handsomely together indeed. Simon Difford’s version specifies Grand Marnier, a sophisticated curaçao made from a Cognac base, which seems a bit unnecessary to me, given that the cocktail is made out of Cognac anyway. And in fact I find that the orange flavour from the curaçao gets a bit lost too.** I would recommend just using Cointreau.

I rang the bar steward at the East India Club to ask how he made it. He does indeed specify Cognac, curaçao, bitters and pineapple juice, though he adds: “It’s very sweet. It’s good for the ladies.”

Actually I don’t think it is that sweet, but I do personally feel that it needs some balancing tartness, and one or two teaspoons of lemon or lime juice seem to do the trick, though it will depend on how sweet or sour you like things.

East India Cocktail
1½ shots Cognac
1½ shots pineapple juice
¾ shot curaçao (orange liqueur)
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1–2 tsp lemon or lime juice (optional)
Shake vigorously with ice and strain into a glass. Traditionally garnished with a cocktail cherry though Difford suggests a twist of orange peel

* Though Simon Difford says that the juice version is “thought to originate with Frank Meier at the Ritz Bar, Paris”, which would make it much later, as Frank served at the Ritz from 1921 to 1947.

** Actually Difford gives this recipe as “East India No.2”. His “No.1”, which he says is based on Ted Haigh’s version, which in turn is based on Johnson’s, uses syrup instead of juice, but in fact Haigh goes down the raspberry syrup route, adding maraschino as well, and Difford goes one further in replacing the raspberry syrup with grenadine.

A friend gave me this as a birthday present last month, KAR tequila, which comes in an earthenware bottle shaped like a Day of the Dead style skull. This is the blanco but they also make a resposado (yellow skull with red devil motif) an añejo (black skull) and an extra añejo (black skull with sparkly bits). The Day of the Dead ritual, honouring the dead and celebrating the cycle of death and rebirth, apparently goes back 3,000 years. The name KAH means “life” in the ancient Mayan language.

Each bottle is hand-painted and no two are the same. As a result this is an expensive product: here in the UK you can expect to pay £46 for the blanco, £61 for the repo and at least £66 for the añejo. My friend gave it to me as much as anything because he’s convinced it’s the same size as my own skull—I have a notably small head and if I try on one of his hats I just disappear into it. It’s close but not quite (see illustration at the bottom). As he says, if nothing else it’ll make an unusual plant pot. But what about the contents? Are they worth the price tag?

Uncork it and there is a strong, pungent agave character. The palate is fruity and surprisingly smooth and sweet, with a herbal element carrying on from the nose and a petrolly aftertaste. There is a robust vegetable character that is muscular but not rough.

It makes a good margarita (tequila, lime juice and curaçao or syrup—agave nectar is fashionable) , bright, sharp and pungent, with that strong herbal note poking through to balance the drink.

To get a subtler idea of KAR’s character I line it up against some other tequilas: El Jimador, at the better end of the mass-market tequilas here and one that you’re likely to encounter in a supermarket, Olmeca Altos (see my post on it from 2013), Ocho (see here) and Tierra Noble.

KAR is again sweet and smooth on the tongue (and note that it is 40% ABV, as is Ocho, while El Jimador and Olmeca Altos are 38%), with caramel on the nose. El Jimador has a note of orange on the nose and it is thinner and leaner on the tongue, with a slightly soapy flavour compared to the others here. With Olmeca Altos you do feel you’ve stepped up a league: the nose is more expansive, fresh, herbal and fleshy, with a petrolly agave character that follows through on the palate, where it joins toffee notes. Ocho also has that extra dimension compared to the first two, but its juicy grapefruit nose is lighter and frothier than Olmeca Altos. There is a strong agave character but it is more delicate than the Olmeca, which has a more middly, meaty, savoury flavour. Finally Tierra Noble is a bit of a wildcard, because I was given my bottle several years ago at a trade show and to the best of my knowledge it is not available in the UK. It is the most smoky of the tequilas here with a hint of chocolate on the finish.

As a spirit to sip neat, I would definitely choose Olmeca Altos of Ocho over KAR. But how do they compare in mixed drinks?

I line up four Margaritas, made with the same proportions but different tequilas: El Jimador, KAR, Olmeca Altos and Ocho. Initially I use two parts tequila to one part lime juice and one part Cointreau. At this point the El Jimador makes an unsatisfactory drink, because the tequila doesn’t really make its presence felt. The KAR, on the other hand is strikingly more prominent on the nose and tongue. Likewise the Olmeca is again noticeable, with a similar caramel note to KAR but with a fresh aromatic element. Ocho is playful, more elusive and subtle, with a hint of minerality.

As an experiment I increase the tequila to three parts (to one part each of lime juice and Cointreau). Even at this ratio the El Jimador gets a bit lost, but with KAR it immediately strikes me as a pretty perfect balance between the three ingredients, the sort of combination that makes sense of a cocktail recipe. With Olmeca, by comparison, something seems out, not gelling. It’s not unpleasant, but just takes a bit of getting used to. Ocho likewise seems to leer out a bit, stamping its own character on the drink, whereas KAR feels more that it merges easily with the lime and curaçao.

There is no doubt that KAR makes a damn fine Margarita. But is it worth the money? Not unless you have a desire to fill your house with gaily-painted ceramic skulls. As a sipping tequila, KAR is smooth and approachable but Olmeca Altos (about £30 for 70cl) and Ocho (£21 for 50cl) offer more dimensions.

Having said that, when my bottle of KAR is finished, I will still have a highly unusual plant pot.

The Fumoir bar at London's Claridge's hotel

Last month I gave myself a birthday treat and sloped by the Fumoir Bar in Claridge’s hotel. Claridge’s itself is an Art Deco feast, but the Fumoir is a little-known treasure within a treasure. There is another main bar, but the Fumoir, which used to be a smoking room back in the days when you could smoke indoors, is off the main drag through an inconspicuous door. Within its compact dimensions (it can only seat 36 and you can’t book) are a wealth of decorative period details along with vintage photos of famous people smoking. There are no windows, so it has an intimate late night feel, even during the day.

Your correspondent, roughing it in the Fumoir

As I was chatting to the barman he mentioned one of their Champagne cocktails, which contained tequila and grapefruit juice. He suggested that it referenced the Papa Doble, or Hemingway Daiquiri (a Daiquiri with added grapefruit juice and maraschino) but it occurred to me that this was effectively a high-class Paloma (see my earlier posts on vintage tequila cocktails and cocktails with Ocho).

I am reliably told that the Paloma, a mixture of tequila and grapefruit soda, is the most common way that tequila is drunk in Mexico. The preferred brands are Squirt, Jarritos or Fresca, none of which is available here in the UK, that I have seen; I’ve tried making the drink using Ting but I was underwhelmed. So recipes often involve some actual grapefruit juice, sometimes dispensing with the grapefruit soda altogether; often they will specify a salt rim to the glass and some lime juice (in turn balanced with sugar or agave syrup) or a lime garnish.

Intrigued, I later experimented at home. I essentially stuck to just three ingredients, tequila, grapefruit juice and Champagne, and I definitely think it works. (Even Mrs H. who is frankly not much bothered about cocktails in general, confessed it was pretty interesting and actually quite nice).

But a lot of it lies in the balance. I was using KAR tequila, which has more overt character than some mainstream brands, and a commercial fresh (not from concentrate) grapefruit juice, courtesy of Tropicana. I eventually decided these proportions worked best:

Paloma Royale

Paloma Royale
25ml tequila
40ml grapefruit juice
100ml Champagne
(Optional: 5ml lime juice and 5ml agave syrup)
Shake everything but the Champagne with ice, add to a Champagne flute or coupe and top with chilled Champagne, stirring gently to blend.
(Or you can save time by chilling all the ingredients and simply blending in a—preferably chilled—glass.)

The earthiness of the tequila comes through clearly; I started with equal amounts of spirit and juice, but I think this elevated level of grapefruit is necessary to get the balance and a bit of sweetness. As with all these things you could add lime juice and syrup for some conventional sweet/sour density (as I've indicated, a teaspoon of each is acceptable to me),* but I always think that if you’re going to use Champagne in a cocktail you should be able to taste it, so I preferred to leave it at this—not austere but delicate.

* And I have seen some recipes that add elderflower liqueur—which certainly has a natural affinity with tequila. I’ve also noticed in the past that tequila and ginger go well, so I must try adding something like the King’s Ginger liqueur to see how that works…

A friend has drawn my attention to a curious volume, the American National Standard Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis, which you can view online here.

Evidently it was produced as a tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt to raise awareness of the American National Standard Institute and its work, but there are some interesting observations to make nevertheless.

Whoever wrote the pamphlet (or whatever committee) nails their colours to the mast—they like their Martini dry, with just 5% vermouth for lower-strength gins, and it must be served with an olive, pitted but not stuffed, or alternatively no garnish at all. Lemon peel and the Gibson’s cocktail onion are verboten.

There is a curious emphasis on colour, which must be as pale as possible. It’s true that Dry Martinis do tend to be pretty pale because they are mostly gin, but I’m guessing there is an unconscious sense that paler = purity and strength, especially in the macho world where you are supposed to strive for the driest Martinis possible. There is even a suggestion that vermouth manufacturers had responded by making their products paler, which is something I hadn’t thought about (but then I wasn’t drinking a lot of Martinis back when this pamphlet was released, so I don’t know if vermouths used to be more coloured). Certainly they do vary—Belsazar Dry, one of my favourites, is actually pretty dark (and probably gets darker if you allow it to oxidise after opening). Oddly, the text states that, “The colour shall be either water-white of faintly blue”. Blue? I’m assuming this is poetic license, derived from the idea that something can be so white that it is bluish, but I must say that if my Martini were blue I would send it back. (There are some gimmicky gins that are coloured blue but we don’t talk about them.)

And these drinks are big. I doubt that any official publication today would breezily announce that a “regular” Dry Martini should contain 3½ ounces of gin—over here in Europe that is 103.5 ml, which is over four units of alcohol. (For a long time the UK government’s maximum recommended intake for a man was 3–4 units a day, though the spoilsports later reduced this to 2–3, and I have a feeling they may recently have reduced it further.) If you fancy saving time and having a double you’ll be swallowing 2–2½ days’ worth of alcohol allowance in one drink. Drink responsibly, kids.

On the subject of olives, it is curious that the guide seems to suggest that maximum olive size for a large Martini is larger than for a regular, but for a double it goes back down to the same size as a regular. Perhaps the message here is that choosing a large Martini is an aesthetic decision, whereas choosing a double is simply a matter of alcoholic need. Or it may just be a typo.

It terms of mixing, no mention is made of shaking. A Martini must be stirred (and there are many who agree here) or blended from pre-chilled ingredients (what my colleague Mr Bridgman-Smith calls the “Diamond Method”). Interestingly they also mention the “radiation” method. This is presumably a reference to the old joke, attributed to Winston Churchill, about making a Dry Martini by simply allowing a shaft of sunlight to pass through a bottle of vermouth on to the gin. Curiously the sunbeam here is replaced by a 60-watt bulb. Either this is a self-consciously urban adjustment, or it is purely logical, based on the idea that if it is Martini time then it might well be the evening, so there is no sunlight. Or it could simply be a pseudo-scientific trope—by specifying the wattage of the bulb and the distance between all the objects you can control the precise amount of light.

The whole tone of the pamphlet reminds one of Jazz-Age wags like Robert Benchley, so it is surprising that this was actually published in 1974—surely well into the cocktail Dark Age, between the Golden Age and the New Golden Age, where we apparently are now. I’m sure that some Dry Martinis were still being consumed in the 1970s but they could hardly have felt like part of the zeitgeist. You can’t help wondering if what this shows us is simply how glacially the mechanisms of official bureaucracies actually work. Some bright spark at the Institute probably had the idea for this gag in 1928 but by the time it had passed through countless committees and sub-committees somehow 26 years had passed…

Of course right-thinking drinkers would probably bristle at the very idea that cocktail recipes should be standardised by any central agency—what scope does that leave for bar-room arguments, varying ingredients or indeed for personal taste? But in fact in 1937 the UK Bartenders Guild produced a volume for professionals entitled Approved Cocktails (later incorporated into the Café Royal Cocktail Book for consumers), which attempted to do precisely that. You can see it online here.

Early in one’s drinking career one will encounter spirits lengthened with mixers—gin and tonic, rum and coke, perhaps whisky and ginger ale (or whisky and soda water, if you are of a different generation). It was when I was a student that I first encountered gin and orange juice. I was sceptical, as I was inclined to think of OJ as a wholesome breakfast beverage, not a louche partner-in-crime to the Demon Drink, the innocent-faced, outwardly respectable enabler that distracts you from the hard spirits you are guzzling. It didn’t not work, but it was clearly intended as a way to mask the flavour of the spirit.

It was later, when I had found a copy of Cocktails and How to Mix Them (1922) “by ‘Robert’ [Vermeire] of the American Bar, Casino Municipale, Nice, and late of the Embassy Club, London”, that I first encountered the Monkey Gland cocktail. The name comes from experiments conducted at the time by surgeon Serge Voronoff, who believed he could boost longevity/virility by surgically implanting monkey testicle tissue into men. The cocktail was created by Harry MacElhone, who opened Harry’s Bar in Paris (though Vermeire identifies him by his tenure at Ciro’s in London) and I assume the name was chosen to suggest that the effect it had on the drinker was invigorating, even rejuvenating—and not that it left you feeling like you’d just woken up from surgery (or, even worse, feeling the way the monkey did when, and if, he woke up).

It’s a mix of gin and orange juice, with grenadine and absinthe. Recipes vary, but it is roughly equal parts gin and OJ, with small quantities of the other two ingredients. I tried it at the time, using Pernod (this was the 1990s and absinthe hadn’t made its triumphant return by then) and commercial grenadine, and I don’t think I was terribly impressed.

I was reminded of this drink again when Mrs H. recently gave me a copy of An Anthology of Cocktails, put out by Booth’s gin in 1935.* It features a whole list of celebs of the time with a recommended cocktail for each one and a cheesy testimony from them on the glories of Booth’s. For example, man of the turf Lord Westmorland declares, so we are led to believe, “A cocktail without Booth’s is a cocktail under a handicap,” while actress Sybil Thorndike asserts that, “A cocktail in which Booth’s plays a leading part receives an enthusiastic reception from the most captious critics,” while racing driver Brian Lewis blurts, “A party without Booth’s is like a car without wheels.” Quite how the Great and the Good were persuaded to lend their names (and indeed their signatures, printed alongside) to these abortions of the copywriter’s art boggles the mind.

The volume also includes a list of London clubs and theatres that serve Booth’s and a list of top barmen from the city with their favourite Booth’s recipes. You can see a page-turning PDF of the whole book at https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/1955-An-Anthology-of-Cocktails.

The Monkey Gland as such does not appear—the cocktails recommended by Booth’s for the celebs do tend to have a name that is relevant (Brian Lewis gets the Self Starter, winter sportsman the Earl of Northesk gets the Snowball, Ivor Novello gets the Star, etc), so I doubt that any of them would have appreciated being paired with the Monkey Gland—but it does feature a number of cocktails that similarly feature fruit juice not as a mixer to lengthen but as an ingredient, in amounts less than that of the base spirit. The Star, for example, is half-and-half gin and Calvados, plus a dash each of French and Italian vermouth, and only a teaspoon of grapefruit juice. The Smiler cocktail, recommended by horse breeder Tom Walls (“Would that the pedigree of a horse were as reliable a guide as the name of Booth’s on a bottle of gin,” he creaks) is essentially a Martini made with a blend of French and Italian vermouth, Angostura bitters and just a dash of Orange juice.

As it happens I had an orange looking for a purpose in life, and I was inspired to give the Monkey Gland another go. The upshot was most uplifting but I had to do a lot of experimenting to get there.

In the first instance I would say that the proportions are probably the most important part. Get the gin/OJ balance wrong and things go awry. Exactly how much grenadine you use may depend on how sweet your tooth is; but it is very easy to throw the whole thing out by using too much absinthe—in one attempt I escalated the absinthe to a whole ½ tsp and it ruined the drink. It should be a playful suggestion of pungent herbal flavours lurking in the background. The simplest way to keep that under control is to start by rolling some absinthe around your mixing vessel, then pouring it all out back into the bottle. What is left clinging to the sides of the shaker is all you need.

I also found that squeezing the orange juice freshly makes a big difference. It doesn’t exactly fail with commercial OJ from a carton, but this will make a more watery drink. Juice squeezed from an orange is sweeter and more intensely flavoured, with sharp aromatic notes from the rind oils. I imagine that when all these early cocktails with small amounts of fruit juice were developed, cartons of ready-squeezed juice may not have been available, so if a recipe specified the juice of a citrus fruit it was assumed that you would produce this by squeezing an actual fruit.

Monkey Gland
50ml gin (Adnams Copper House)
37.5ml freshly squeezed OJ
Absinthe rinse (La Fée new formula)
½ tsp grenadine
Coat the shaker with a rinse of absinthe and drain. Add the other ingredients and shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and squeeze a strip of orange peel over the top.

As mentioned, the gin/orange balance is important, so neither swamps the other, a balance of sweetness, fruitiness and spirit warmth. When it’s right, interesting chocolate flavours emerge. Maybe it’s the use of freshly squeezed OJ, but the spirit and juice seem to integrate in a way that suggests the rich orange character of curaçao. I also tried varying the gin brand, using Anno instead, and it still works, though I found that the approachable, fruity, floral character of Adnams Copper House sat more comfortably. I didn’t try varying the absinthe brand, but as long as it is real absinthe (avoid anything that is a bluish green, which is artificial; naturally coloured absinthe tends to be an olive green) I would imagine it’ll be OK in these proportions.**

Grenadine is traditionally a pomegranate syrup, and I have previously railed against modern commercial grenadines, which are actually based on “red berries”, and probably don’t even feature any real ones of those anyway. But it is easy to make a good one, not too sweet, with some of the tannic dryness of the fruit, by mixing equal parts by volume of 100% pomegranate juice (POM Wonderful is the grand I have used in the past) and granulated sugar, heated in a pan to dissolve, then cooled. I keep some in the fridge and it never seems to go off.

*Most of the recipes specify “Booth’s gin”, and more than once the text refers to the “mellow” or “matured” character—DBS tells me that Booth’s was actually rested in wood barrels (casks previously used for sherry or Burgundy, depending on the era) for 6–12 weeks to soften its rough edges. Some of the recipes, on the other hand, specify “Booth’s dry gin”; certainly by the mid-20th century Booth’s were selling their High and Dry Gin, claiming to be “the driest gin in the world”, though I’m not sure if, at the time this booklet was published, they were selling both versions. Sadly there is nothing actually about the product within its pages. Aged gin has become fashionable again (and in fairness Seagram’s have always rested their gin in wood for 3–4 weeks). In recent years a Booth’s Cask Mellowed Gin has been produced again.

** I see that the International Bartenders Association gives their prescribed recipe as even leaner: 50ml gin, 30ml OJ and just two drops each of grenadine and absinthe.

DBS contemplates the three vintages

Along with the fashion for cider (or “cyder” as the really poncey brands have it) comes “vintage” cider. In some cases this doesn’t actually seem to mean the cider has a vintage as such, merely that it is “vintage” in style, but here in the UK mainstream brands such as Weston’s and Thatcher’s do produce aged ciders of a specific year.

I recently had a chance to do a vertical tasting, albeit under rather unscientific circumstances. My sister lives in rural Kent and has a few apple trees in her large garden, so every year she gathers friends and family for a rather messy cider-making party. Small children are sent up into trees to gather the apples, which are loosely chopped by cackling crones, then “scratted” into a pulp. Scratting involves a machine so that job is done by blokes.* The pulp goes into a pleasingly old-fashioned wooden press and the resulting juice is fermented in plastic bins or glass demijohns with bubbling water valves to let the CO2 out but ideally let nothing in to contaminate the cider. In all, each year’s harvest makes about 70 bottles. Mrs H. and I traditionally compose labels for each vintage in time for Christmas which is roughly when the cider is ready for bottling. As a joke we named it Chapple Downer (there is an commercial vineyard in Kent called Chapel Down; my sister’s married name is Downer and the cider is made from apples) and the name has stuck.

It’s a nicely circular process, because by the time of each event the previous year’s cider is drinking nicely and the cider-making party consume quite a lot of it in the process. (For this reason the 2015 vintage was named Perpetuum Mobile—perpetual motion.)

Anyway, my sister gave me a set of 2013, 2014 and 2015 samples at the end of last year, so earlier this year I invited DBS along for this rare chance to try them all together.

2013 Bumper Scrump(so named because it was a bumper crop that year)**
Nose: Instead of fresh apple, it is more like baked apple. Extraordinarily it seems to include aromatic cinnamon and clove notes and raisins too. I keep wondering if this is just suggested to me by flavourings you might add to baked apple, but it does genuinely seem to be there.
Palate: The same thrust as the nose. It’s dry, but not mouth-puckeringly dry. The acidity is well balanced, with a hint of bitterness on the finish. Although bottled as a sparkling cider (with a supposedly calculated dosage of extra sugar for a controlled secondary fermentation) this bottle is not really fizzy any more, but it is nevertheless zesty and refreshing. But overall its character is deep, dark, complex cooked apple.

2014 People's Farming Collective of Littlebourne Fermented Apple Product (I think the name was a reference to the sheer number of people involved in the production)
Nose: Although this sample seems slightly darker in colour than the older cider, the nose is less profound, with more fresh apple and less of the spicy baked apple.
Palate: Properly sparkling with a delicate mousse. Slightly sweeter and more appley than the 2013. But there is a dark fruity weight on the tongue which makes you think that in time it would mature into the spiciness of the 2013.

2015 Perpetuum Mobile
Nose: Essentially similar to the 2014
Palate: Balance now is too much towards the acid, making it not quite comfortable to drink. Interestingly, this bottle was stoppered and left for a day or two, after which its pale colour had darkened (presumably through oxidation) and the palate had mellowed a bit.***

Of course all of this ignores the fact that, especially with production on a haphazard, domestic scale like this, not only will each year’s harvest differ, but the fruit going into each squeeze of the press and each of the various fermenting containers may not be consistent in terms of either quality or balance between different varieties (there are different species of apple tree involved, including a quantity of crab apples, which are apparently important, although nothing is measured very precisely). Different demijohns will ferment differently depending on the sugar present, the viability of the yeast and any accidental infections.

However, there does seem to be a pattern apparent where the youngest cider is acidic, dry and most redolent of fresh apple, then as it ages the attack softens and deeper spicy notes appear. The 2013 is very interesting, and not like any commercial cider I have tasted; DBS said it was by far his favourite, but I think some people might find it a little too over-mellow, and it would be harder to partner with food. The 2014 probably has the best balance between these complexities and the basic package of fruit, tannin and acid, while the 2015 gives the impression of not quite being there yet.

* The first year the scratter was a crude blade attached to an electric drill, which was spun round inside a plastic bucket of apples. Last year we tried using a cheap garden chipper. This was pretty effective at first, but after a while the engine started cutting out. The blokeyest of the blokes starting taking it apart, gradually bypassing switches and safety cut-offs in the hope of getting it going again: eventually is was pretty much just a motor wired into the mains, and it still didn’t work so we had to concede defeat at this point and scratted the rest of the apples in a food processor. Which was pretty effective too.

** “Scrumping” means stealing apples from someone’s orchard

*** I’ve just tried it again now, some weeks after it was opened, though it has been kept stoppered. It is now frankly brown in colour, but has taken on a Fino sherry note, that high aromatic edge that reminds me of Bostik glue (but in a good way). It’s aggressive, and you feel you wouldn’t want to leave it in contact with your tooth enamel for longer than necessary, but actually quite interesting. I wonder if some sort of flor has developed…

The complete set of Chapple Downer labels:

Osbourns is the name of my sister's house

2012 saw a relatively meagre harvest, which we spun as being "select"

By contrast, 2013 was a bumper harvest

This is where the Richard Scarry homage reaches its peak to date

The worm here is a reference to the Midgard Serpent in Norse myth

We have a couple of little fruit trees in pots, an orange and a lemon, which struggle to thrive in our London garden. Over winter we brought them indoors and I watched as the orange tree produced a couple of fruit. Sadly, it wasn’t very happy and started dropping its leaves until pretty much all that was hanging from its spindly branches were the two fruit, and the stems supporting them were the only green, healthy looking ones. I was hoping that they would in time look like, you know, oranges; but by the point they both dropped off last week they were still resolutely green.

After a week sitting in the fruit bowl they clearly weren’t about to change colour, so I sliced one open. Rather gratifyingly, the inside looked just like an orange. A little on the small side, but nevertheless orange and juicy, like an orange should be. Its juice was somewhat astringent, but definitely orange juice.*

In fact the combination of the green skin and orange flesh is rather striking and, in combination with the white pith, reminiscent of the Irish flag. When I thought about cocktails traditionally garnished with an orange slice I immediately hit upon the Negroni (equal parts gin, Campari and red vermouth) and, to give it an Irish twist I tried using Irish whiskey instead of gin. Or course there is every reason why this should work, since the same thing with American whiskey is a Boulevardier, and I’ve noticed in the past how Irish whiskey, with its milder character than Scotch, lends itself better to cocktails.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Moroney. And very well it works too, with the caramelly warmth of the whiskey balancing the herbal bitterness of the amari with a bit of sweetness from the vermouth (I used Martini Rosso and Jameson whiskey in this case).

I wish I’d thought of this in time for St Patrick’s Day last month. Perhaps I can pretend it is to mark the 101st anniversary of the Easter Uprising…

Ice ball courtesy of a G'Vine ice ball maker

*When I posted a photo on Facebook a friend observed that once upon a time oranges were actually green, until later being bred to have orange skin, so I can tell myself that we must have a Heritage Orange Tree.

I was in ASDA yesterday, which is frankly not the most upmarket supermarket, and I was surprised by the range of gins they had on offer. My eye was caught by Ungava, not so much because of its lurid neon-yellow colour but because it comes from Canada. I was actually born in Canada, as my parents lived there for a few years, so I have a soft spot for all things connected with that country (though, as my wife points out, I am a fairly rubbish Canadian, never having been back there since I left at the age of three). So I decided to give Ungava a try.

The name comes from the vast wilderness region in the north-east of the country where six botanicals are foraged during the brief summer: Nordic juniper, wild rose hips, crowberry (looks a bit like a blueberry), cloudberry, Labrador tea, the white flowers and evergreen leaves of which are described as giving a herbal flavour to the gin, and Arctic blend, which is very similar to Labrador tea and its flowers, leaves and stems apparently contribute the “underlying botanical base” of the gin. It’s not clear if these are all the botanicals involved or whether some other conventional ones are included as well; if it’s just these six then the distillers have done an impressive job of covering all the bases of the basic gin flavour profile with the plants to hand.

The gin is bottled at 43.1% ABV and, although they don’t actually say, I have read elsewhere that the base spirit is made from corn. There is a conventional steeping and redistilling process as well as a post-distillation infusion, which accounts for the colour. (They don’t mention which of the botanicals is responsible for the colour; it looks suspiciously artificial to me, the colour of Galliano, but they insist that all the ingredients are 100% natural.) The colour is said to recall the aurora borealis, which can be seen in the region. The bottle itself is adorned with Inuit characters, which I assume spell out something relevant. (The word above the name does, according to Wikipedia, say “Ungava”.)

This colour is apparently natural

Uncork the bottle and stick your nose to the neck, and the first thing that hits you is, reassuring, juniper. There is also a prominent citrus note, plus something herbal and mentholly, like wintergreen, a dustiness and even something that reminds me of banana, which I suspect is a slightly over-mellow floral element. You can believe there is tea is there too. It’s a pretty appealing nose, with just a suggestion that it might become cloying.

On the palate the flavour carries on from the nose. It does not strike me as hugely smooth (other gins of the same ABV do manage a smoothness) and there is a slightly bitter aftertaste. It is subtly complex, but not very strongly flavoured compared to many, quickly fading to leave a stemmy, grassy finish and a ghost of Opal Fruit (Starburst to you younger people).

As you can see from the botanicals, there is quite an emphasis on berries, and the dominant character of Ungava is a fruitiness. Add a little water to ease the alcohol burn and a sweetness emerges on the tongue, giving the whole thing a candied tone to match the candy colour.

A Dry Martini made with Belsazar Dry (which is quite dark in itself)

I try making a Martini using Belsazar Dry, and the result is an approachable drink that brings out the fruitiness, making me think of an orange and lemon ice cream. With this in mind I make a Gimlet (gin and lime cordial) and, as you might imagine, the result is harmonious. But when I compare this to a Gimlet made with Gin Mare, a bottle of which happens to be nearby, the latter drink is frankly much more interesting: Gin Mare is pretty wild, but its powerful, pungent, rosemary-led blast certainly holds your attention.

A gin and tonic made with Ungava is the colour of Pinot Grigio and again shows an essentially ginny, but quite restrained, character. Citrus is to the fore, with a dusty herbal layer and a dry, slightly bitter aftertaste. Not unpleasant by any means, but a G&T made with Thomas Dakin gin with the same tonic (Fevertree) in the same proportions has much more punch: a lively but harmonious collection of essentially classic flavours that bursts on your tongue.

Maybe that is just distracting, with the botanical intensity of Gin Mare and Thomas Dakin giving them an unfair advantage in comparison; but as interesting as Ungava is on paper, it is fairly quiet in practice. You can play with the colour (I’ll have to try an Aviation, which logically should end up green), but that’s a bit of a gimmick and Ungava is quite restrained on the tongue.

Having said that, it did grow on me, and I suspect the best way to drink it might be simply on the rocks, puckering your brow over the delicate notes of tea on the nose that subtle grassy aftertaste.

Just nobody mention the deadly yellow snow…

EDIT:

I wasn't entirely right about the Aviation—more dark yellow than green…

An Aviation cocktail made with Ungava: yellow sky in the morning, aviator's warning…

For your drinking pleasure: a Hartley Gin Tonica, featuring my own penchant, the addition of Campari

The ceaselessly industrious Mr Smith sent me a copy of his new tome, all about the Spanish style of serving gin and tonic. DBS himself (always a fan of taxonomy) long ago decided that this serve was sufficiently distinct to count as a separate drink, referring to it specifically by the Spanish name gin tonica, and that is indeed the title of his book.

The Spaniards’ love of a G&T apparently started in the Basque country and is now so entrenched that this beverage is considered the national drink. What makes a gin tonica different from a gin and tonic? Essentially, attention to detail. The punter is presented with a range of gins and tonics, which are complemented by elaborate garnishes, all served in extravagant balloon glasses to capture and channel the aromas. Large quantities of high quality ice are vital and the tonic is added as delicately as possible so as not to damage its effervescence (I’ve even heard of someone pouring the tonic down the shaft of a barspoon to try and minimise the loss of bubbles). The whole preparation process can take up to 15 minutes, and the wait is considered part of the experience.

David’s book offers 40 recipes, broken down into Classic, Contemporary, Experimental and Seasonal, starting with simple variations on standard garnishes, such as the Evans which deploys both lemon and lime, the James Bond, where a lime is squeezed into the drink (as described in Dr No), the Pink Gin (with added Angostura bitters), plus general variations made with aged gin or sloe gin.

Here you will also find the Hartley, named, I am honoured to say, after myself. I had mentioned to David that I sometimes like to add a dash of Campari to my G&T, so his version has a teaspoon of Campari and a teaspoon of orange juice (to balance the bitterness with sweetness).

But even the “Classic” section calls for unusual garnishes such as thyme, rosemary, bayleaf and coffee beans. Moreover, the recipes never specify simply “gin”—each one is a precise combination of a particular gin and a particular tonic. Alternative gins are also given, but if you fancied working your way through the recipes it would mean buying a lot of different gins and quite a few different tonics that may prove hard to come by.

Moving into the “Contemporary” section we find more esoteric gins, featuring unusual botanicals or spirit bases made from rye or rice, as well as exotic garnishes, the flavours of which start to take more of a defining role—such as the combination of grapefruit and vanilla pod (which apparent synthesise the impression of chocolate) or infusions of teabags. Also in this section we encounter the addition of other spirits such as Bénédictine, crème de violette or even malt whisky.

Once we get into “Experimental” territory, the only certainty is that there is gin involved in some way (although it may be joined by another spirit or liqueur, such as rum or blue curaçao). Garnishes include lemon sorbet, gummy sweets, rock candy or marmalade, and the tonic itself may be augmented or replaced by lemonade or soda water.

The “Seasonal” section offers recipes that will feel in keeping with different times of year, although the ingredients are not necessarily any less exotic, featuring gins made with spices or actual Christmas puddings and tonics pre-flavoured with cranberries, elderflower, grapefruit and rosemary. The winter recipe adds ginger ale, ginger wine, cinnamon sticks and cloves. There is a Chocolate Gin Tonica (is that a season? Why, I hear you cry, it is every season) made entirely of ingredients you will be outraged to find you never knew existed—gin made with cocoa nibs, coffee and vanilla, a cardamom tonic water and chocolate bitters. Finally, the New Year’s Eve version uses a gin that comes in a Champagne bottle and is served with a little Champagne as well.

As I say, you would have to be a dedicated home mixologist to source all the various gins and tonics specified in these recipes, with the patience to delay your post-work loosener while you hull strawberries and shave ribbons of cucumber. But if you love a G&T and wish to explore all the drink’s nuances, then this inspiring book is for you.

Gin Tonica by David T. Smith is published by Ryland Peters at £7.99.*

* If you follow up both those links you'll see that the image on the Ryland Peters website actually shows a different cover design from the copy I was sent. I wondered if the UK and US editions were different, but on Amazon.com the cover is the same as Amazon.co.uk.

Back in 2011, when Suffolk brewery Adnams entered the distilling game with two gins and three vodkas, I was much taken with all of them. The basic Copper House gin, which is cheaper and more widely available, is based on Adnams’ entry-level barley vodka and features hibiscus in the botanicals, giving it a smooth, floral character; the more expensive First Rate gin is based on the more complex three-grain Longshore vodka and has a drier, more juniper-forward character.

Adnams is based in the seaside town of Southwold, with their brewery and distillery a stone’s throw from the seafront. I was in the town last week and found myself in their dedicated store (in fact they have two). Their range has expanded further, with a young single malt whisky, a triple-malt (wheat, barley and oats) blended whisky with a bourbon character, their Spirit of Broadside, distilled from their Broadside ale, an apple brandy, a triple sec, a limoncello, a rye vodka and also a third gin—Rising Sun.

The defining characteristics of Rising Sun are the use of two key botanicals—lemongrass and Japanese matcha tea—and the base spirit made from rye. (In fact the name apparently comes from the fact that the rising sun’s rays hit Jonathan Adnams’ field where the rye grows before any other. They don't say whether this spirit is the rye vodka that is now sold as a product in itself.) It seems to be quite divisive: a friend of mine who had already tried it was quite sure that he did not like it, saying that it was too savoury for him; and the woman in the smaller of the two Adnams shops declared that it was sharp and peppery, thanks to the use of grains of paradise, and she said it in a way that made it clear she wasn’t that keen herself.

In uncork the bottle and Rising Sun greets me with a reassuring waft of juniper, some sweet orange peel and something floral like violets; concentrate the fumes and this becomes slightly overripe. There is a distinct sweetness, a hint of ginger and something biscuity, perhaps with a sharpness like varnish fumes, which may come from the rye base.

On the palate I’m half expecting a pronounced rye-whisky sharpness, but it is actually quite smooth. In fact it is complex, as if the spirit base is lean and dry but the botanicals are smoothing things out. For me the most striking element is the matcha tea which is quite noticeable (more so, for me, than in Beefeater 24, which prominently includes Japanese sencha and Chinese green teas among the botanicals). Not so sure I’m getting the lemongrass, but overall it is comfortably within the territory of modern smooth/sweet/floral crowd-pleasers. I’m not really seeing why it would wrinkle noses in the way that it has done. In fact to me it seems to have a faint aftertaste that is sugary like a boiled sweet (without actually being sweet as such).

I make a Dry Martini using Rising Sun and Belsazar Dry vermouth and the character persists, except that there is now a toffee-mint note emerging.

I try mixing the gin with Franklin’s tonic water and it brings a fruitiness—a concentrated kind of fruit like dates or dried figs, plus a note of chocolate. (Although I am quite new to Franklin’s, these flavours don’t come from the tonic itself—I checked.) And still the matcha tea note cuts through.

So far I like this gin. To me the green tea element makes perfect sense, but others may feel differently. It does not seem sharp to me as it did to the woman in the shop, but perhaps it is the rye that puts some people off: in the user comments on Adnams’ website one reviewer describes it as “propanone and sourdough starter gone bad”, which definitely sounds like a reaction to the spirit. (I suspect his “propanone” is what I refer to as reminding me of varnish.)

And I wouldn’t really call it savoury. But then I myself tend to prefer gins that are savoury in the sense of being herbal, so perhaps it just seems normal to me.

Comparing Rising Sun alongside Copper House, the latter seems cloyingly floral and fruity; I much prefer Rising Sun. But certainly I feel there is a house style to Adnams’ gins that is quite bold, citrusy, smooth and floral. (I have the remains of a bottle of Beefeater 24 for comparison and it is quite different, restrained with a stern, lean mouthfeel.)

I notice that on the webpage for Copper House gin they say that they first had the idea of using hibiscus when they encountered it in tea, so you get a sense of the overarching family of flavours that make up the Adnams approach to gin.

I went to make myself a Champagne Cocktail the other day and found that I had run out of Cognac. However, I noticed that I had the tail-end of a bottle of marc, so I thought I would give that a try.

Marc is a French spirit made from the grape must left over from making wine (like Italian grappa). I first encountered it on holiday in France. In a booze shop my eye was caught by a bottle of marc from Chateau Mont-Redon—my wife’s degree dissertation had been on the artist Odilon Redon, so it seemed somehow preordained that I should sample this liquor. Marc is, or can be, extremely strongly flavoured, and I remember how powerful the aroma of the Mont Redon was, firing off elements of dried fruit, nuts and stewed vegetables. My wife said she could smell it from the other side of the hotel room.

The marc I had this time was from Briottet, who produce a handy range of high-quality, reasonably priced liqueurs ideal for cocktail making. This was their Très Vieux Marc de Bourgogne, from the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beane regions, aged for ten years in Burgundy barrels. Tasting the last thimbleful of it now, it does smell a lot like grappa, a sharp woody aroma with nuts and cherry stones, chocolate, raisins and dates. On the tongue these flavours are joined by a marmaladey orange note and something like pine nuts. Even after ten years in the barrel it’s pretty fierce, and you could believe it was stronger than its 43% ABV.

So does it work in a Champagne Cocktail? Yes, it certainly does, but you have to go easy. I started off using the same proportions I would use with Cognac (and I use less Cognac than many people) and the marc swamped it. I actually think that 5–10ml is about right, depending on the marc and the Champagne or sparkling wine you use. Adding the wine to the marc brought out extra elements of prunes and tobacco. The resulting cocktail seems very autumnal in its earthy flavours. I used the traditional sugar cube doused with Angostura bitters, but I found myself wondering whether a little pear purée might add a similarly autumnal form of sweetness.

Champagne Cocktail, Marc 2
Sugar cube
Angostura bitters
5–10ml marc
Champagne or sparkling wine
Apply several dashes of bitters to the sugar cube then drop it into a Champagne glass. Add the marc then top up with the sparkling wine.

A friend was thinking of ways to mark another friend’s 50th birthday and, being a sterling cove, he decided she needed a cocktail created for her and named in her honour. To which end he approached me. (Yes, it’s the same friend who previously asked me to come up with a cocktail to go with the new Bognor Gothic typeface he had designed.)

To get me started I was given a list of his friend Sarah’s likes and dislikes:

Likes: Vodka, tequila, gin, Champagne/Prosecco, triple sec, fruity flavours

Dislikes: Brandy, whisky, chocolate, creamy drinks

OK, so a Brandy Alexander was out. But the combination of tequila, Champagne and fruit flavours immediately made me think of the Paloma Royale combo I came up with last year. This is a blend of tequila, Champagne and grapefruit juice (inspired by the popular Paloma drink of tequila and grapefruit soda); at the time I felt that it worked fine like that, but I also experimented with adding a sweet/sour element with lime juice and syrup. So I felt sure that you could take this base and tweak it a bit more.

My first port of call was the reference in the list of likes to the orange liqueur triple sec (e.g. Cointreau). Sure enough, adding a little of this worked very well, but it really needed just half a teaspoon (2.5ml). At this level the note of orange is clear, but doesn’t swamp the grapefruit, and the earthiness of the tequila still comes through and you’re aware of the mouthfeel of the sparkling wine too. (I used Prosecco this time.) Judging by the photos it looks as if I used pink grapefruit juice last year and I was using white grapefruit juice this time—which might explain why I previously decided that sweetening wasn’t necessary, whereas this time I had to admit that a smidgeon of added sweetness (i.e. the amount in ½ tsp of Cointreau) was just right. If you have a sweeter tooth you could try pink juice.

Sarah’s Surprise No.1
25ml tequila
40ml grapefruit juice
2.5ml (½ tsp) triple sec (e.g. Cointreau)
100ml Champagne or sparkling wine

Shake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a flute or Champagne saucer then add the sparkling wine and give a gentle stir.

Adding ginger to the original Paloma Royale works well—but with white
grapefruit juice it does need a hint of sweetness added

As I mention in a footnote of the previous post, I’ve noticed in the past that tequila and ginger go well, and indeed my friend had suggested using ginger to give it an autumnal warmth (Sarah’s birthday is in November). An obvious strategy would be to use a ginger liqueur like The King’s Ginger. But (a) I didn’t have any, and (b) based on my previous experience I was worried about making it too sweet. So instead I decided to try muddling fresh root ginger in the cocktail shaker before adding the tequila and grapefruit juice. This does work for sure, and you can adjust the ginger flavour by how big a slice of ginger you use (about an inch across and ⅛ inch thick is a good starting point). You will probably want to fine-strain this, as mashing up the ginger does fill your shaker with bits of fibrous root.

For me this may well have been fine as it was if I had been using pink grapefruit juice, but since I was on the less sweet white juice this time I had to concede that even for me it needed a hint of sweetness. I did try combining both versions of the cocktail by adding triple sec as well, but this was actually a flavour too far and the whole thing became confused.

In the end I found that ½ tsp maraschino did the trick (and I was not unconscious of the reference to the Papa Doble Daiquiri, a version of the rum-based Daiquiri cocktail that adds maraschino and grapefruit juice, apparently preferred by Ernest Hemingway).

It also occurred to me that if you simply garnished the drink with a maraschino cherry, deployed with a barspoon or teaspoon, then enough of the syrup would be transferred to add the same sweetness as using the liqueur, and sure enough this was the case.

Sarah’s Surprise No.2
25ml tequila
40ml grapefruit juice
Slice of root ginger
2.5ml maraschino, or one maraschino cherry
100ml Champagne or sparkling wine

Muddle the ginger in the base of a cocktail shaker, then add the tequila, grapefruit juice and maraschino if using. Shake with ice and fine-strain into a flute or Champagne saucer, then top with sparkling wine. If using the cherry, add it, then give the drink a gentle stir.

Adding a maraschino cherry, using a teaspoon or bar spoon, brings across enough of the syrup to balance the sweetness

One of the defining characteristics of whisk(e)y, and what makes it expensive to produce, is the time it has to spend in the barrel to soften and acquire character. Scotch and Irish whiskey must legally be aged for at least three years. (In the US there is actually no minimum age requirement, though “straight whiskey” must have at least two years in oak.) Yet for all this there has been a trend for releasing unaged “white whiskey”, perhaps as a nostalgic throwback to Prohibition times when moonshiners would not have had the luxury of ageing.

I haven’t had a great deal of exposure to white whiskey, though one sniff of an open jar of Georgia Moon (a corn spirit guaranteed aged no more than 30 days—and in moonshine style it does indeed come in a jar rather than a bottle) sent me reeling from the raw fumes so that I never actually had the courage to taste the stuff.

So I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised when people try to come up with a novelty product that evokes the idea of white whiskey but without the eye-watering roughness. The first one I encountered was Bootlegger, actually made in the UK from wheat and distilled several times to make a smooth spirit, then flavoured with a “wood tincture” to give it a slight colour and vanilla/caramel woodiness, designed to mimic the slight barrel flavour from being stored and transported in wood.

More recently I was sent samples of O’Donnell Moonshine. It makes a clear reference to Prohibition, and takes its name from Spike O’Donnell, head of the South Side gang in Chicago, but in fact it’s another European creation, launched in Germany four years ago and now expanding into the UK with premises in Hackney.

According to director Hugo Cooke, O’Donnell is also essentially a wheat vodka, briefly aged in wood to impart a light colour and woody flavour—“the main difference being,” Cooke says, “that vodka has to be filtered and we don’t filter our sprit. The effect this has on the final product is that you should have a distinctive taste of wheat.”

O’Donnell Original has a pale straw-coloured tint and a nose essentially of vodka but with subtle, evolving elements of raw potato, apple, butter, vanilla, biscuits, varnish and a hint of hot dust. As you become acquainted with it I think it is the biscuit aspect (by which I mean something like a digestive biscuit) that comes to dominate.

On the palate it is a not particularly smooth spirit with a bit of raw wood (though not the powerful sawmill character I expected), some vanilla ice cream and a slightly bitter finish. Nothing much like whiskey, really.

What with the mason jar container and the Prohibition-related name, it’s clear that O’Donnell are trying to give the consumer a frisson of Prohibition daring and glamour—in fact on their website is a video in which an ordinary Joe goes into a bar, the barman pours him a shot of O’Donnell (somehow they have hammered a speed pourer into the screw cap of the mason jar), he knocks it back… and suddenly the room around him becomes a Jazz Age speakeasy filled with flappers and men in, erm, braces. The effect seems to wear off pretty quickly, leaving him back in the 21st-century—so he immediately makes lingering eye contact with the barman to hit him with another shot. A powerful metaphor for addiction of all kinds.

So I find it surprising that the brand’s main focus is not on this faux-moonshine original spirit but actually on the three flavoured versions of their product, described as “Roasted Apple (20% ABV) with apple, lemon juice, cinnamon, vanilla and almond, Bitter Rose (25% ABV) made with grapefruit, rosehip and elderberry and Tough Nut (25% ABV) made from hazelnut, caramel and a hint of whiskey.”* (They say that all the flavourings are entirely natural.) I guess since the product is presumably aimed at vodka drinkers, and flavoured vodka is a Big Thing, then it was a natural progression.

All the flavoured versions are coloured and even in the small sample jars I received (like the miniature jars of jam you get for breakfast in hotels) there was a noticeable sediment, suggesting that genuine organic matter did indeed go into them, rather than chemical flavourings. So what do they taste like?

Tough Nut
Smells just like a digestive biscuit—caramel and vanilla but definitely something buttery and floury too. This continues on to the palate, which it is almost painfully sweet for me, plus some spirit warmth. The biscuitiness is the same character in the original but more intense—in fact if you compare Tough Nut with Original the main difference is that it is sweeter and has an added dark caramel dimension.

Roasted Apple
The nose is sour and sweet, very confectionary. In the mouth it is not as sweet as Tough Nut, but that biscuit character from the Original once again pokes through. This tastes of sour apple in the way that a jelly bean might, though overall it is surprisingly lightly flavoured. This might limit its usefulness as a cocktail ingredient, though mixing doesn’t seem to be a thrust for the brand—they suggest drinking the Bitter Rose with tonic in the summer, and that is about it.

Bitter Rose
Smells like a cross between sloe gin, cough mixture, prunes, poached apricot and a fizzy sweet. (Anyone remember Spangles? Boiled sweets that somehow had a carbonated tingle in them.) And slightly dusty, like a fruit liqueur you brought back from holiday, which then sat on a shelf for the next seven years. It tastes a little like port, though perhaps specifically like port mixed with Coca Cola. It neither smells nor tastes like roses, though perhaps the name is just a reference to the colour. It does indeed pair well with tonic water—about half and half seems to work best—which brings the citric grapefruit character more to the fore. (In fact on one page of the website they specifically refer to it as a grapefruit liqueur.)

The basic O’Donnell Original is £24.90 for 70cl, so you could get a genuine American whiskey for less money from any supermarket. Clearly it really is aimed at a vodka-drinking market who fancy the idea of moonshine whiskey, because of its associations with the romance and style of the Prohibition era (and who am I to argue—it’s what I do for a living), but don’t actually like whiskey itself. And maybe really like biscuits. (Has anyone tried dunking a digestive in O'Donnell?) I confess I don’t get it, but then I like whiskey and have never met a flavoured vodka** to which I would give the time of day.

For me the most noteworthy aspect of this is Hugo’s mention of their spirit not being filtered. The Original really does have an unusual floury, digestive biscuit flavour (and allegedly it has no additives, just a little time in a barrel), literally like someone has left a few biscuits to soak in a jar of vodka, so this must indeed be the flavour of unfiltered wheat spirit. Which is interesting.

* In fact at time of writing the UK website shop was out of stock of the Original.

** Unless you count gin, of course, which is arguably a flavoured vodka. You know what I mean.

I like Cornwall, England’s westernmost county, and regularly go on holiday there. It was on a previous jaunt, to the Roseland Peninsula, that I came across Tarquin’s Cornish Gin, which got me thinking about how one could meaningfully create a gin that seemed redolent of Cornwall itself. (Tarquin’s gin has mostly conventional botanicals from all over the world, with the only local one being violets from Tarquin’s garden.)

The last time I was in the area I popped into the Polgoon winery near where I was staying. I’d been before, sampled their wines and frankly found them pretty unpalatable, but I like the idea so I went back to give them another try. Their product was still unexciting (though they also make cider, which is better), so I poked around in the shop and found a whole wall of Cornish gins. More or less at random I picked three to try, Curio, Wrecking Coast and Trevethan. Each of these takes a different approach to what might make a gin distinctly “Cornish”.

Curio gin is made by the Curio Spirits Company in Mullion, west Cornwall, which is husband and wife team William and Rubina Tyler-Street. The Big Idea is that Curio uses rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum) as a botanical, which grows on cliffs in the area. It is not to be confused with the more commonly-encountered marsh samphire (Salicornia europaea), which I first came across in a fishmongers some years ago, sold as an accompaniment. I was told it grew on the coast and was only in season for about three weeks a year; later I foraged my own one summer on a flat, marshy beach in Norfolk. It has a pleasant crunchy texture and a light salty flavour. It is sometimes called sea asparagus, but it is not nearly as strongly flavoured as asparagus. Nowadays it is sufficiently fashionable (at least in London) that I see it in supermarkets all year round, imported from the Middle East and elsewhere.

Rock samphire, on the other hand, is still pretty obscure, probably because it has a strong, alarming flavour. While rambling on the coast we crossed a beach where, according to the guidebook, rock samphire grew on the cliffs; I did nibble some stalks of what I concluded must be the right plant (though Mrs H. was sceptical) and it was pretty fiery and pungent. Curio has a dominating flavour of mint, both on the nose and the palate, a sort of soggy mint with an undertone of fennel. I’m guessing this is your rock samphire, as it is also known as sea fennel. The illustration on the label shows the samphire, and also juniper and star anise (and what looks like coriander leaf but presumably isn’t). The company say that there are 15 botanicals but won’t give them away apart from samphire, juniper, star anise, cinnamon and seaweed. Mind you, there is a photo on their website which seems to show them all. How good are you at identifying them? I can also spot lemon peel, nutmeg, coriander seed, fennel sea, and what looks like ground almond and orris root powder, plus some sort of dried flower?

The botanicals that go into Curio

It's one of those occasions when I can’t really pick up on many of those, so dominating is that sweet mint/fennel thing. There is a waft of fresh lemon on the nose, and a bit of pepper and caramel on the finish. It goes well enough with tonic, but that mint flavour persists and, for me, becomes more cloying as you go on. The recommended serve is on the rocks with a pinch of sea salt. The spirit is certainly smooth neat (they say their spirits are “quadruple distilled”) and the salt adds the briny promise that is there on the label but not in the spirit itself (despite the presence of seaweed in the mix), but I can’t really warm to this gin. I am just haunted by those nagging pungent, aromatic oils.

Wrecking Coast is made at Tintagel, on an area indeed known as the Wrecking Coast because of the violent winter weather. The microdistillery uses a selection of 12 botanicals (apparently juniper, coriander, chamomile, vanilla, angelica, liquorice, orris, grains of paradise, cassia bark, cinnamon quills, lemon peel and aniseed), steeped in neutral grain spirit for 14 days, then redistilled through a computer-controlled iStill designed in the Netherlands, before being rested for a further seven days. But the Big Idea with Wrecking Coast, in fact the starting point for the whole project and the thing that makes it self-consciously Cornish, is clotted cream. In case you don’t know, clotted cream is a local delicacy, made by gently heating cream to produce a very thick, slightly caramelised end result with a fat content of at least 55%. The distillers seem to blend clotted cream with more grain spirit (I assume the fat dissolves in the alcohol) then use a separate, hand-blown glass vacuum still to redistill that mixture.* I guess they must have found that traditional heat distillation did something horrid to the taste. The two distillates are blended then diluted down to 44% ABV.

Making alcohol from dairy is nothing new—some vodkas are milk based and it was a common base for illicit Irish poitín (in fact I believe Knockeen Hills is made from milk) but I have not heard of someone mixing cream with neutral grain spirit then redistilling that.** Wrecking Coast say that the resulting drink retains the flavour of the cream while also gaining a “rich, velvety feeling in the mouth”. Certainly some spirits do have a creamy, unctuous mouthfeel, such as Sipsmith and Chase vodkas, though neither of those has any dairy in them.

The first thing that hits me on Wrecking Coast’s nose aside from mentholly jumiper, is citrus, plus lemony coriander and something herbaceous, like lemon balm. There is also a strong sweetly floral element, like violets. Particularly when sniffing the neck of the bottle I get toffee or caramel notes too. The palate is also citrus-forward plus juniper, coriander, perhaps berry fruit, and a perceived floral sweetness (orris?), which grows if you let ice melt in the gin. I also find a growing sense of that aniseed. I am much taken by this gin; I like its botanical intensity and the sweet/savoury balance. But I confess I don’t get cream. And a velvety feel in the mouth? Actually, out of the three gins on test here, this one actually has the fiercest mouthfeel, but then it is the strongest at 44% ABV.

Trevethan takes its Cornishness from its back story. In the 1920s local man Norman Trevethan was a chauffeur to Earl and Lady St Germans and would sometimes take them to events in Jazz Age London. Inspired by the cocktail culture he found there, he decided to join in by making his own gin. There was a long rural tradition of making alcohol from seasonal crops, though quite how easy it would have been for Norman to find conventional gin botanicals I do not know. Then in 2015 two industrial food and drink scientists got talking—one of them, Robert Cuffe, is Norman’s grandson and the other, chemist John Hall, heard about his friend’s grandfather and had a hankering to recreate the family recipe.

I’m not sure how much resemblance the modern version has to the original—the suggestion is that they merely “tweaked” it. I met John at the World Gin Awards judging and he told me that Rob’s mother can remember going out with Norman to gather botanicals for the gin, so I guess they must have some idea of the original recipe. The modern gin does contain elderflower and gorse flower foraged at Trewonnard Farm in Treneglos, and, like all the gins here, it is made with Cornish spring water.

Norman Trevethan

The distilling notes are enlightening. They know that Norman only made his gin in small batches, which is how they made their test recipes, but scaling that up to their 300-litre copper pot still (still “small batch” by commercial standards) meant making adjustments to keep the flavour the same. In tests they used the gorse to add a hint of sweetness but found they needed to add vanilla to maintain this at high volume, which also helps create a smooth, oily mouthfeel. They describe the profile as juniper-led, backed up by cassia and angelica, with citrus “hiding in there” and cardamom “lingering at the end of the mouthful”. Other botanicals mentioned are coriander, orange peel, lemon peel.

Compared to the other gins tasted here, Trevethan immediately emerges as more elegant and poised. I like Wrecking Coast but it is more boisterous and in-you-face, whereas Trevethan has a reserved complexity. At times I have decided it was all about coriander, then cardamom (and I think the cardamom does emerge more with dilution). Sniffing the bottle again now I get lemony citrus, balanced by warm, perfumed lower notes, definitely including cassia. Then you notice the resinous juniper. And now and then you’re hit by a sideways stab of very savoury curry notes. It is indeed smooth and oily on the tongue, though sipping it now I still feel that high, dry, aromatic coriander seed notes dominate, followed by fresh coriander or parsley leaves. On the finish I could certainly believe there is elderflower here.

Without doubt Trevethan is my favourite of these three. It’s a sort of “desert island gin” in the sense that it does the fundamental job required of a gin, without being gimmicky, but also has a complex balance that reveals different nuances at different times. Even after you’ve swallowed it the aftertastes continue to evolve. It rewards study if you want to ponder it, but it also delivers if you just want a drink without thinking about it.

Does any of these gins capture the essence of Cornwall? No, but then gin is not a quintessentially Cornish thing. Curio may well pack a big hit of rock samphire, but there is probably a reason why we don’t eat rock samphire very much. Wrecking Coast is a fun gin but does appear crude next to Trevethan, and I’m damned if I can detect clotted cream in it. Trevethan, on the other hand, make the point that theirs is traditional—because Norman was trying to create a normal gin, not trying to stand out in a crowded market by being Other.

In my rambles along Cornwall’s clifftop paths I have often reflected that, aside from brine, one powerful fragrance of the area is indeed gorse, which is everywhere and has a powerful smell, sweet and distinctly redolent of coconut. I’m not sure that, blind-tasting Trevethan, I would leap up and yell “Gorse!”, but it does have a sweet, warm, perfumed element to the nose in which I can definitely believe that gorse is playing a part.

* Conventional distilling raises the temperature of the liquid till the alcohol evaporates off and can be condensed in a second chamber. Vacuum distillation achieves evaporation by instead lowering the pressure inside the vessel. In fact lowering the pressure has the effect of causing the temperature inside the vessel to drop. Ian Hart from Sacred Gin does all his distilling this way and I believe that Oxley does as well. Clearly if you are not “cooking” the liquid the end flavours may well be different.

** Today I learned that in the early days of vodka-making it was common to distill the spirit a couple of times, then mix it with milk before distilling it again, which is much more like what Wrecking Coast are doing.

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