We know from the earliest boozers that it was a variation on a Sling – spirits, water and sugar and included the miracle ingredient bitters. So what bitters was it?
Features
Features
After a whirlwind trip to the land of the rising sun I can safely say that Tokyo is one city that everyone who loves their food and great cocktail bars must visit at least once in their lifetime. To sum up I would say Tokyo bars are fantastic – they are disciplined, quirky, interesting and just bloody different! All in all a great trip.
For a region so steeped in history Barolo’s wineries don’t shy away from modern innovation. Many wine makers now augment hundreds of years of tradition with new techniques and facilities. Josetta Saffirio is just one example of a new mark on an ancient landscape. They’ve been making wines for generations, but their new, still to be completed winery, is decked out with some serious wine making accoutrements.
Craft brewing has been widely defined and words like ‘innovation’, ‘integrity’ and ‘philanthropist’ (seriously) have been thrown around more than lightly. Some believe that the ‘state of mind’ of the brewer when they are making the beer is important, or that craft brewing is ‘related to brewing and bottling techniques, not the volume produced’.
This article was featured in the March edition of Bartender Magazine By Philip Duff As…
Where is Sydney’s oldest pub? Whether the claim is ‘the oldest pub’, ‘the longest running continual liquor licence’ or ‘the oldest building ever used as a public house’ there will never be a definite answer as colonial Sydney was brimming with sly grog-shops and hotels from 1800 onwards. Furthermore, the irregularity with which liquor licences were issued would make it all but impossible to substantiate a claim of actually being the ‘oldest hotel’ in Sydney.
“Rum has flavour, it has heritage, and it has quality,” says Dave Broom in his wide ranging work entitled (rather directly) Rum. That sonorous word one can’t help saying without a slight-smile. Rum, roll the ‘r’, has also been described in its early years as that ‘hot, hellish, and terrible liquor’. This was when rum was for slaves, indigenous peoples, the poor and the press-ganged and other more antisocial characters – your pirates, privateers, rebels and ye smugglers.
Belgium, the home of the European Union, waffles, and damn good chocolate has a land area of only 30,528 km² – less than half that of Tasmania. Despite its diminutive territory Belgium is the forth largest brewing nation in Europe with an estimated 125 breweries in operation putting it behind only Germany, the United Kingdom and France despite all three having at least six times the population. It’s not Belgium’s output that is impressive, however, but rather the myriad traditional styles that are still available to this day.
Famously, no matter how beguiling a living goddess like Angelina Jolie might appear, there are a score of chaps (and quite a few ladies, from what we understand) who are tired of putting up with her shit. Nothing lasts forever; not love, freshly squeezed lemon juice – or passion.
Islay is a place of romance, of deafening silence, biting winds and of course…all things whisky. As part of the inner Hebrides it clings to the waist of Scotland and clambers for notoriety as a destination spot.
I feel sorry for the vodka companies. In the last few years there has been a serious backlash against what was until recently the world’s most distilled spirit (apparently that kudos now goes to Korean shochu). Whatever. It’s besides the point I’m trying to make. The return of the classic cocktail over the last decade has been the catalyst for this anti-vodka movement; at least in the highest temples of mixology.
Not long ago, while sailing on the electric Interweb, a wee notice caught my eye. Among the many other internet advertisments promising to enlarge (or reduce) parts of my body I myself consider to be perfectly formed and correctly proportioned, this one was about a spirits competition.