By Rob Pickard
With the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel’s Booking Office Bar officially launched earlier this month, the bespoke drinks menu, designed by Bibendum and consultancy firm Strange Hill, is bringing long lost Victorian punch recipes back to London’s bar scene.
The new menu offers customers an interesting look at an era when mixed drinks were beginning to emerge within …
By Rob Pickard
The recently opened St Pancras Renaissance Hotel is quite a sight, set within one of London’s most iconic landmarks, this 5 star hotel is now one of the leading hotels in the city, and hailed as the city’s most romantic building. Originally opened as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873, it was designed to …
By Rob Pickard
Since its creation in 17th century Europe, gin has taken an interesting journey through history. From its early days, when it was sold in pharmacies across Europe to treat ailments, before a boom in gin production in 18th century London; following the British government allowing unlicensed production. This leading to London’s ‘Gin Craze’ and the cause …
By Rob Pickard
Following last week’s look at the Australian brewing icon, Coopers Brewery, in our first post looking at a range of unique Bibendum producers, we focus on one of Mexico’s finest exports, tequila, and the renowned El Tesoro de Don Felipe Tequila, part of the Bibendum portfolio of boutique spirit brands. El Tesoro is not …
By Rob Pickard
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without indulging in a few seasonal drinks, and in true festive style, drinking things that at any other time of year would seem ridiculous: Snow Ball, Eggnog, Mulled wine……Cream Sherry!
Following a team Christmas party – which kicked off with a cocktail master class from Stuart Hudson at The Alice House, West Hampstead - I offer you …
By Helen Graves, http://helengraves.co.uk/
The only ‘hard work’ involved in making sloe gin is foraging those sloes. Most recipes also advise you to painstakingly prick each sloe with a pin to allow the juices to leach out in the bottle. Forget this. I recently ran into Sipsmith’s master distiller, Jared Brown who gave me an absolute blinder of a tip – put the sloes in …
By Will Lowe
Distillation is a very simple process for separating two liquids in a solution from each other, utilising different boiling points. In the same way as evaporating sea water leaves salt behind, so heating a low alcohol solution will allow the alcohol to evaporate whilst the water content remains. By collecting and condensing the vapour as it evaporates, we separate out a concentrated alcohol.
The equipment …
By Will Lowe
Calvados is a unique French brandy, in that it is made from apples, rather than grapes. Whereas Armagnac and Cognac are essentially distilled wines (from grapes), Calvados is to all intents and purposes a distilled cider. The Calvados region lies in lower Normandy, in the north of France. Whilst the area is too cold to grow grapes, it is home to some seven million …
By Will Lowe
In Armagnac, the soil, climate, distillation and ageing techniques are completely different to those used in Cognac, and the resulting spirit is unique. The AOC Armagnac region sits in the South West of France within the Gascony region, close to the Atlantic Ocean and at the base of the Pyrenees Mountains. There are three sub-areas (the Bas-Armagnac, Ténarèze and the Haut-Armagnac areas) within the …
By Will Lowe, http://www.willlowe.com/
First posted on Wednesday 20 October by Will Lowe from the Bibendum Spirits team. Cognac – The Basics will be the first in a series of posts from the Bibendum Spirits Blog, looking at a few classic spirits and outlining the basics behind the drink, the production process and serving suggestions.
Cognac is the most famous of the world’s …
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