Sussex

Once upon a time, a few weeks ago, the Whisky Dogs attended a party in the Sussex Down. A fairly small affair: gazebo, bar, punk covers band, piles of food and, as all parties should have, a peacock. Peacocks are brilliant. They're conversation starters. They're funny to look at. They're..well. That's actually about all they are. But that's their appeal. They're funny and you can talk about them; perfect thing to have at a party. Nestled below the Firle Beacon on Nicholas Gage, 8^th Viscount Gage's estate the party was held in the manicured garden of a coaching inn turned small holding and certainly possessed a picturesque, Sussex charm. One which was only added to by the presence of a large number of the local hunt. The whole thing did become a bit...horsey. Not a bad thing, of course, and certainly led to some unusual conversations. Never had I thought to hear so much on the topic of horse dieting.

And so we drank the night away. I recall a case of Thornbridge's Wild Swan vanishing before the sun set. Very tasty it was too. There was also a bottle of Ballantine's 17 Year Old, the best whisky in the world in 2011, which disappeared in moments. Also there was some gin. Quite a lot of gin. Possibly rather too much gin. And so it went, singing, dancing, gin. Then we fell asleep in our tents or, erm, cars; only to be woken by the charmingly rural sound of the inhuman banshee shrieks emanating from the bloody peacock. They do not make pleasant noises.

There we were. Hungover. Hungry. Tired. In tents. Facing the unrelenting, baking sun of a summer's morn in southern England. This was truly a day not seen since the Luftwaffe contested the skies over the verdant rolling hills of the Downs. It was desperate. It was also rather unpleasant. We tried everything our striving, suffering minds could think of to improve our situation. Food. Coffee. Tears. Sleep. A bracing cliffside walk. Striding into the sea, chased by a spaniel. Nothing was working. Were we doomed?

Eventually we came to the obvious conclusion. We needed a beer. We needed it badly. It wasn't easy. Body and mind rebelled; it was too hot, we were too hungover. Using the lessons learnt the previous evening from our red-coated, fox-slaying brethren we took our hangovers in a firm hand and retreated to the Pilot Inn for a pint of Harveys.

Harveys is a family-run brewery in Lewes which has been in business for some 200 years and is something of an institution in the southern counties; especially East Sussex. This is a beer which belongs to a place like few others. Other regional beers can be enjoyed practically anywhere they can be found. Thornbridge's offerings may be at their best on a windswept hilltop, peering out at the persistent drizzle that characterises the Peaks, but they're as wonderfully palatable regardless of where they're enjoyed. Another coastal brewery, St Austell, may actually be better enjoyed inland and away from the salt tang of the Cornish air.

Harveys, much like a foaming ale version of Antaeus, loses something when taken away from its chosen ground. Away from sea and cliff and Down the ale tends to fall a little flat. Maybe it just doesn't travel well. As such the Pilot was probably one of the better places to indulge in several pints of the stuff. The sea is ever present and the place is basically perched on the edge of a cliff, at the eastern edge of the Downs. Maybe it was the location, maybe the context, maybe the tortured state of our nerves and livers. Whevs.

That pint of medicinal ale was, without exaggeration, one of the best pints I have ever savoured. Everything came together. Sat in the sun, pleasantly tired, with sand in my shoes and the sound of sea and gull that first sip was like a snatched taste of Elysium. And, frankly, if that isn't a reason to go drink a beer by the sea then nothing will ever persuade you.

James

Also, ignore everything positive previously said about peacocks. Squawking monstrosities.

Theatre

On Sunday I was having something of a dearth of social options, let's say, and the idea of staying in and watching Downton Abbey – for what else does one do on a Sunday? - was proving a little difficult to bear. So, I thought I'd go to the theatre. I should really have come up with something terribly catty to put in here about theatre-going on a Sunday and then ascribed it to a certain dowager, but I can't seem to think of anything. Which must be why Julian Fellowes gets the fame and fortune and I, ah, don't. Anyway. I went to a small place in Lisson Grove called the Cockpit Theatre to see a show called A Broken Rose. Awfully good it was, too.

But first, and in keeping with the general purpose of this blog, my compatriot and I went to sample the pubs in and around the area. Well, pub, anyway. After peering into, and quickly retreating from, a number of, um, shall we say less than salubrious establishments we chanced across a Moroccan pub. Well, shisha bar. It was nice, it had shisha, so I suppose it lived up to expectations. Its supposedly-imported-but-actually-brewed-in-Slough European lager tasted like supposedly-imported-but-actually-brewed-in-Slough European lager. Which is always good. Um. The music was quite entertaining, and the fug of smoke made it fairly atmospheric. It probably has other good qualities, too.

Then we saw the play! Which was actually fantastic. It was billed as a dark, twisted fairytale and, to my happy surprise, turned out to be a dark, twisted tale about fairies. Performed in the round and with some excellent set and costume design it was the story of a girl's possibly real, possibly psychosis-induced invisible fairy friends. All happily mixed up with a smattering of substance abuse, domestic abuse, unwanted pregnancy, stage blood and a quite shocking – although in hindsight somewhat inevitable – conclusion. A solid Whisky Dog recommendation. Which we give to plays now, despite the name. And the other entries. 

So, we're out of the theatre, but it's a Sunday night, what to do? Still not wanting to return home and watch Downton, despite the appeal of Lady Mary's eyebrows, we ended up happily ensconced in the Allsop Arms. Located about halfway between Marylebone and Baker Street stations this pub carries the arguable mark of quality that comes from being the second pub on the Kensington and Marylebone arm of the Capital Cask Ale Trail. We at Whisky Dog like ale trails, so this was a good sign.

I would heartily recommend this pub, and its really very good Allsop Ale, to anyone who finds themselves with some time to waste in the area. It would be an excellent place to cleanse the palate if you were unfortunate enough to have had to face the grotesque appeal of Madame Tussauds, located about 5 minutes away.

In conclusion; a better evening than one spent watching Downton Abbey. And, really, what more can one ask for? 

Apart from Lady Mary's eyebrows, obviously...

Gin

Gin has had a bit of a varied history, to say the least. Gin is pretty quintessentially English, as compared to whisky which is currently a bit of a cross between Scotland's entire export economy and a Chinese businessman's penis extension. A pretty wonderful cross, but a cross nonetheless. There's just so much more associated with gin. Gin is burnt into the national character. It is the symbol of our nation's history and a chart of just how much we've developed as a society since it first came to the fore. It's also quite good mixed with other things in a glass. I realise that this is a blog about whisky but I for one haven't drunk much of it recently because it's been what we in England call summer and summer is a time for gin. And Pimm's, but that's another matter entirely. And I believe that gin is a little under respected, a little under appreciated, insomuch as an alcoholic liquid can be, anyway. There's art to do with gin, albeit portraying the stuff in a fairly unflattering light.

Gin started out as a cheap way for poor people to get as drunk as they possibly could as quickly as they possibly could so they could escape their dangerous, miserable, drudge-ridden and generally impoverished existence in the docks of London. It probably didn't help that the water then would kill you, the government had significant duties on foreign spirits (hence why smugglers and, by extension, Hastings exist) and, oh yes, there was no licensing of this powerful spirit. People were literally making it in their bathtubs. Well, figuratively, since they didn't have baths. Anyway. As you might expect gin got rather a bad name at this point seeing as how it maybe, possibly, probably singlehandedly stabilised London's burgeoning population explosion through a charming combination of death, child mortality and alcohol-fueled crime. Probably tasted pretty horrible too.

 Anyway, people got a little wise to just how much of a problem gin was becoming and clamped down on production and distribution, times changed and eventually almost all the gin production in London stopped. Out in the colonies, at that slightly fluid moment where the Empire was rushing out just fast enough for new and exciting diseases to kill the colonists, there was a slight problem with malaria. At that time there was only one solution to catching malaria, and that was to consume a large amount of quinine which, by all accounts, tasted pretty awful. The solution? Soak it in water then pour gin on top until it tastes palatable. And so the gin and tonic was invented on some sun-baked verandah in Ceylon or some other far flung outpost of her Majesty's empire and came to characterise a completely different aspect of England. Not just for the poor, gin was the respectable drink of the colonial adventurer. I expect that, if he were real, Allan Quartermain would have been perpetually squiffy on G&Ts, much like this:

Then the middle-classes got a grip on the stuff. This was the time of gin in teacups and hammered housewives smashing the stuff back to cope with 60's suburbia. And still is, if my mother's liquor cupboard is any indication. But gin, like all good alcoholic drinks, is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. In 2009 the first gin distillery to open in London for 189 years started production of the absolutely brilliant Sipsmith gin, in their still called Prudence. This is gin as it should be made, not by the thousands or millions of gallons by Diageo, but in 300 bottle batches in a residential street with water from the Cotswolds and barley from, well, a nearby field. After a bit of a slow start Sipsmith gin is now available all over the place – so long as that place has a Waitrose – and is well worth trying.

Although gin is best known as being from London (or Plymouth, for some reason) sometimes it's best to look further afield. So far afield, in fact, that you're rapidly running out of Britain before you get there. Shetland, that windswept, barren, and sheep filled island is about as far from the traditional homes of gin drinking as you could realistically get before you cross the Arctic Circle. Yet Shetland is the home of Blackwood's gin which is made using locally collected Wild Water Mint, Meadowsweet and Sea Pink flowers. I don't know what any of these are, but the end concoction is absolutely delicious by itself or mixed at half and half with tonic and a slice of lemon. 

And that's all there is to it; now I hope you'll all mix a drink, sit back, and savour the taste of history and the last, somewhat overcast, days of summer.

James

Cocktails

Cocktails

Cocktails have a bit of a mixed reputation; both in life and here at Whisky Dog. On the one hand they can be delicious, impossibly cool looking to drink and have a decidedly insalubrious effect. On the other hand, they can be horrifically syrupy bile in colours Dali might have thought twice about using. Although it does still tend to have a decidedly insalubrious effect. Yes, I'm looking at you, 'Woo Woo'. The humble, or decidedly extravagant cocktail has also taken a bit of a battering at the hands TV shows like Sex and the City, with its obsession with Cosmos. After all, what is more female than a cocktail? It really doesn't help that cocktails are a good way for bars to make money and so, generally, are...underpowered, to say the least. For too long we have suffered at the hands of chain bar cocktail menus which always comprise of a half pint of ice, a single measure of cheap vodka, then a copious amount of some unknown substance from a plastic bottle below the bar – a frankly bewitching sounding combination which then costs half your day's pay and then is gone in minutes. It can't be savoured, and tastes only of E-numbers and high fructose corn syrup. Or something.

But it doesn't have to be this way!

I suppose we have Mad Men to thank for a lot of this, but a good cocktail; made with whiskey, is now within our grasp. All we have to do is reach out and take it. Or find a bar that makes it. Or, you know, learn the recipe ourselves. And, chaps, it is always whiskey. I've seen concoctions made using single malt scotch and that, well, that just seems wrong.

First; the bar that makes it: The Old Fashioned

This is THE whiskey cocktail, beloved of Don Draper and everyone else who tries it. In fact, my first taste of this cocktail was when someone shoved one into my hand in a bar with the words 'This is what Don drinks'. I hadn't seen any of Mad Men at this point so I nodded, and smiled, and then drank the single best mixed drink I'd ever tasted. On one level so simple, and yet undeniably brilliant, an Old Fashioned is basically bourbon, a drop of Angostura bitters and some brown sugar mixed with water. There are many, many, many variations of this. In fact, the bar in question, located in impossibly trendy Camden has two variations of it themselves. However, this is by far the better version:

Old Fashioned (two)
Woodford Reserve and a dash of maraschino liqueur are balanced out with a brown sugar cube, orange bitters and slowly stirred over Ty Nant mineral water ice cubes. These drinks take time and passion to create – expect to wait 5 minutes per drink.

That last part is vital. This is a cocktail which is crafted so you get layers of sweet, bitter, sour boozy, and that delicious orange twist. The bar staff must hate them, which is a sign of a good cocktail. And just look at it. 

Forget the bright colours, forget the Cosmos, forget everything you think about cocktails in bars. It just looks impossibly cool. As will you drinking it. I guarantee*. This is a drink that should single handedly make men drinking cocktails cool again, and reclaim it from the stigma of town centre Friday nights and crying girls.

Especially if you drink one in here.

Second: learn the recipe yourself: The Stonewall

While an Old Fashioned is pretty fantastic, sometimes it just doesn't hit the spot. In the same way that a generous glass of scotch just isn't going to be what you're looking for as the sun dips on a sunny day. That's where the Stonewall comes in. It's simple, it's refreshing, it's delicious, and it's not massively sweet. This is something you could mix in really big jugs and have set between friends in a garden of a summer's eve. You'd probably have to crawl back into the house afterwards, but it'd be worth it.

You'll need bourbon, cloudy apple juice, ginger ale and limes, lots of limes. Then mix a generous measure of bourbon in a glass with the apple juice at a 2:1 apple to whiskey ratio. Squeeze in some of the juice and gooey bits from a lime, stir, then top up with ginger ale. Garnish with a slice of lime and, hey, done. Then go and set the world to rights as the shadows lengthen.

Hopefully this has rescued cocktails for you. Now, I don't expect to see you drinking cocktails in your local Slug & Lettuce again. Ever, actually. But if you must, stick to the gin – even they can't mess that up.

*Guarantee not valid in any actual real-world situation.