Road Trip: Sipsmith

Having lived in Scotland for pretty much all my life, I have a fairly well-developed idea of what a distillery looks like. It would be hidden away at the end of a glen somewhere remote where the taxation officers would be unlikely to stumble across it, with a cluster of copper pot stills in one building and a two-storey-high wooden washbacks for fermentation in another; otherwise it would be a sprawling industrial complex, all 40ft column stills and piping, that would draw comparisons with your choice of near-future urban dystopia.

Distillation, though, is not something that requires a lot of space in itself and that point was well-illustrated when I stopped by an open day at the Sipsmith Distillery in West London during London Cocktail Week.

If you didn't know what you were looking for, it would be easy to miss the otherwise unremarkable garage amongst Hammersmith's rows of terraced houses. But the unassuming setting hosts the first new distillery to be granted a licence in London since Beefeater in 1820.

At the heart of the distillery - even though she's located at the back of the room - is another rarity. Where many new products are made either under licence or in second-hand or recycled stills, Sipsmith's range is produced in a new copper pot still. Dubbed Prudence, the still was created by CARL, Germany's oldest still manufacturer, and also has small column attachment - through which Sipsmith's English barley vodka is passed - and a Carterhead attachment which has apparently been used for experiments in flavouring vodka.

One of the upsides of a micro-distillery is that the tour doesn't take too long and our group (of six people from anywhere between Manchester and Japan) spent a large chunk of the afternoon tasting the range with Sipsmith's James Grundy. Their London Dry gin and English barley vodka are fairly well known (partly thanks to the involvement of drinks historian Jared Brown, I suspect), but they've recently expanded into liqueurs with a sloe gin and a damson vodka - the interesting aspect of the latter two is they seem much less sweet than liqueurs of that type generally are which lets the base spirit come through more, particularly in the sloe gin.

Sipsmith are an almost perfect definition of the kind of operation craft bartenders fall for. They're not pushing the boundaries of spirit production, but I get the sense that, for now, they're not inclined to do that. It's a range of artisanal spirits produced by people with a clear passion for both the process and the products they create and it's hard not to like that outlook.

Road Trip: Balmenach Distillery and Caorunn

Scotland - and it's likely that I'm not the first person to notice - has a long history of distilling. The obvious product of that history is whisky - single malt or blended - but like any country with that kind of tradition, it's not uncommon for producers to branch out into other spirits. Up and down the length of the country, you'll find vodkas, gins, liqueurs, and much more besides, all produced on scales from a single shop to multi-national distribution runs.

All of this became particularly relevant as I accompanied Andrew Kearns from Monteiths, the winner of the Edinburgh heat of Caorunn Gin's cocktail competition, to the Balmenach distillery in Speyside. We travelled up with the Glasgow party, including regional winner David Smillie from the Blythswood Square Hotel and Caorunn's brand ambassador Ervin Trykowski, and met up with 99 Bar & Kitchen's Mike McGinty and the Aberdeen contingent at the distillery.

The word Speyside should be familiar to anyone with an appreciation of single malt Scotch. Of Scotland's whisky producing regions (the others being Highland, Lowland, Islay, Islands, and Campbeltown), it's home to the greatest number of working distilleries - including those of the world's top selling single malts, the Glenlivet and Glenfiddich.

The Balmenach distillery isn't a new addition to the scene; it was established by James McGregor at some point in the early 19th Century (it's often dated to 1824, when it was officially licensed but it's a fair guess that they'd been producing before then). It remained in family ownership through 1922 before changing hands a number of times through the 20th Century, until it's then-owner, Diageo, opted to mothball the site in 1993. Balmenach was taken over by Inver House in 1997 and production started anew in 1998.

Scotch whisky is, as many spirits are these days, subject to a whole raft of legislation governing what may and may not be used in its production, the method of production, length of maturation, and so on. As far as ageing goes, in order to qualify as a Scotch whisky, it must be barrel aged in Scotland for a minimum of three years and one day. If you wanted to bring a single malt to market, you'd be up against a lot of 10 and 12 year old expressions, so you're looking at a decade before you can bottle something and that's before you consider that the age statement on a bottle of Scotch refers to the youngest whisky in the blend (even for single malt). If you want to compete, then it could be upwards of fifteen years before you have the stock on hand to blend a whisky that you could label as a 10 year old.

Ageing whisky is not a cheap process, and so it makes a lot of sense to use the equipment you've got to make something that you can bring to market a lot sooner than, say, fifteen to twenty years and that means white spirits. In the case of Caorunn, the equipment goes some distance to shaping the product; they found two berry chamber stills -they would have typically been used in the production of perfumes.

Essentially, high-strength spirit is pumped into a vaporiser and turned into vapour. That vapour is channeled into the base of the berry chamber and passes upwards through five perforated drawers which contain a loose mixture of the eleven botanicals. Simon Buley, Caorunn's creator, says that the process differs from that used by other gin producers in that all of the vapour comes into contact with all of the botanicals; there's no other way out of the chamber.

The final product sits somewhere between a traditional style gin and newer, more exotically flavoured efforts. There are six traditional botanicals - juniper, lemon peel, orange peel, coriander seed, angelica, and quassia bark - and five Celtic ones - rowan berry (Caorunn is the Gaelic word for rowan), heather, bog myrtle (also famed as a midge repellent), dandelion, and Coul Blush apple (a local variant bred to survive in the changeable climate of Northern Scotland). It's an interesting product to work with, and we headed back to Grantown-on-Spey to see that demonstrated by the three regional finalists later in the evening. The winner was Mike McGinty from 99 Bar & Kitchen in Aberdeen, with drinks called the Haughs of Cromdale and the Celtic Fizz.

The Haughs of Cromdale

37.5ml Caorunn Gin 12.5ml Costacalda Passito Bianco (sweet dessert wine) 10ml Calvados 20ml lemon juice 15ml homemade apple gomme muddled pink lady apples smoked heather bud in boston shaker

Using a lighter, set a sprig of heather on fire. Hold the tin from a Boston shaker over the sprig to capture the smoke. Muddle the apple in the other part of the shaker and add the other ingredients along with cubed ice. Cap with the smoke-filled shaker and shake. Fine-strain into a chilled red wine glass.

Garnish with a slice of apple and a sprig of heather.

Celtic Fizz

50ml Caorunn 20ml lemon juice 20ml pressed apple juice 15ml homemade spiced apple gimme 1 dash egg white topped with Brewdog Punk IPA

Shake the first five ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled highball glass (straight up). Top with IPA.

Garnish with a single star anise.

Thanks to everyone at Caorunn and 3rdparty for making the trip happen!

Leaving the Twentieth Century

I've been in the process of working up a small cocktail offering for a function we're hosting at Sygn in a couple of months time. There are some obvious choices for it - the event isn't industry-focused so I won't be going too obscure or bleeding edge with anything - but flicking through various menus and recipe books led me to the Twentieth Century cocktail.

Twentieth Century Cocktail

35ml Gin
15ml Lillet Blanc
15ml Crème de Cacao (white)
25ml lemon juice

Shake all ingredients with ice; fine-strain into a chilled martini/coupe. Garnish with a twist of lemon zest.

According to Ted Haigh's Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, it was named for a train, the 20th Century Limited, that plied the route between Chicago and New York in the near aftermath of Prohibition. Haigh suggests that earliest written record comes from the Café Royal Bar Book of 1937 and that "we now have a firm idea of exactly what Art Deco tastes like."

On a personal level, I found the Twentieth Century profoundly depressing. It's not because it's a bad drink - it certainly isn't - but there's something about the way those four ingredients just sing together that make me wonder if I'm ever going to put together a recipe that comes close.

On paper, it's just four ingredients. In the real, it's exceptional, and that's something to aim for.

Mirrorball

So cocktail masterclasses have become a thing. This isn't news but it turns out it's not a passing craze either. Having been hosting them for birthday or hen (US translation: bachelorette) parties and other groups for a couple of years, I've settled into a pretty standard format. Over the course of two hours or so, we'll do three drinks for everyone in the group - everyone gets a chance to make a drink and then we'll spend some time putting together drinks based on suggestions from the group.

The first round of drinks, though, is usually sitting ready for the guests' arrival. It's a nice welcome and it's usually something with a touch of Champagne or Prosecco, just so the group get a sense that it's a special occasion. If I'm honest, it's usually a Bellini.

The Bellini is a fine drink - it's simple, it's tasty, and from a bar-geek's point of view, it's one of the few drinks that we can attribute to a specific person (one Giuseppe Cipriani, who invented it in Harry's American Bar in Venice in the mid-late 1940s). The only thing about the Bellini is that it's, well, kinda boring.

Part of the appeal of a cocktail masterclass is pulling back the curtain on how you actually make cocktails. For the most part, we don't go into any great depth but guests get enough info to be able to start making drinks at home if they wanted to. While the Bellini is a great tasting drink, there's a sense in which it sets the bar at a really low level: put some peach purée in a glass, top it with Prosecco. Once you realise that's all it takes, it's a little disappointing.

So, for the last couple of classes I've done, I've tried a new drink to say hello with. It needed to retain a sparkling wine element and I needed to keep the flavours on fairly common ground - it's a drink that I'm serving to people before I've had a chance to even talk to them, so I had to be confident that it would be a crowd-pleaser.

Spring is just hitting its stride in the UK, so I looked at flavours that embody that sense of freshness and carry a floral connotation. The obvious one was elderflower - so 2009, but still - and one of it's natural partners is pear. I wanted to keep a string British identity, so gin was the logical choice for a base spirit. I wanted to go for something very l
Iight in character, with strong floral notes. The drink works very well with Greenall's BLOOM and Darnley's View, but the best response I got from a masterclass group was when I used Bombay Sapphire. Part of that could be down to pure and simple brand recognition, but part of me thinks that the simplicity of the drink works well with the simplicity of the gin.

(I feel like I should point out that this is all stuff I did at work; we didn't receive any free stock for it and this drink doesn't come under any brand agreements we have in force. The products I've listed are the ones I chose to try out.)

Mirrorball

10ml Bombay Sapphire Gin
10ml Xante
5ml elderflower cordial
1 dash Peychaud's bitters
Prosecco

Stir the first four ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled flute. Top with Prosecco and garnish with a twist of grapefruit zest.

For me, it's a recipe that does exactly what I want it to and the response so far has been really good. One thing stands out - I'm using the Mirrorball in place of the Bellini in my masterclass presentations and despite not having anything peach-flavoured in it, there's one flavour everybody says they get from it.

Peach.

Moving on with Lillet

I stopped by a fairly informal tasting session with Sébastian Martinon of Lillet last week. He was on a flying visit from France and had asked to see somewhere outside of London; Edinburgh's not a bad choice, but I'm pretty biased. (I'm also pretty biased because the tasting took place in the private lounge at Sygn.)

Lillet was founded in 1872 by two brothers who had made themselves a career as wine merchants. Right now, it's probably more famous for what it was rather than what it is - and you can blame James Bond for that.

Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet.

This recipe, given to the bartender at the Royale-Les-Eaux casino by 007 in his début, represents something of a dilemma for the cocktail bartender. I've lost count of the number of people who've asked for a "vodka Martini, shaken - not stirred" in the months after the release of a Bond film without really knowing what they were getting themselves into. We, members of the secret brother/sisterhood of bar geeks, would roll our eyes, knowing that Bond didn't drink vodka Martinis. He drank Vespers - and he'd do it alone, because Kina Lillet wasn't available anymore.

The "Kina" refers to quinine, which was the only ingredient other than citrus liqueurs and Bordeaux that I can remember Sébastian referring to through the tasting. When the recipe was reformulated in 1987, the level of quinine was reduced - not completely removed; there's still a pleasant bitterness across the range - and the product was relaunched as Lillet Blanc. It's said to be less bitter and less sweet than Kina Lillet, but I haven't got a frame of reference - I've never tried Kina Lillet and the opportunity to do so seems pretty unlikely if they stopped making it almost a quarter of a century ago.

We tasted three expressions of the aperitif - the Blanc, the Rouge and the 2006 Vintage Jean de Lillet Blanc. They're all made in a similar way, adding a fruit liqueur flavoured with a range of citrus peels, quinine and other, secret aromatics to Bordeaux wine. All three offer a deep citrus flavour with more sweetness than I'd expected and a touch of bitterness, but each also has distinct characteristics that I'd guess are attributable to the wines used. The Blanc is refreshing and light; the Rouge is richer and slightly tannic. The Jean de Lillet is only made when the company's maître de chai comes across a wine good enough to be commemorated. The 2006 vintage we tasted seemed more rounded and slightly more bitter than the Blanc. For anyone who's wondering why it's not in the photo, it proved to be the most popular bottle in the room.

France is Lillet's main market and over there they drink it straight-up, chilled but it's often hard for me not to try something out in a mixed drink. Gin, particularly something juniper- and citrus-heavy like No. 3, seemed like a natural choice, and the recipe wrote itself from there.

Tesseract

35ml No. 3 Gin
25ml Lillet Blanc
1 dash Peychaud's Bitters
20ml lemon juice
10ml sugar syrup (2:1)

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with an orange zest twist.