The East India Cocktail

I have a few friends who belong to the East India Club, a private members’ club in London with a long history. Originally set up for employees of the East India Company and officers in the Army and Navy, who might need a base in London while away from their far-flung posts, in the 1930s it absorbed the Sports Club, and then in the 1970s (a tough time for many clubs, when membership of such establishments was at its least fashionable) the Public Schools Club and the Devonshire Club as well. Today there aren’t any real criteria for joining but I think the people I know who belong joined because their schools had been among those originally part of the Public Schools Club. There is no particular connection with East India, but I was interested to hear a couple of references to an “East India Club Cocktail” served at the bar.

In fact it turned out to be simply an “East India Cocktail”, and this is something with quite a history, though there are several approaches to it. It can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century when it seems to have been enjoyed by Englishmen out in the colonies. Though the East India Club would have been in existence by this time (founded in the mid-19th century), it is more likely that the cocktail was devised in one of the “American Bars” in fashionable Grand Hotels of the region.* Recipes vary but it always seems to be Cognac based.

The earliest reference is in Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartender’s Manual from 1882, where a double measure of Cognac is augmented by small amounts of curaçao, maraschino, bitters and pineapple syrup. You might think that the use of pineapple syrup rather than juice is simply a necessary expedient the further you get from the source of pineapples, but O.H. Byron’s The Modern Bartender’s Guide (1884) has a recipe that is essentially the same as Johnson’s except that it uses raspberry syrup instead of pineapple. This may well have evolved from Johnson’s version, but it does show that both pineapple and raspberry versions have been around for a long while.

The use of pineapple syrup certainly persisted into the Golden Age of Cocktails, as Robert Vermeire and Harry MacElhone, writing in the 1920s, specify it. But the Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930 gives the ingredients as brandy, curaçao, bitters and pineapple juice. as does Cocktails by Jimmy of Ciro’s (1930) and the Café Royal Cocktail Book (1937, an attempt to codify “correct” recipes by the United Kingdom Bartenders Guild). Perhaps the juice had just become more widely available by this stage, though a couple of sources from this time, and also David Embury writing in the 1940s, suggest that maraschino can be use instead of the pineapple juice, which would suggest it is just there to add a bit of fruity sweetness.

In fact the use of pineapple juice in cocktails does not just add the flavour of pineapples but, when vigorously shaken, adds a rich, silky, foamy texture. However, for me this cocktail is primarily about the combination of Cognac and pineapple flavours, which I think go very handsomely together indeed. Simon Difford’s version specifies Grand Marnier, a sophisticated curaçao made from a Cognac base, which seems a bit unnecessary to me, given that the cocktail is made out of Cognac anyway. And in fact I find that the orange flavour from the curaçao gets a bit lost too.** I would recommend just using Cointreau.

I rang the bar steward at the East India Club to ask how he made it. He does indeed specify Cognac, curaçao, bitters and pineapple juice, though he adds: “It’s very sweet. It’s good for the ladies.”

Actually I don’t think it is that sweet, but I do personally feel that it needs some balancing tartness, and one or two teaspoons of lemon or lime juice seem to do the trick, though it will depend on how sweet or sour you like things.

East India Cocktail
1½ shots Cognac
1½ shots pineapple juice
¾ shot curaçao (orange liqueur)
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1–2 tsp lemon or lime juice (optional)
Shake vigorously with ice and strain into a glass. Traditionally garnished with a cocktail cherry though Difford suggests a twist of orange peel

* Though Simon Difford says that the juice version is “thought to originate with Frank Meier at the Ritz Bar, Paris”, which would make it much later, as Frank served at the Ritz from 1921 to 1947. 

** Actually Difford gives this recipe as “East India No.2”. His “No.1”, which he says is based on Ted Haigh’s version, which in turn is based on Johnson’s, uses syrup instead of juice, but in fact Haigh goes down the raspberry syrup route, adding maraschino as well, and Difford goes one further in replacing the raspberry syrup with grenadine.

The Armin Strom Cognac Watch: wearing your wealth on your sleeve

The Armin Strom Cognac Watch: you can see the transparent capsule at the
5 o'clock position, containing a drop of 1762 Cognac

I’ve been contacted again by Wealth Solutions, those crazy Polish people behind the special 1953 Glenfarclas whisky bottling for the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012. This time they’ve bought themselves a bottle of 1762 Gautier Cognac, bottled in 1840 and believed to be the oldest bottle ever sold at public auction. Bonhams of New York presented the bottle with an estimate of $20,000–25,000, but in the end it went for a whopping $60,000.

When a wine or spirit is that old and that expensive, many purchasers will have no intention of drinking it, but will keep it intact as an investment. Wealth Solutions, however, opened the bottle at a special ceremony last November, and decanted it into flacons. I don’t know if any of this will get tasted, but their current project is much more bizarre. They have teamed up with high-end Swiss watch manufacturer Armin Strom to product a wristwatch that actually contains a drop of the 1762 Cognac.

The precious Gautier, the oldest authenticated bottle of Cognac
ever sold at auction

At this point I think we need to step back and think about what is going on here. I don’t know what these watches—due to be launched next month at watch show Baselworld 2016—will cost, as price is very much “on application” and ordinary Armin Strom timepieces seem to be in the $10,000+ arena. Yet the person who buys one will never know what this rare spirit tastes like. The drop is sealed in a sapphire crystal capsule*—which is just as well, of course, otherwise it would evaporate in a matter of hours. So you’ll never know its aroma either. (Although, again, having a watch that made you smell of brandy might raise a few eyebrows at that 9am board meeting.)

No, this is very much a matter of simply knowing the brandy is there. The whole high-end watch market has always been a bit mystifying to me. I like to wear vintage watches, simply because I like the idea that this thing was on someone’s wrist in the 1920s or 1930s and has been ticking away ever since. (I have a pocket watch that, from the engraved dedication inside, looks like it was presented as a gift to “R.B.S.” on 22nd July 1931, perhaps celebrating retirement: these are the sorts of human stories that you can muse upon.) They can be purchased on eBay for £40 and I’m not too bothered that they might not keep the best time and regularly break down altogether.

The underside of the watch, showing the
engraving of a bunch of grapes

On the other end of the scale are watches like Armin Strom’s. I’m sure they keep very good time, but then so does a cheap digital watch you can buy for a fiver from a petrol station. With these watches it is about the difficulty of making them mechanically, and Strom specialises in “skeleton” designs where everything is hollow and exposed so you can see the workings. To my eye this actually makes them rather hard to read, but that is not the point—the point is that it is difficult and expensive. In fact, with such watches I suspect that the asking price is far in excess of what is needed to reflect the cost of manufacture. Here we are in the realm of things that need to be expensive just so that rich people can conspicuously consume them. That is the Wealth Solution—as if wealth is a problem that needs to be solved. For some people nothing is intrinsically expensive enough: so they must agree that certain items will be designated as expensive so they can vie to own them. Walking around with a drop of the world’s oldest Cognac inside your watch feels a bit like adorning yourself with a crystal reliquary containing a relic of a saint—in the hope that you will be mystically healed by the patron saint of the Painfully Wealthy.

For the record, the watch has 117 components, 20 jewels, a manual-winding mechanism that will run for five days, and a hand-engraved image of a bunch of grapes on the underside. It is available in stainless steel, titanium and rose gold finishes and comes with a blue alligator strap. (And you thought blue alligators were extinct.)

It seems a shame for this spirit to be sealed away untasted, but of course only 40 of these watches are going to be made, so that is only 40 drops of the stuff that has been earmarked. We’ll have to wait and see that happens to the rest of it (unless the wags at Wealth Solutions flamed it over their Christmas pudding two months ago for a bet). It makes you wonder how far you could take this idea—limited edition designer trainers where the uppers are stitched together from a newly discovered canvas by Rembrandt? Or a novelty gear stick ornament for your sports car with a crystal dome containing your initials spelled out in illuminated letters cut from the Book of Kells? Or an iPhone case containing a fine slice of Einstein’s brain tissue?

In the meantime, I notice from the lush photos of the Armin Strom timepiece that the tiny phial of 1792 Cognac seems to have an air bubble in it, so at least your wristwatch has the bonus that it can double as a spirit level.

* The capsule is placed at the five o’clock position on the dial. I’m curious as to whether this was deliberate—are they suggesting that 5pm is the hour when a gentleman puts down his tools, calls it a day and relaxes with a bracing droplet of 250-year-old brandy?

The Wealth Solutions crew opening their bottle in November. You don't want to make these people angry.

Some Negroni variants

A Mr President cocktail

I like a Negroni (equal parts gin, red vermouth and Campari), and I seem to have this in common with much of the world, as it is on trend these days. (Which is interesting when you consider that it is quite bitter—perhaps we are just getting more sophisticated in our cocktail palates, or perhaps it is the appeal of the vintage/heritage aspect.)

I was therefore intrigued when I later encountered the Boulevardier, which is effectively a Negroni with the gin replaced by bourbon or rye whiskey. It was created by Harry MacElhone, of Harry’s Bar in Paris, for Erskine Gwynne, socialite, nephew of Alfred Vanderbilt and editor of the Boulevardier magazine. It appears in Harry’s book Barflies and Cocktails, published in 1927, where it is given as equal parts bourbon, Campari and red vermouth. (Harry’s earlier ABC of Mixing Cocktails has an Old Pal cocktail that is equal parts Canadian—i.e. rye—whiskey, Campari and dry vermouth, which is a pretty dry drink. Oddly, a cocktail with the same name appears in the 1927 book made with red vermouth.) You often now find the Boulevardier with the whiskey elevated to 1½ parts, though certainly with Redemption Rye or Rittenhouse 100 Proof equal parts is easily enough. I would certainly put this cocktail up there with the Negroni; if you like Campari you should try it, as it is essentially a Manhattan with added Campari. Even with milder Maker’s Mark bourbon I think equal parts works fine, though ramping the bourbon to 1½ is still interesting.

Count Camillo Negroni, alleged inventor of the cocktail of
the same name. However, the contemporary Negroni family
insist that their ancestor Count Pascal Olivier Negroni is the
real creator. See here for the low-down on the spat 

All of which got me wondering what would happen if you tried using other spirits in place of the Negroni’s gin.* What about rum? In Havana’s Prohibition-era glory days as a watering hole many extant cocktails seemed to spawn an equivalent that used rum instead of the original base spirit—the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktails Manual has three “President” cocktails, all essentially a Dry Martini made with rum instead of gin, with a few other bits and pieces thrown in. Sure enough such a thing as a rum Negroni already exists: the Kingston Negroni uses pot still Jamaican rum, while the Mr President uses white Cuban rum (though the proportions are different here: 1¼ shots rum, ¾ shot red vermouth, ½ shot Campari). I’m not entirely convinced about either of these: the white rum is easily smothered by the other ingredients, contributing only a little sugar character; although clean, I find it a bit too sweet. In the dark rum version (I used Myers’s) the rum certainly makes its presence felt, though I suspect that I am ultimately not really a fan of this sort of Jamaican rum with its dry, dusty, woody rasp, and it is debatable here whether this quality compliments the rooty bitterness of the Campari or quarrels with it. I think on balance that this is a successful combo, in that you can certainly taste all the ingredients in the mix, although they seem to be circling each other warily. Compared to the Boulevardier, however, it is definitely less inspired.

A Milano is simply a Negroni made with vodka instead of gin, or an Americano (originally known as a Milano-Torino) made with vodka instead of soda. Ultimately it lacks the complexity of the Negroni or the Boulevardier, as you can’t taste the vodka, even if you bump up the proportions. It is also known as a Negroski. This cocktail need detain us no further.

A Rosita cocktail

Inevitably, where one whisky goes another will follow, and the Scotch Negroni uses blended Scotch instead. I used Famous Grouse and, although I am not generally a fan of Scotch-based cocktails, this one undoubtedly works. The whisky balances against the orangey fruit notes in much the same way as it does in a Blood and Sand (Scotch, orange juice, red vermouth and cherry brandy) and seems to add a chocolatey warmth.

Replacing the gin with Cognac (I tried Courvoisier Exclusif) is surprisingly successful, and quite different from the other variants. The fruitiness rises up, suggesting apples and prunes, and it balances in a very satisfying and complex way, though the overall effect is more a warming autumn drink (I imagine—I’m writing this during a heatwave here in the UK). I also tried it with Calvados and it works too, in the same fruity way, though it lacks the complex spread of flavours that the Cognac offers.

Finally we come to the Rosita, made using reposado tequila (I used Tierra Noble**). Simply replacing the gin with tequila at equal parts, the tequila sits squarely in the mix; the recipe I found gives 1½ parts tequila and although this still works I’m not sure it’s necessary. (The recipe, from Gaz Regan's Bartender's Bible, actually has the vermouth as an even blend of red and dry white; this gives a subtle and quite dry result, though I think I prefer it with just red vermouth.) It’s a fascinating combination, with the petrolly, smokey, herbaceous agave flavours entwining with the bitter, orange notes of the Campari. It works in a similar fashion to the Scotch version, with smoke being present in each case and each a relatively subtle blend compared to the minty, sawmill punch of the rye whiskey version.

Out of all of these, for me the Rosita takes first prize—it’s not just “interesting” but is a cocktail I will definitely come back to—thought the Boulvardier and the Cognac Negroni are definitely worth trying too.

* Of course there is much more you can do to a Negroni than just vary the base spirit. In fact Gaz Regan has written an entire book about it… 

** I was given a couple of samples at a trade show, but I don’t think they ever did sort out distribution in the UK. Which is a shame as it’s a great product.

Sipping on ‘yak’…

My kit for blokeish heaven*

Although cocktails based on Cognac are among the oldest created, it’s no surprise that major brandy players are keen to get hip to the “Second Golden Age of the Cocktail” (which we’re in, if you hadn’t noticed) and persuade the young and cool that Cognac is for hipsters, not just for septuagenarians in gentleman’s clubs.

This time last year Courvoisier created their multi-room, immersive “Institute of Grand Cocktails Experience”, where each room was meant to be “like stepping inside a cocktail”. Their Courvoisier Exclusif expression was actually developed as a cocktail ingredient, and in London Cocktail Week 2010 they sponsored a seminar on that most ancient of mixed drinks, punch.

Now Rémy Martin have taken a more blokeish approach and are sponsoring the GQ Men of the Year Awards ceremony on 3rd September, which will include the special Rémy Martin Breakthrough Award for newcomers. Rémy cocktails will be served through the ceremony and afterwards the brand will be running a bespoke bar at the after-party on the Royal Opera House balcony.

Rémy’s mixologists apparently kept coming back to a signature combination of Cognac and ginger, so the house cocktail will be the R&G, Rémy and ginger ale. The sample kit I was sent included a bottle of Fevertree ginger ale, so that is clearly the preferred brand.

An R&G cocktail

R&G
50ml Rémy Martin VSOP
Ginger ale top
Lemon peel garnish
Build over ice and garnish with a lemon twist

With that twist it reminds me of the classic Horse’s Neck cocktail, which was in essence a soft drink of ginger ale with a long spiral strip of lemon peel—just like in the R&G photo—and bitters; but from its inception it has been regularly spiked, sometimes with bourbon but originally with Cognac. I’m sipping an R&G now and I can confirm that it is a good combination. The Rémy has aromas of oranges, bananas, almonds and hazelnuts and an underlying warmth that is indeed like ginger.

On Rémy’s website you’ll find a host more recommended cocktails—five of which contain ginger. Moreover, they have created a special drink just for the GQ awards, called, naturally the R&GQ. It likewise involves ginger but also, in a stroke of blokeish genius, contains beer!**

The manly R&GQ cocktail

R&GQ
35ml Rémy Martin VSOP
20ml Lemon juice
15ml Bottle Green Ginger and Lemongrass cordial
Very cold British ale
Build in a chilled half-pint glass tankard

Since they are not too specific about the ale, I figure that a Pale Ale style would be best, as these are often intended to be served cold, or at least cool (I plump for St Austell Cornish Pale Ale). I’ve never tried making a cocktail with beer before, and it is quite a revelation: for a start you can taste everything, the ale with its bitter hoppy finish, the sour lemon juice, the warm date-like Cognac and the fiery ginger (the lemongrass perhaps getting slightly subsumed into the lemon juice). It retains the quaffability of beer, but with a complexity and the typical sweet-‘n’-sour extremities of many cocktails. It feels a bit like drinking an 18th-century drink, like spiced, mulled ale (although it is cold) or punch. Fascinating. I’m definitely a convert.

The Rémy Martin Cognac house itself goes back to 1724. The spirit is distilled from grapes, mostly Ugni Blanc, grown exclusively in the Grande Champagne and Petit Champagne regions of Cognac. Barrel ageing is an important part of the Cognac process, and the spirit in the VSOP*** is a blend of batches between four and 14 years old, all aged in barrels of French Limousin oak.

The version I have here is the VSOP Mature Cask Finish: after the final blend of aged spirits is made, the mixture is rested for a further year in small oak casks, all more than 20 years old. Apparently this extra time in small casks (with a proportionally greater surface area) increases the gentle exposure of the brandy to the air, through the permeable wood, while presumably getting relatively little of the heavy vanilla character of fresh oak. This is said to increase the peach and apricot notes. I get the impression that this last stage is a relatively new development.

Sampling the Rémy neat, I get wafts of berries and the afore-mentioned stone fruit, plus vanilla from the oak and something sweetly floral like rose. It’s quite a complex nose, with unexpected things in the mix like ashtrays and sticking plasters too. Bring it up to your lips and the apricot nose intensifies. These flavours continue on to the palate, with little sparks of other things, like tobacco and figs, and on to a relatively smooth, warm finish.

I put the Rémy head-to-head with some of Sainsbury’s own VSOP Cognac that I happen to have, on the grounds that they are both VSOPs, though the Sainbury’s brandy is £21.50 a bottle and the Rémy is about £34. The Sainsbury’s has a big, soupy nose with a host of flavours, including raisins, dates, chocolate and copper, jostling with each other. It’s bold but a little chaotic. The Rémy, by comparison, has more refinement, poise and clarity. On the palate the Sainsbury’s is about as smooth as the Rémy, with some latent Christmas cake flavours, but a bit flabby and unresolved.

Rémy on the rocks, anyone?

My Rémy Martin Man Kit comes with a handsome highball glass, a sturdy bar spoon and, interestingly, a little ice bucket just the right size for a 35cl half bottle. (I later discover from the PR that it is actually intended for chilling the ginger ale!) Now purists will be perplexed and outraged at the idea of serving Cognac chilled, but a few years ago Cognac became the drink choice for hippety-hop hipsters in the clubz, presumably because of its traditional association with opulence and wealth, and I wonder if the preferred presentation in this environment became to serve it on ice. In any case, it reminds me of a conversation I had with a Rémy rep after a Cognac and cigar evening some years ago, when he talked about arranging a tasting to match Rémy VSOP and XO with various sweet and savoury foods—in some of these pairings the Cognac was served on the rocks, or even from the freezer. So clearly chilled Cognac is not just a nouveau riche affectation but something with the aesthetic endorsement of Rémy themselves.

Some other classic Cognac cocktails you might like to try include the Sidecar (Cognac, Cointreau and lemon juice), the Champagne Cocktail (Champagne, Cognac, bitters and a sugar cube), and, if you must, the Earthquake (equal parts Cognac and absinthe). Or for something a little more obscure but surprisingly effective, try the Ritz, which I believe may have been invented by Dale DeGroff:

Ritz Cocktail
¾ shot Rémy Martin
½ shot Cointreau
½ shot maraschino
½ shot lemon juice
Champagne/sparkling wine top
Orange peel garnish
Shake the first four ingredients with ice and strain into a coupe glass. Top with Champagne or sparkling wine and garnish with a squeezed strip of orange peel.

* This issue of GQ comes with five different (and doubtless highly collectible) covers, featuring the different members of One Direction, outlining how “heavier…rockier…cooler” One Direction's New Direction is. I hear that 1D's army of female teen fans have been so incensed by some of the less than hagiographical things that the GQ journalists say about the band that a barrage of death threats has been launched against the magazine's staff. That's how edgy a GQ bloke's life is.

** In fairness it has been trendy to make cocktails with beer for some time. I'm sure it gives the mixologist the chance to specify obscure craft ales and boutique porters…

*** Stands for Very Special Old Pale or Very Superior Old Pale. The categorisation requires that everything in the blend must be at least four years old, though as in this case, the average age will usually be higher than this.

The Emperor Napoleon Cocktail

Whilst I was mixing some Courvoisier Cocktails for the Diamond Jubilee, I noticed again that the bottle had a picture of Napoleon on it (please make your own ironic comments here). Given that I also had Napoleon’s favourite wine, Vin de Constance, and a small sample of Mandarine Napoleon to hand, I was immediately inspired to mix up a drink.

Following a little research, I found that The Cocktail DB already lists a Napoleon Cocktail and so my creation is called the Emperor Napoleon.

The Emperor Napoleon Cocktail

The Emperor Napoleon

30ml Courvoisier

10ml Vin de Constance

10ml Mandarine Napoleon

SHAKE

This makes a rich and flavourful drink that has strong, warming Cognac on one side, the juicy and sweet Mandarine Napoleon sitting on the other, and the Vin de Constance in the middle. There are herbal elements, too, as well as a lot of sweet citrus. For a tart and extremely refreshing drink, add 10ml of lemon juice, to make an “Emperor’s Vacation”.

Courvoisier VS Cognac is available from  al major grocery stores – RRP £23.79 for 70cl

The Earthquake cocktail

Diminuative painter and absinthe fiend
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

A cocktail is always more appealing if there is a story behind it, perhaps because as you slump over your glass you can feel that you are following in the footsteps of the great, partaking of an ancient and noble tradition.

The Earthquake cocktail was allegedly invented by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and, as you might expect, involves absinthe—and thus immediately borrows from that drink's treasurehouse of romance and dangerous allure. The recipe I first encountered was:

3 parts absinthe
3 parts cognac

Simply combine the two ingredients in a wine goblet. (Other recipes suggest a brandy balloon, though why you’d want to go out of your way to concentrate the eye-watering fumes from this drink, I do not know.) Given that the proportions are simply half and half, I particularly like the fact that this recipe specifies fully three parts of each, thus adding to the whole mood of doomed indulgence.

Needless to say, anything involving this much unwatered absinthe is hard to drink. Some sources do suggest adding water or ice. Note that absintheonline.com recommends using a lower-alcohol absinthe such as Swiss La Bleue or Pernod White Fairy, and I imagine that Clandestine (53% ABV and more readily available in the UK) would fit the bill.

However, any research quickly throws up an alternative recipe, espcially from more general cocktail sources (as opposed to those specifically focusing on absinthe chic).

1 part gin
1 part whiskey
¾ or 1 part absinthe
Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into a Collins glass.

Some recipes specify Bourbon whiskey; whether the others mean to imply it, or whether they mean Scotch, is not clear. I have tried it with both and it is quite pleasant either way, though the woody sweetness of the Bourbon offsets the bitterness of the absinthe more.

I initially assumed that this version was a later invention to appeal more to international tastes. But in fact The Savoy Cocktail Book (first published in 1930) gives this recipe. So perhaps the absinthe/brandy version is a spurious later invention, based on the sort of thing fans would assume that Toulouse-Lautrec would drink.

Which brings us to the name. There are various explanations around: one is that it’s called an Earthquake because this is the effect it has on you. The Savoy Cocktail Book, which is normally pretty terse in its recipes, does add, “This is a cocktail whose potency is not to be taken too lightly or, for that matter, too frequently!” It also gives a different explanation for the name—that if there should happen to be an earthquake while you are drinking it, it won’t matter. (A slight variation on this version is that if there is an earthquake while you’re drinking it, you won’t even notice.)

So who knows if Toulouse-Lautrec ever had anything to do with this cocktail? For completeness’ sake I leave you with one more recipe I have found:

1 part absinthe
1 part brandy
splash of red wine

Serve in a martini glass,“ice and sugar lump optional”. I’ve not tried it but it sounds like what an absinthist drinks on holiday, a hardcore sangria. Or just something you'd create by accident while clearing up after a party.

An Orange Fist…in an Orange Glove

Philip Wilson with a Fifty Pound "case gin" bottle

When someone is talking about a drink they make or sell it can sometimes be heavily technical, sometimes heavily business-oriented. But Philip Wilson prefers to operate on a much more personal level. "If we like the guy who makes it, we're happy to bring it in," he says with an affable shrug. "Does he care? Has the basic product been well made or are there flaws and imbalances in there? Right now we're dealing with this Australian whisky maker—we'll sell the square root of not a lot, but we like what he does." OK, this makes Philip sound like a cross between a hippy and a Mafia godfather, and he is neither. But he and his four colleagues at Eaux de Vie Ltd specialise in very niche products so are used to dealing in passion rather than high volumes.

We're at London's Graphic Bar to taste Philip's Fifty Pound gin. Mercifully the name is not an indication of price but a reference to the tax brought in by George II in an attempt to quash dangerous low-end gins that were flooding the place and damaging the nation's health. (Not dissimilar to the situation in France in the late 19th century when the soaring popularity of absinthe led to a flood of dangerously low-grade drinks.) Which is a bit odd considering that Fifty Pound was actually put together for the Spanish market. Yes, there is a huge market for gin in Spain, and a big sherry distributor decided to add one to their list. So they had something knocked up by Thames Distillers in south London (New Sheridan Club Members may be interested to note that this is the same company who manufacture SW4 gin, sponsors of the NSC summer party). Philip was looking through their sherry list and came across the gin. His curiosity piqued he had a bottle sent over and decided to distribute it in the UK.

Fifty Pound is a muscle gin.* It's intended to imitate the old-style London Dry Gin—"big, fat and flavoursome", as Philip puts it. The 11 botanicals (juniper, angelica root, coriander, liquorice root, grains of paradise, lemon and orange rind and savoury, plus another three secret ones) are cold-macerated in quadruple-distilled grain spirit then redistilled just once. (Other gins may use multiple distillations post-maceration to create a "purer" effect, but a single distillation hangs on to more of the essential oils—and this is a gin that packs a punch.) The distillation takes place in batches in a small John Dore still. Crucially, the gin is then allowed to "rest" for three weeks—to allow all those oils to integrate fully with the spirit—before bottling in distinctive rectangular bottles that taper from the shoulder to the base. (The design is modelled pretty closely on the earliest gin bottles, known as "case gin" because the shape made the bottles easier to pack together in cases.) The label of each bottle is marked with the number of the 1,000-bottle batch from which it comes.

Fifty Pound with the Tanq and the Fever Tree we used for the G&T test

Sampled neat, at room temperature, Fifty Pound has plenty of the juniper coming through with a steely graphite top note, and also red berries. But for me the defining characteristic is the orange rind, giving it a warm, spicy quality. It's like a Christmas gin. The official brand characteristics are smoothness and balance, though it didn't strike me as especially smooth on the palate—but then most of the action was on the nose, which is boisterous, like being hit over the head with an orange in a sock.

Philip had also brought some Tanqueray to taste alongside, and the comparison was intriguing. After the Fifty Pound the Tanq nose struck me as delicately perfumed in a floral way, refined and subtle; the palate was woody, aromatic and more lingering than the Fifty Pound. Much as I warmed to the latter I also found myself developing new respect for the Tanqueray.

Philip had one more trick up his sleeve: Death's Door gin, from Wisconsin. Anyone who finds that all gin just tastes of gin should stick their snout into this. It's dominated by fennel, so much so that to me it doesn't smell or taste like gin at all. Not just fennel but a sort of pungent stewed fennel, with hints of other stewed veg and burnt rubber, like a bad ratatouille. Mr Bridgman-Smith couldn't see what I was complaining about and confessed he rather liked it, but for me the one thing it was good for was giving you a renewed appreciation of the other two gins. Just smelling them again after the Death's Door was like collapsing into the arms of the love of one's life (sadly quite close to the truth…). The comparison really brought out a rose-petal bouquet to the Tanq and a aromatic wood note to the Fifty Pound.

Fifty Pound gin is around £30.50 a bottle.

* I keep wanting to pronounce it "fiddy-poun", like it's the obvious thing for 50 Cent to drink with his homies. I think the days of cognac—sorry, "nyak"—as the de rigeur hip-hop drink are surely over.

Brandy and Cigars: A Match Made in Heaven?

Alexandre with the XO. He is very French

It’s the end of your fantasy evening and for what do you bellow? Brandy and cigars, of course.

Imagine how my curiosity was piqued when I was invited along to a cigar-and-brandy event last night at the Stafford Hotel in St James’s. The cigars were Cohiba Siglo VI courtesy of Hunters and Frankau and the Cognac was Remy Martin VSOP and XO. These brandy categories indicate age, but not anything terribly specific: the cognacs are blends of spirits of different ages. “VSOP” requires a minimum of four years (in practice the Rémy VSOP consists of eaux de vie aged between four and 14 years) and XO six years (though from 2016 this will rise to ten).

These acronyms actually mean nothing in French—they stand for English phrases “Very Special/Superior Old Pale” and “Extra Old”, reflecting the dominance of the English market at the time they were devised. Rémy does actually produce a VS product too, we are told by Alexandre Quintin, the Rémy ambassador (who is very French and even looks like a character from Belleville Rendezvous). It’s a grade below VSOP, but is sold only in America. Make of this what you will, but it’s interesting to note that while the US is now an important market for cognac, the demographic has shifted dramatically from affluent white drinkers to urban black consumers, who now represent 60–80 per cent of sales. In studies many purchasers have confirmed that their choice of drink is specifically an endorsement of their favourite rap artist. Do not underestimate the power of hippety-hop.

Rémy are very proud of the high proportion of grapes from Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne, the two more prestigious crus for cognac. A blend of the two, with at least 50 per cent Grande Champagne, is known as Fine Champagne and 80 per cent of all of this is made by Rémy. In fact their VSOP is 55 per cent Grande and the XO 85 per cent.

The Stafford event was originally scheduled to take place in the vaulted wine cellars, where I hung around twiddling my thumbs before discovering that it had moved to the courtyard. (I’m glad I saw the cellars, though, as they are a shrine to their WWII function as bunkers, filled not just with dusty wine bottles but old signs, helmets and other mementoes; perhaps worthy of further investigation.) Needless to say the weather whipped up and the heavens opened, leaving us huddled under canvas canopies. Hurricane conditions aren’t ideal for appreciating the subtleties of a stogie—the boxes of long cigar matches liberally scattered were of little use and I relied on the generous loan of a multi-jet turbo gas lighter (imagine lighting your smoke with a pocket-sized Death Star) from a fellow guest. Initially they plied us with Prosecco, which I thought was a surprisingly delicate flavour to risk against the leathery Old-World fumes of the cigars, but perhaps not—I was reliably informed by the Hunters and Frankau rep that certain cigars go very well with Champagne. Don’t believe me? I might arrange a Club event to investigate this assertion once and for all…

The story goes that an exceptional cigar roller, Eduardo Rivera, devised a particular long thin cigar for the private used of himself, family and friends. One of those friends was Bienvenido Perez, who happened to be Fidel Castro’s bodyguard. One day Castro was out of smokes and asked his minder to sub him. He enjoyed Rivera’s cigar so much he set the man up up with a team of five to produce them for the president’s exclusive use. (The name Cohiba came from the ancient Taino Indian word for the bunches of tobacco leaves that Columbus saw the original Cubans smoking.) Indeed it was not until 1982 that a range of Cohibas became available to the public; ten years after that the Linea 1492 range was added to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World, in five gauges dubbed Siglo (“century”) I to V. The relatively fat (a 52 in cigar gauges) Siglo VI, which we were smoking, didn’t arrive until 2003. Two of the filler leaves in Cohiba cigars undergo a tertiary fermentation in cedar barrels to impart smoothness. Apparently the Cohiba flavour is most often described as “grassy”, though I’m not sure I picked up on that. 

OK, cigar aside, what was the brandy like? I  must have tasted at least the VSOP before but coming to it fresh I was hit by an unexpectedly pronounced apple note. In fact if you’d given it to me blind and asked me what it was I might even have suggested that it was Calvados (Normandy’s apple brandy). After that, as you get your snout deeper in and then sample the palate, I got broader, spicier notes, but still all very lively and pugnacious. It may be an old world drink but it was still bouncing around on its toes. (The Rémy website claims you should be getting “the impertinence of wild flowers”. Don’t you just know that’s been translated from French?)

I then switched to the XO and immediately got a softer, wider, preserved-fruit barrage. Alexandre likened the flavours to Christmas pudding—it was figs and plums, very characterful but more like subtle woody memories, in which you want to wallow nostalgically, than the darting VSOP. 

I’m no connoisseur of cigars but I have enjoyed a few and I was interested to see if it was true that they could be meaningfully partnered with drink. Just because they are commonly associated doesn’t mean it works: after all, Champagne and chocolate are often sold together, yet make a foul gustatory combination. However, it won’t surprise you to hear that Cognac and cigars to do work. Just like a food and drink combination, the flavours of each emphasise aspects of the other. The sweetness of the brandy seemed to be brought out, a sugar cane quality that perhaps filtered any bitterness in the smoke, leaving smooth, rubbery, Reisling-like, petrol notes and aromatic woody hints. The two jostled and occasionally sparked: at one point I got a burst of mixed, candied fruit peel (back to Christmas pudding again, I suppose).

Hunters organise regular events of this kind but you’ll have to keep looking at their website: they are not allowed to do mail-outs, as this constitutes advertising. Rémy meanwhile are organising a “speakeasy” themed night next week, with Champagne reception, three-course meal and lashings of Cognac and cigars (is that really what speakeasies were like? I’m thinking more bathtub gin and raucous jazz). But this will set you back £140. In fact my evening was very much one of sampling the high life—while Rémy Martin VSOP is typically around £30, the XO closer to £90. Cohiba Siglo VI are around £22–25 singly.

So what other flavour combinations are there out there we should investigate? Chablis and chewing tobacco? Champagne and chewing gum? The Institute is at your service. Mind the monkey on the way out. He was testing our homemade puffer fish bitters last night and I think he’s still sleeping it off…