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Latest

Keystone looks skyward for new CBD bar

With Sydney’s CBD basements slowly fllling up it was only a matter of time before bar owners started to look up, as the team at Keystone have now done. “It’s called the Rook,” said group director Paul Schulte, “it means a playful bird that hangs out up high.”

Rum: King Cane & bottles of rum

In 1682, rum was big business in the American colonies. So much so that, when faced with the imminent arrival of a “hundred or more” heretic Quakers, Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather thought he could sell them for rum. “Much spoil can be made by selling the whole lot to Barbadoes [sic],” he wrote, “where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar”. Such was the appeal of rum – the New England colonists were crazy for it.

Grain

Sydney’s northern CBD is witnessing a bibulous revival right now. Venues like the Morrison, Palmer & Co, and now, Grain Bar, have dragged the north stretch of George Street into the modern drinking world.

Happy Repeal Day!

Happy Repeal Day! Toast the occasion with this classic, the Scofflaw, and be thankful the bars are open tonight.

The Workers

Old Hawkie was the key attraction at the opening of this new Balmain bar on the site of the old trades and labourers hall from the 1890’s. Indeed the bar takes it cues from Balmain’s long history with the Labor party, and the images of Labor leaders of the past adorn the ceiling.

Cocktail Experiment: Aromatic bitters

Aromatic bitters: it is a trickier category for tastings than most, and requires a little more experience as bartender than do other drinks categories. Just as well we were at the Hazy Rose, in Darlinghurst. We sourced a surprise for this the issue, with the Hazy Rose crew among the first bartenders in Australia to get their hands on the Dale DeGroff Pimento Bitters.

Brasserie Ananas

Open in time for the rush of festive season champagne sales is this new brasserie and bar in the Rocks. The bar is decked out in 1920s décor and inspired by the French Mediterranean and the eponymous pineapple (ananas being the French word for it).

Distillery Profile: Bundaberg Rum

There aren’t many iconic Australian brands that have enjoyed such an illustrious and colourful history than that of Bundaberg Rum. It all started in 1888, when a group of enterprising sugar millers decided to do something about a surplus of molasses trickling from the cane fields of Bundaberg…

Astronomical Ardbeg!

Ardbeg, purveyors of peaty pleasures from Islay, have become the first Scottish distillery to conduct experiments in space.

Drinks With: Laura Hay & Karel ‘Papi’ Reyes

One of the great things about Sydney Bar Week is all the amazing talent that jets into town for the week-long celebration of the booze biz. So we took the chance to sit down with two of Pernod Ricard’s finest and here’s what they have to say…