A garden of bourbon delights

Mrs H. pointed out that we had mint growing in the garden, something that I admit hadn’t really sunk in before (I am not the green-fingered type). In fact more than once I have gone to buy some herb or other only for her to show me later that it was actually growing ten feet from the kitchen door.

So I did what any gentleman would do, and made a mint julep. I mention this only really to share with you my intense satisfaction with it: every now and then you make a cocktail where everything falls into place, as if for the first time you truly see what it is all about.

Juleps in waiting: some of the leaves that got away… this time

I took five leaves of mint and put them in a tumbler with about a teaspoon of sugar syrup,* maybe a teaspoon and a half, and muddled it. Then I filled the glass with ice** and added an undisclosed quantity of Four Roses (I used the Single Barrel, which was perhaps extravagant, though it worked well), then stirred.

You get a fresh, pungent aroma from the mint that you simply don’t get from things that are “mint-flavoured”, and this mint had been only a couple of minutes off the plant. The drink was sweetened, but not sweet, and the character of the whisky shone through. The Single Barrel is bottled at 50% so it can take a bit of dilution from the ice without seeming at all watery (and this ice adds no flavour of its own), though I tried the same recipe the next night with the Four Roses Small Batch and it worked well too.

I think I should try using more things from the garden in drinks—though I fear that it may be some years before the fruit of the lemon tree I gave Mrs H. last month will be sliced in our gin and tonics…***

* This was actually commercial syrup from Monin but you can make it yourself easily enough. Ed McAvoy (then Jameson brand ambassador) showed me the simplest way to do it: using a funnel fill a bottle, such as an empty wine or spirit bottle, two-thirds full with dry granulated sugar, then boil a kettle and carefully top the bottle up, before corking it and shaking it vigorously till the sugar dissolves.

** I used ice made in an ice tray with Isbre spring water.

*** And not everything from the garden is good to put in your drink. A few winters ago, inspired by DBS’s post about using snow in drinks, I padded out into the frosty garden and scooped some fresh snow off a plant to make a julep or an absinthe frappé or some such. I forget the actual cocktail, but I vividly remember how astonishingly repulsive it was, full of strong, weird, off flavours, sour and flat, dirty and choking. To this day I cannot understand how water than has fallen frozen from the sky and landed on a leaf can have acquired such a taste, unless the air in London is seriously polluted.

London Cocktail Update

Clayton had a busy day yesterday working hard, conducting research at London Cocktail Week yesterday. We were lucky enough to see:

Gaz Regan at Courvoisier's Spirit of Punch seminar

Philip Duff at G-Vine's Pre-history & Evolution of Gin

The Hayman Family at Meet the Distillers

at a Havana Club Cocktail Seminar (where the lovely Mrs. B joined us)

and what better way to finish off than a Molecular Mixology class with the chap at Purl.

Drinking highlights for me would have to be the Courvoisier Sidecar and trying a Gin made to the world's oldest Gin recipe from 1495 called Aqua Ardens. Naturally the drinks at Purl were tasty as always, and I especially enjoyed their Moscow Mule.

No doubt you'll hear more about our adventures

in the world of London Bar in the next few posts.

In addition to all this excitement when we finally arrived home at 02:00 (I had suggested to Mrs. B that we would probably be home around 21:00!) I found a box had arrived containing Gum Arabic.

Since speaking to Ted Breaux at the Lucid Tasting I have been keen to try some proper Gum/Gomme Syrup (Sugar Syrup containing Gum Arabic which makes it silkier) so I have decided to make my own. Incidentally I discovered that Giffard Gomme Syrup does contain Gum Arabic so if you want an off-the-shelf version may I suggest that.

I will keep you posted on developments.