London Cocktail week - Our Experience

So London cocktail week has again passed by, like Christmas come early, only without the glut of cold turkey and unwanted knitwear. We here at GGG had a riotous time and the experience was fun and in some part educational.

The highlight for me was attending the Jameson's trend lab, which talks from London mixology genius Nick Strangeway, who covered very nicely the history of different way to drink Whisky as well a few of, what I could only describe as, gourmet pickle back shots. For those of you not in the know a pickle back is a whisky accompanied with a shot of pickle brine, a test of machismo for some, an intelligent taste combination for others. My favourite was the sweet and spicy beetroot shot.

Following on from Nick was Oisin Davies, Dublin restaurateur and Irish cocktail guru, who covered his process of using Jameson's whisky and locally grown and foraged Irish produced to make the ultimate home grown Irish cocktails.

  Lastly we had Jack McGarry and Sean Muldoon, formally from Belfast, now running the highly acclaimed New York’s Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog. They made us a few of their signature cocktails and punches and talked us through their trials and tribulations of opening a bar in New York.

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Cocktail week highlights -

• The street vendors giving out their samples, my favourite being the delicious Chase Rhubarb vodka
• Signature cocktails, we managed to hit a few places, amongst them were - Detroit, Roadhouse, Covent Garden cocktail club and my favourite cocktail of the week being a rum and gomme syrup concoction at Café Pacifico

Disappointments-

• The Belvedere Martini bar was a bit of a let down, the cocktails being a touch watery and the food pairing, while nice, didn't really add anything to the cocktail, combine this with double the price of all the other cocktail establishments on offer and you get a must try harder from us at GGG

So there you have it in a nutshell, London cocktail week 2013, roll on 2014 I say ! 

We'd love to hear your cocktail week stories as well, so please feel free to comment.

There's more pictures on Pinterest for those interested.

The Gentleman

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