Sian’s Ferguson’s winning cocktail from the Aberdeen heat of the Chartreuse Last Word Competition is here for your viewing pleasure.

Sian Ferguson from Ninety-Nice Bar & Kitchen in Aberdeen not only beat all the boys she also got to star in her very own video and here it is. If you want to follow in her footsteps then get your Green on and enter the Chartreuse Last Word competition. More details here.

Click on the image to view it at full size

One thing that guarantees a dynamic and varied bar culture is bartenders taking the plunge and opening their own venues.

BarLifeUK contributor and all-round Manchester raconteur, Jamie Jones, is doing just that. Along with Chris Legh, director at Heart Soul Rock & Roll and other partners, he will be opening the Yacht Club  on Hardman Square next week.

They tell us of the venue:

“The summer playground of world leaders, glamour girls, actresses, playboys and the rich and famous, the 1950s Riviera was the ultimate place to party and have a jolly good time.

The ideal place to quaff champagne and absorb the sunny Manchester rays, The Yacht Club will harness this spirit, bringing to life the elegance of the Cote d’Azur with the sophistication of the Promenade des Anglais and the stylishness of St Tropez in a chic outdoor bar complete with wooden deck and leather day beds.”

BarLifeUK have had the pleasure of judging Jamie in several competitions, and his drinks have always been first rate, so we are looking forward to trying the Yacht Club’s menu, which will include:

“Boardwalk Bramble; a fruity combination of Bombay Sapphire gin, lemon juice, a little sugar and finished with a drizzle crème de mure liqueur; The Bardot and Monte Carlo Mint Julep.  All of which can be enjoyed seven days per as the bar opens from midday until 11pm.”

The yacht Club opens on April 19^th, and we encourage you to get involved if you are in that neck of the woods. But take our advice and book an open return train ticket… we never seem to make our train out of Manchester for some reason.

For more information, contact Operations Director, Jamie Jones.

Follow the Yacht Club on Twitter and Facebook.

You feel dissatisfied, purposeless and, ultimately, in need of a stiff drink.

About £8,000 worth right there

For me, it was not (as may well be assumed) late on a Tuesday night, watching episodes of Lassie and staring at the bottom of a bottle of cheap whisky, empty fast-food wrappers by my side. Rather, it was a couple of Fridays ago (February 10) at the Glenfiddich Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve charity auction, an evening designed to raise money for the Walking With The Wounded charity, an organisation dedicated to the re-training and re-education of injured war veterans.

The Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve whisky was made to commemorate the 110-year old granddaughter of the Glenfiddich distillery founder, William Grant. Only 14 bottles of the 55-year old whisky have ever been produced, and, of those, only 11 will be released to the public, one to celebrate each decade of her life.

At Friday’s auction, the bottle sold for a whopping £44,000, just shy of the recording-breaking £46,850, which bottle No.1 sold for in December last year. All of the proceeds go directly to the charity, who are hoping to head up an expedition to Everest this April – a fundraising challenge to put five wounded servicemen on top of the world.

One Lucky Journalist

One lucky journalist won the opportunity to sample a wee nip of the extremely rare whisky – and that one lucky journalist happens to work for BarLifeUK, joining only about a dozen people worldwide who have ever tried the rare spirit. Surprisingly pale in colour for something that has spent so long in European barrels, it has a light and floral nose, with a creamy vanilla taste that lingers on the back of the palate for what could may well have been hours, had I not chosen to join the rest of the group in a toast with the 12-year old Glenfiddich.

The Team heading to the top of Everest

But, it wasn’t that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that brought on that moment of clarity. Rather, it was the opportunity to mingle with the members of Walking With The Wounded, and listen to a talk from Private Jaco van Gass, a war veteran who took part in the Walking With The Wounded expedition to the North Pole last year and who was wounded in Afghanistan at the age of just 23. He was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, resulting in the loss of his left arm, as well as a collapsed lung, punctured internal organs, loss of muscle and tissue from the upper left thigh, multiple shrapnel wounds and a fractured knee, fibula and tibia. “At that moment,” he said, “my life changed forever.”

Glenfiddich’s Malt Master Brian Kinsman said that, while the bottle was most likely bought by a collector and would therefore never be opened, the fact that £44,000 went to the charity was a remarkable thing.

And if Glenfiddich wants to get behind that, well, drink up I say.

Sarah "Tiki's Dead" Mitchell

Less than a month old, the underground bar is already attracting a heaving crowd that is as eclectic as its decor.  BLUK caught up with assistant general manager Sarah Mitchell, formerly of Graphic, to talk about birds, bars and all things rum.

BLUK: What is the concept behind the bar?
SM: Not Tiki! Tiki’s dead, and you can say I said that! What it is, is a naval-style rum bar. In the decor you’ve got navy pin-up girl posters all around, navy-style tattoo sparrows on the wall and plenty of rum. Everyone seems really enthusiastic; it’s rum but not Tiki. It’s nice to have something a bit different.

BLUK: How is it different to the original LCC Goodge Street?
SM: It’s really similar, in a lot of ways, same attitude, same style, although we’ve gone for a rum focus here. We are incredibly busy, so busy, especially during happy hour. We get a mix of regulars, the office crowd, some footfall, customers that have heard about us from Goodge Street, and a lot of customers from the old wine bar that we took over from. When they come in, they are all so impressed with what we’ve done with the place.

BLUK: What’s the team like?
SM: We’ve got a great team. Matt Armitage from the LCC Goodge Street has come down as general manager and we’ve got about four or five young bartenders who are thirsty for knowledge, and who are all producing great drinks.

BLUK: You’ve got a cracker of a cocktail list. Talk us through it.
SM: Andy Mill put together the list, and there’s also a few of Matt’s on there. I’d say the Red Dragon is the most popular cocktail (Bacardi 8 Rum, pineapple and lime juice shaken with Chinese five-spice syrup and bitters and garnished with a fortune cookie). But, they’re all really good. We’ve also got the Black Tot, which is great as a pinnacle of the backbar. Basically, it’s the last remaining rum from the days when it was part of a ship’s ration. You can have a tot of it, and it comes with your own engraved mug, too.

BLUK: You were at Graphic for a few years, why the change?
SM: At Graphic, everything had run its course, I feel like I’d taken it as far as I could. James and JJ and I had always talked about me joining the team and this felt like the right time to do it.

BLUK: Lastly, sum up the place in three words.
SM: Rum, fun and rock n’roll!

The Grosvenor hotel’s sleek, new bar Réunion

Formerly the VIP lounge for first class rail passengers at Victoria Station, the revamped bar is just two months old, yet Duane has already honed one of London’s classiest venues.

“My vision for Réunion is to create a destination bar in a chic, luxurious environment where people can meet to enjoy a choice of great cocktails alongside a speciality wine selection and a selection of premium Champagnes served by a team of professionals who are passionate about the products at their disposal and happy to share their knowledge with customers,” he said.

Each month, they will be offering a bespoke cocktail list, with Duane and head bartender Paul Bradley kicking things off with a cracking limited-edition Victorian-themed cocktail list, available until the New Year.

The drinks include a Victorian Martini (Hendricks gin, blackberry liqueur, oranges, thyme and blueberry) and the 19th Century (Beefeater 24, Seville orange, dark chocolate bitters, homemade Oolong tea syrup infused with fresh baby figs and Madagascan vanilla), which was shortlisted for the Beefeater 24 South Regional final this year. Paul has even tried his hand (very successfully, I might add) at reproducing the distinct taste of Southern Comfort in his Cuffs and Buttons cocktail (Four Roses small batch bourbon whisky, peach brandy, cinnamon syrup and orange bitters).

Upcoming themes include, very appropriately, Failed Resolutions in January and Reunion’s Olympic Decathlon to coincide with the London Olympics in August (and what better place to start training, than at a station bar?).

They are also looking to launch an industry night in early 2012, “that gives something back to the hard working bartenders of London with the support from the brands we stock,” said Duane.

As if that’s not keeping them busy enough, each month they also feature a specific drink category where brand ambassadors are first invited in to train the team, before hosting masterclasses.

“We are really trying to put the brands directly into the customer’s hands whilst educating them at the same time, this way they may in turn start to order their drinks by brand rather than by category,” said Duane.

They have so far held four masterclasses including Japanese whiskies (Yamasaki 12 Yr Old, Hakushu 17 Year Old and Hibiki 17 Year Old), American whiskies (Four Roses yellow label, small batch and single barrel), Liqueurs (Mandarine Napoleon, Citronge, Grand Marnier, Cointreau, Pierre Ferrand Dry Orange Curacao and Merlet Triple Sec, Cassis, Poire William and Framboise) and a gourmet wine dinner hosted by Chateau Musar.

www.reunionlondon.com

Dre Masso

For years we have been inundated with brand-marketing telling us that X gin is the best choice for a Martini, or you can’t have an Aviation without Y. And don’t even think about adding Z to a Tom Collins – it’s sacrilegious!

To an extent, they are correct. Some gins, for example, simply have too many bitter botanicals to work in an Aviation, and others don’t have the legs to hold their own in a decent Martini.

However, if you were to attempt to stock the ‘perfect’ brand for every cocktail (and its infinite permeations), you’d need a backbar the length of your patience for good tippers and the height of your awareness for pretty girls at the bar.

Enter Dre Masso and his latest venture, L.T.D at The Social, where they only stock one of each spirit category – one vodka, one gin, one rum, one tequila, one whiskey, and one brandy – but they are certain they are the ‘best of the best’.

BLUK: So, tell us about the concept behind L.T.D at The Social.

DM:  There’s too much choice these days. London bartenders can be pretty savvy, but it can be trickier for the customers. I mean, do customers really know the difference between Tanqueray or Beefeater? So, what we wanted to do was make it simpler for all involved, while still getting a high-quality drink.

BLUK:  Maybe so, but how do you choose the ‘best of the best’?

DM: We formed a committee of 20 industry people – no sponsorship – and asked every member to vote for their top five spirits in each category under £20, looking for ones that would work best as a cocktail base. The second stage involved blind tasting and a comparison of the three finalists of each section. I took myself out of the panel at this stage. All spirits were sampled neat and in a cocktail.

BLUK: Did you get a wide range of brands in each category? Were there any surprises?

DM: For some categories like vodka and gin, there were some really obvious patterns in the brands that made the top three. For instance the top three vodka brands included Stolichnaya, Wyborowa which are from the home of vodka, while the top three gin brands were Beefeater, Tanqueray and Plymouth, three brands with loads of heritage.

Whiskey was the most surprising category, there were so many brands mentioned. Scotch whiskies can be difficult as they can be really malty or full of peat. The final three included Johnnie Walker Blue and Maker’s Mark.

BLUK: What were the winning brands?

DM: Stolichnaya vodka, Beefeater London Dry gin, Havana Club 7 yr old rum, Jameson Irish whiskey, Ocho Blanco vintage tequila and Courvoisier VS Cognac. We also serve just two lagers – Camden IPA and Camden Lager, as well as just four wines chosen from the guys at Planet of the Grapes.

BLUK: What has the reception to the concept been like?

DM: It’s been really good. I was expecting more conflict – on Friday night it was normal, and then on the Saturday we came in and turned it into L.T.D, so we were expecting a bit of backlash, but it’s been great. We have lots of industry come in, and consumer-wise we also have a lot of regulars. I think having the menu with pictures of all the drinks, and a little description about what we’re all about helps. It’s not just one cocktail for each spirit, but six signature drinks, as well.

BLUK: You’re more than just the brains behind the concept, you’re also pulling a shifts behind the bar, what’s that like?

It’s also been a great learning experience for me. I haven’t been behind the bar for maybe 6 or 8 years, so this has given me new insight!

BLUK: What else is happening at L.T.D at The Social?

DM: Desert island discs is on every Tuesday night. It’s a bit of an industry night where, like the BBC radio show, industry greats come in and take over the decks and play the tunes which have meant the most to them throughout their careers. So far it’s been great. We’ve had Tomas Estes and Julio Bermejo in, as well as Peter Dorelli and Salvatore Calabrese.

Also, we’ve got a photo exhibition running – Behind Bars – which has photos I’ve taken of some of the great industry people over the years including Phil Bayley and Manuel Terron.

BLUK: What happens come the New Year, when L.T.D at The Social closes its doors?

DM: Well, they’ll be looking for someone new to takeover! When I came in, it was basically a blank canvas, which I’ve hijacked until Christmas. So, they’ll need a new team and a new idea for the space.

L.T.D @ The Social runs until 31st Dec 2011

Where: 5 Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JD

Ash and Daniel from Sahara Bar water the thirsty guests

The room itself wasn’t too shabby either, One Mayfair is an awesome space and was the perfect place to celebrate in grand fashion. The concept of the evening was a simple one, 8 bars would each produce a cocktail using 35ml Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge and then serve their drink from a mobile bar to the thirsty guests. These guests would then vote for their favourite drink/s using tokens. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Well yes it was, but the quality of the bars was really what transformed it into a great experience, the contenders were:

• Hyde & Co
• Worship Street Whistling Shop
• Mahiki
• ECC
• Sahara Bar
• Hawksmoor
• Salvatore at Playboy
• Beaufort Bar

Four bars at a time served their drinks and each bar was 4 deep from the minute it opened until the minute it closed as the crowd fought like it was the January Sales at M&S to get a taste. Despite the fact they were using alien bars and knocking out the drinks at a huge rate of knots the quality of the cocktails on offer was amazing.

We had our personal favourites but this competition wasn’t judged by a group of trade ‘experts’ with an unnatural love of sour ingredients and herb infusions. The guests at this event were mainly the great unwashed – the general public! In this industry we can sometimes lose perspective of what it is that the customers want from their drinks and this was a great opportunity to give them a voice.

As the voting ended and the counting of the tokens took place in a vault somewhere, the bartenders gathered, took a deep breath, a deeper slug on a cold drink and waited for the results. The prizes were impressive to say the least with the winning bar (2 bartenders per team) being flown out to Tales of the Cocktail 2012 and the runners-up receiving a trip to the Grand Marnier Chateau in Bourg-Charente.

The Playboy boys celebrating their win with Julien Lafond

In the end it was the Salvatore at Playboy (Fabien Marcault & Aaron Jones) who took out the win with Beaufort Bar (Jill Saunders & Ludovic Solmi) taking second and the Sahara Bar (Ash and Daniel Bovey) claiming third and the prize for our favourite cocktail ingredient of the year – Berroca sugar syrup!

It was a great night and I am sure the Playboy guys will have a great time over at Tales next year. The winning drinks are below for you to enjoy yourselves:

Salvatore at Playboy
Cordon Rouge Cocktail

• 40ml Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge,
• 20ml french merlot,
• 20ml pineapple reduction,
• 20ml demerara sugar and spiced butter mix.

All ingredients shaken and served in a coupette, garnished with redcurrents dusted with sugar

Beaufort Bar
L’Etoile

• 35ml Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge
• 15ml Tanqueray Gin
• 20ml pressed apple juice
• 10ml pressed lemon juice
• 15ml star anise syrup
• Champagne

Served from a large punch bowl, with dry ice carbonating and chilling the drink. Garnished with a chuck of triple frozen ice and warm, caramelised flambé apples prepared a la minute. Served in a coupette.

Sahara Bar
Bartender’s Breakfast

• 40ml Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge
• 30ml lemon juice
• 25ml Compass Box Asyla
• 1 tsp marmalade
• 20ml Berroca sugar syrup

Shaken and strained in a martini glass or coupette. Garnished with a lemon twist.

And so it came to be that BarLifeUK went on a jaunt of some of Berlin’s finest bars after day one of Bar Convent Berlin (BCB).

With map in hand and Euros in pocket (a heads up for anyone visiting Berlin’s bars for the first time, carry cash, most bars seem to be allergic to card payments) we headed into the Schoneberg / Tiergarten districts of town (we had done a couple of other areas on previous nights – find out about those here).

These districts seem to have the most concentrated selection of bars around with several great venues within walking distance of each other.

The great Manhattan at Stagger Lee

Before a night of cocktails and shots a stop to line the stomach is always needed and there has probably never been a cuisine invented which lends itself better to this task than that of the Germans.

I know this is a drinks website but the food in Berlin deserves a mention. Following previous meals of Pork Knuckle, Beef Olives, Sausages and various types of fried potato and Sauerkraut we found a restaurant called April.

I had a checklist of food to eat and as of yet Schnitzel and Potato Salad had been missing; however this was to be rectified. Whilst sipping on a beer I saw the waitress carrying a dish that’s size summoned up thoughts of tectonic rather than dinner plate across the restaurant, I almost got up to help her it was so vast.

As it was placed in front of me the table legs bowed as a Schnitzel the size and rough shape of North America was placed in front of me. It may have been big but managed to be as thin and moist as Kate Moss in a shower. I ate I breathed out heavily and I was ready for whatever the night threw my way.

Stagger Lee

First stop was round the corner at a bar called Stagger Lee which was hosting an event laid on by the Cocktail Kingdom. The bar was packed but with 80% of people in there drinking the Elijah Craig Manhattans being expertly prepared by the team of bartenders, 2 of whom had been flown over from New York, service was quick.

The Manhattans were exceptional, beautifully balanced and served with a cherry soaked in enough booze to slap you firmly round the face as soon as popped it in your mouth. With drink in hand I surveyed the bar and what a great place it is.

I can only imagine that if the producers of Boardwalk Empire had visited before filming started then Steve Buscemi’s house would have emulated it exactly. Dark red wall paper, wooden panelling and big leather armchairs filled to room. The music rounded off the experience perfectly with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong mixing in with the joyous chatter.

The packed Stagger Lee

To be honest I could have settled into one of those comfy chairs and happily spent the night drinking Manhattans and talking to (or more accurately boring the arse off) anyone who passed my way, but this was no time for sitting around enjoying yourself, there were bars to visit damn it!

Lebensstern

A 5 minute walk away was Lebensstern, a bar which had been recommended to us by pretty much everyone we had seen and it wasn’t going to disappoint. Located above a rather fancy looking restaurant is a rather fancy looking bar.

This bar is famous for a couple of things (having been featured in the Tarantino blooderama Inglorious Bastards) but it was the spirits selection we were most interested in feasting our eyes and indeed mouths on.

Off the main bar are a series of rooms each with inbuilt glass cabinets holding bottle after bottle of fantastic brands from across the world. In 2010 the bar won Best Drinks Selection at Tales of the Cocktail and with the hundreds of bottles throughout the bar (which can be bought as well admired) the only questions seems to be why it hasn’t won every Drinks Selection award in the world.

There are so many rare and special edition bottles of rum (and indeed other spirits) in the cabinets that it was a surprise that each room didn’t contain a box of tissues for visitors to clean themselves up with after a quick look.

Two of the many cabinets of joy

At this point I have to highlight one of my disappointments with the bars in Berlin during the show (and really there are almost none) and it is to do with the cocktail menus.

A lot of the bars we visited during our trip had produced a ‘special BCB menu’ for the occasion containing 5 – 7 cocktails and had hidden away their usual menus.

I understand the reason for this as I am sure the venues are full of bartenders during this period wanting to be served nice drinks quickly and this approach certainly speeds up service.

I also wouldn’t particularly mind if these lists contained the bars signature cocktails however the fact is they all seem to contain a Gin & Tonic, a Horse’s Neck and a Moscow Mule.

A large proportion of the visitors to the show, like me, come from not only out of town but out of country and BCB is a fantastic opportunity to visit the cities bars and enjoy some of the local bartender talent. In actuality I have found myself being forced to decide which bartender makes the best Horse’s Neck!

Okay mini rant over back to Lebensstern. Philip Duff was propping up the bar and whilst we wandered through the rooms admiring the displays (a sure way to get you in the mood for a drink) Philip kindly ordered a couple of Dark ‘n Stormy’s for us. As we sipped we were joined by the lovely Audrey Fort from G’Vine Gin in town ready for her talk with Philip at the show. A couple more drinks and a great chat with some folks visiting from Amsterdam and it was time to move on yet again.

Mother Nature is obviously a fan of a good night of bar hopping as the moment we stepped outside she turned off the taps on the rain which had caught a few out including an exceptionally wet Rob Rademaker from Bols. Next on the list was Victoria Bar.

Victoria Bar

Located on a main street, Victoria Bar is a brightly lit bar with a fantastic reputation for great drinks. As we were entered we were given the most surly and inhospitable greeting since the spacesuit welcomed the fart. If the rain hadn’t just started up again in grand fashion I would probably have walked out there and then but with an open mind a couple of drinks were ordered.

The menu was great and we picked out a Brooklyn and a Guyana Manhattan. Surly man didn’t seem to deem us interesting enough to serve however his colleague made us two fantastic drinks. The décor was nicely done (if a little bright) and music was, well, patchy but all of this was insignificant compared to the quality drink and the spicy nuts which my stomach was a big fan of. Perhaps the guy was just having a bad night, I hope so because the cocktails deserved better.

Ueno San serving another two perfect drinks

Somehow the clock had ticked way further on than I realised and we had to miss out a couple of bars to head back to the Michelberger Hotel were the one and only Ueno San was holding court behind the bar and producing some of his exceptional creations.

Despite the latish hour Ueno was in full swing as was the crowd surrounding the bar who seemed to be enjoying watching the man work almost as much as they were enjoying the drinks he produced.

The great and the good were in attendance enjoying themselves and any tiredness I felt was soon washed away by the smiles, banter and man hugs taking place. A drink (or was it two?) later and it was time to crash to prepare for another day of great talks at BCB and of course the awards later in the evening.

For more about the show itself click here and on the seminars in particular click on this one. But the awards in the evening were a real highlight.

Mixology Bar Awards

In a lovely venue anyone who was anyone in the German bar industry was there to celebrate the best of their bar culture. Many of the bars we had visited over the last two days were nominated however it seemed that the whole of Germany had reason to celebrate when the winners were announced.

BarLifeUK was honoured to accept a Lifetime Achievement award on behalf of Joe Gilmore from The Savoy who, understandably at 92 years of age, was unable to make it. We shall be handing the award over to Joe at The Savoy very soon.

Here is a full list of the winners:

• Bar Team of the Year – Gekkos (Frankfurt)
• Newcomer of the Year – Henning Neufeld, Les Trois Rois (Basel)
• Mixologist of the Year – Klaus St. Rainer, Goldene Bar (München)
• Host – Frank Kettlitz, Fasanen 47 (Berlin)
• Bar of the Year – Stagger Lee (Berlin)
• Hotel Bar – Les Trois Rois (Basel)
• Lifetime Achievement – Joe Gilmore, from the Savoy Hotel (London)
• New Spirit of the Year – Smith & Cross Rum
• Bartender´s Product Choice – Bollinger Champagner
• Mixology City Award – Vienna Bar Community

Dub Dub doing what he does best

We have an atrocious sense of direction and get lost in them, somehow always ending up in the lingerie department of British Home Stores, drawn there like a moth unto a flame.

And so it was with great relief that we fought our way through throngs of evening shoppers and into the warm, boozy embrace of All Star Lanes’ latest opening within Westfield shopping center for their opening party on September 28^th.

Ten pin bowling is obviously one of the great American pastimes, and as such it makes perfect sense that Jack Daniel’s features prominently behind the back bar, along with an impressive collection of other American whiskeys.

Group bar manager, James Wynn-Williams told us: “It was fantastic to team up with Jack Daniels and Bacardi Brown Forman Brands to throw one heck of a party and announce our arrival to Westfield Stratford City, and to showcase the same great food, fantastic cocktails and darn good night out that people know and love All Star Lanes for.”

The look pretty, but these lanes are clearly wonky because BarLifeUK couldn't buy a strike

Sets by The Correspondents (BarLifeUK are clearly getting old because we had never heard of them before) and the venerable Norman Jay kept the youngun’s on their toes, while Blood and Sand and Jack’s Apricot Sours (Jack Daniel’s, apricot brandy, lemon juice, bitters and egg white) spoiled BarLifeUK’s bowling aim.

The venue looks great, and while we don’t really review newly opened bars (we prefer to give them a few weeks to work the kinks out), especially on opening night, the drinks were really well made and the staff were on top form.

As we reluctantly put our ‘street shoes’ back on at the end of the night, BarLifeUK were struck by the strange thought that there might never come another opportunity to wear a pair of bowling shoes that haven’t housed another man’s feet. A sobering thought, and one that had us reaching for another blood and sand…

B@1 Operations Director, Andrew Stones

They are bucking the economic trend too, with like-for-like results up on last year, a slew of newly-opened venues, and more on the cards. We spoke to B@1 operations director, Andrew Stones, to find out how they have become so successful.

BLUK: Could you give us some background on how B@1 started?

AS: Well, it was started off by the ‘three boys’ as they are affectionately known: Steve Locke, Leigh Miller and Rhys Oldfield who were bartenders at TGI Friday‘s. They met at the TGI Friday’s Bartender of the Year challenge, got on exceptionally well and decided that they wanted to develop a bar business based on what they would want to drink.

They borrowed some money… car loans, credit cards, that sort of thing and opened Battersea Rise, and that’s 13 years ago now.

BLUK: How many outlets are in the portfolio now?

AS: There are 10: Battersea Rise, Balham, Clapham Common, Richmond, Hammersmith, Putney, Soho, Covent Garden, Spitalfields and Shoreditch.

BLUK: I remember B@1 being nominated for a few awards in the past, how have you done in that respect?

AS: We’ve won a reasonable amount… There is a little bit of what can be perceived as brand snobbery towards B@1. In that we are…  ‘cocktails for the masses’ is probably a little bit strong, but we are not a typical mixologist bar.

We are pretty much about serving consistently good drinks to guests through knowledge of products, consistency and good service. That format has absolutely worked for us as a business.

BLUK: Has that become harder to do as the portfolio has grown?

AS: No, we invest, in terms of our bartenders, we invest £5000 training them up. So we recruit for the right behaviours and we want individuals that have great personalities, that are serious about a career about bartending and that have that real drive and passion. It’s quite a rigorous selection process.

BLUK: Will you take someone who has never been behind a bar before?

AS: Absolutely.

BLUK: So what are the characteristics you are looking for?

AS: The key one is personality. So it’s personality, it’s drive and it’s passion. We will take people who have never worked behind a bar before, but they really need to want to do it.

So they have to want that career, that lifestyle. Otherwise you might have people with great personalities and great passion, as we know in this industry, it’s hard work and it won’t work.

BLUK: That’s a lot of money to spend. How do you make sure you keep people after you have spent five grand training them up?

AS: We are a great place to work. We have our ‘all store party’ this coming Monday… We are closing all our bars and we are going to have one hell of a party at the Shoreditch bar.

We have quarterly communications meetings that everybody comes to. Where the area managers, myself, present… so there is good communication.

We’ve just launched an internal newsletter, we give our teams £75 worth of drinks vouchers each every month.

BLUK: Do you operate bartenders and bar backs?

AS: We do. In an ideal world, we want them to become bartenders. As part of that raining process, they join effectively as bar backs. They go through the bar back training in the first couple of days of their time with us. They then begin learning the cocktails.

One of the key differentiators with us and other businesses is we have over 200 cocktails in our menu. We’re about to launch a new menu in April and there will be even more cocktails.

BLUK: And every bartender needs to be able to make all of them without consulting the specs?

AS: They know them all.

BLUK: If we go back to the original ‘three boys’… What was it about them, aside from their drink-making skills, that made them able to set up B@1?

AS: It was… I think they had absolute clarity about what they wanted to achieve with the brand. They had a very clear vision – they still do – for me, I’ve only been with the business now for 6 months, and the boys generally make the right decisions.

They know what works for this business, they now what their guests want, and they’ve kept it simple.

So, the fact that we don’t serve food is a massive benefit for us, in that it is a very simple product. It’s all about the drinks, all about the service and interaction.

One of the other differentiators for us is the atmosphere and we think we do have a good atmosphere in our bars.

BLUK: So if you image two successful bartenders who have great connections with the drinks companies, good reputations, who want to open their own bar. What knowledge do they need to develop, aside from the drinks knowledge, to do so?

AS: You have to know what you want, before you can go out and get it. You have to have tenacity and drive in order to make it work. Business dog-fighting skills are needed when you are trying to secure finance, finding sites etc.

BLUK: If you were a bartender trying to open a bar now, where would you look for finance?

AS: The conventional route is banks, and that’s how we fund this business.

BLUK: If you are going to open a new B@1 in an ‘average London Location’, how much does that cost?

AS: It depends on the site, but in terms of fitting out a B@1 bar, it costs us around £300,000. However Battersea was around £40,000 when it first opened, because the boys did a lot of the work themselves.

BarLifeUK had heard rumblings of a second venue by the team behind Purl, one of the most talked-about bars to open in London of recent times, and so we collared Tristan Stephenson to get the skinny on the new joint.

BLUK: Can you tell us a little about the concept of the new bar?

TS: I have a bit of an obsession with Victorian London and the Gin Palace era, so as a result of that we have gone down the Victorian route for the new place. It is hard core traditional British, 19^th Century, with the main influence being the gin palaces.

BLUK: How did you come up with the name?

TS: Whistling comes from the Old English for ‘Cheers’ and during the late 18^th Century a whistling shop was the name for a place you could go to buy a drink… it was slang for a gin palace. And as the site is on Worship Street, it rolls of the tongue nicely.

BLUK: Purl has become well know for quite intricate cocktails that encourage guests to step out of the comfort zone on occasion. Will the Whistling Shop follow suit?

TS: The drinks will be quite different to Purl, which is all about theatre and multi-sensory drinks using dry ice or coming in several parts for the guest to construct at their table.

With the Whistling Shop, it’s going to be quite historically accurate, with some modern takes. We are fitting out a full lab, which will create more in-house ingredients than any other bar I’ve seen. The prep list is ridiculous!

If you think about Heston’s ‘Dinner’, it’s pretty close to what we are doing with the drinks.

Ryan Chetiyawardana, of 69 Colebrook Row fame, is the bar manager. He has been working on the cocktail list. One of the drinks we are doing is a Champagne gin fizz – so we are actually bottling a flat gin fizz and bottle-fermenting it with yeast. We have a corker, so it will be served in the bottle and popped at the table.

BLUK: Will the cocktail list be quite gin-heavy?

TS: Yes, kind of. The list has only 12 drinks, and yes you would probably say it is gin-driven.

BLUK: We’ve heard tell of some experiential drinking, can you tell us about that?

TS: We have two private dining rooms, well, drinking rooms. One of them is being converted into an authentic 18^th Century dram shop, so it has bench seating and a library cabinet of vintage gins – the idea being a group go in for a short experience and try some of the gins.

The other room is being called the Cocktail Emporium – it will be a multi-sensory journey through cocktails based around a given theme. The idea is up to eight people will taste five cocktails over a couple of hours, but accompanying those cocktails will be aromas, light, images, sound, and music to match.

As an example, we might run an experience on the history of rum. So it would include five cocktails ranging from a Flip all the way to Tiki drinks. For each drink the theme of the room will change, so for the Grog cocktail, the aromas would be sea air, gunpowder, wet wood. There would be the sound of the waves and the light would move to give the impression of moving on a boat. And this would be accompanied by food.

BLUK: This all sounds fantastic! Do you have an opening date yet?

TS: Yes, the opening date will be April 28^th!

You can follow the Worship Street Whistling Shop’s progress towards opening on April 28th on Twitter: www.twitter.com/whistlingshop

I have almost always found preparing for any cocktail competition is stressful enough, especially when you want to be the one that stands out. Everything from having a damn fancy piece of glassware to a slick routine can win over the judges, but as for the molecular mixology competition I wanted to avoid conventional glassware altogether.

Sourcing most items is easy, for example a quick look online in the right places can unearth many oddities & exotic ingredients, even a trip to a handful of charity shops can lead to some of the most unusual drinking vessels out there. I have been told that reason I made things harder for myself during the competition is that I think of what I want to achieve first & then set about doing it with next to no idea if it would actually work in reality.

The Heats

Which came first the Tomato plant or the egg? Well the egg actually

The drinks for the competition heats were defiantly stumbled upon; while making coconut & mango fried eggs last March, as you do, I said to somebody present at the time “I’m going to put that in an egg shell”, again with no regard or thought into if I could do this let alone get the egg white to set hard around the soft yolk. The only way I can describe what happened next was a lengthy kitchen session of trial & error involving me, lots of rum, a camping stove, an industrial size box of eggs, Coconut Cream, Mango Puree & Agar…..

Eventually it came together very well but presenting an egg on a table isn’t quite enough, certainly not for a competition. Finding all the extras can, I feel, be the most difficult; the best spoon, wooden board, egg cup etc. They have to go visually well together to complete the look. Luckily it went off without a hitch, the only worrying part of the comp was after I presented the cocktail to the judges & cracked the egg open to find out if it worked, seeing as you can’t check beforehand I’m sure you can imagine the phrase “moment of truth” swirling round my head with all the rum I’d drunk at the Imbibe Bar Show just a few hours before.

The Final

Have your glass and eat it

Once I had made it through to the final I decided to enter an edible martini glass as my first drink, I thought I’d just look online & one would just pop out in Google shopping, not a chance. I emailed a few plastics & mould making companies but the quotes were often more than 1^st prize! So I went about trying to make my own & 13-14 attempts later found that a small gardener’s funnel inside an old latte glass from the back of my cupboard with a 35mm film pot in the bottom as a base worked fairly well as a mould….

Certainly sourcing a film set fake tomato plant was one of the more challenging items to tick off the list. After not much luck with the internet search again I was almost tempted to start growing one myself but a last ditch email to a film set designers came up trumps so I drove out to west Berkshire to collect. After driving around with it I the boot for a few days I started chopping off the fake toms & trying to work out how the hell I was going to attach the real ones.

As I mentioned before just presenting the main item didn’t seem enough to me so thinking about what goes well with tomatoes I instantly thought of cheese, however incorporating El Dorado was a little worrying as I’d never really had rum & cheese! The first few batches were foul, I mean really awful, either too much rum or too much Agar I think, it was like eating alcoholic cheese flavoured Soya. I pressed on & a few camembert later had the perfect mix of 12yr old rum, basil paste, salt & pepper. I think it may have even tasted better than some of the tomatoes if I’m honest, but then again I do love cheese.

Ironically plastic Tomato plant's don't grow on tree's

The cucumber & shaped toast were both very last minute editions after thinking the wooden chopping board looked a bit empty with just the cheese & a knife. I originally wanted to heat up copper wire with a blow torch & brand water biscuits with the El Dorado logo – this doesn’t work. I settled with bread cut out to letters & blowtorched to toast on the day of the comp as a toaster isn’t the smallest thing to carry around with you especially when also carrying a 4ft plant.

The cucumber was just a bit of an experiment with Hendricks Gin, Tonic, Sugar and Agar. I scooped out & replacing the middle a solidified version of the iconic Gin & Tonic with cucumber. It looked & tasted great so I thought it deserved a place on “The Big Bartenders Brunch”.

Turned out to be a great competition & I almost can’t wait until the next time it’s held, I think everyone had great ideas to show off all day. Well done to Jon & Quentin for placing 1^st & 2^nd

While there, I caught up with old friend Simon Webster who asked if I would like to contribute to BarLifeUK and write an article on my experiences. I feel honoured and inspired to do so, and I hope not to bore the crap out of most of you in the northern part of the world.

Treacle

So after enduring many hours in the luxury of Air New Zealand economy class and the, I can only imagine, frequently delayed flights of BA, I finally arrived in Edinburgh. Magical place! But the adventures would have to wait as after 40 hours flying or in transit, I was fairly knackered.

The next day was touring around the heart of the city and seeing what deals I could get. Also to see what booze I could get my hands on, to bring back to New Zealand. That started my tour of the bars around Edinburgh, with a list given to me by friends and also some of the places over the years that I had heard of and also read about.

A place that you hear a lot about, even in New Zealand

First on the list was David’s old bar BRAMBLE. A place that you hear a lot about, even in New Zealand. Here I meet up with a guy called Jason Scott whom I can only imagine as being a house hold name though out the UK.

Bramble was great and certainly lived up to the reputation. Lovely expertly crafted and very well balanced. Now to be honest this would be a place that I would feel very comfortable working in and also drinking vast quantities of the cocktail list. Many thanks to Jason again, for being an amazing host and all around great bartender

Other bars that I managed to get to after tearing myself away from the bar stool at Bramble started with Treacle – this was an interesting place. To be honest it may be not a place that I would have wondered in to but I would have eaten my words as I had a great time.

The drinks where great and the people great to talk to, although to be honest that seemed to be a pattern around Scotland.

Now some disappointing bars, for me these were bars that I heard so much about and certainly bars that were recommended to me by other bars and bartenders alike Tiger Lilly and Bon Vivant. I am not sure why or what was happening with these places.

I certainly was highly recommended to these bars but they just where not that great on the nights I went there. Maybe that the great legend Joey was not at Tiger Lilly that night I am not sure. But knowing Joey and the standard he sets himself, it just was not up to that standard for me.

Aberdeen-ho

So after three nights of touring and drinking it was a quick train ride up to Aberdeen. Here after trying hard to navigate the roads of Aberdeen (I can only imagine the council decided on the town plans, after imbibing far too many Drams of the local Whisky), I made it to my hotel.

I had quick walk about the town to get my bearings, and onto the night life of Aberdeen with a list of establishments from a mate Adam Elmegirab. I headed out to the first place, MIM LOUNGE.

Now MIM LOUNGE, where do I start, much in the same regards as Treacle this was probably a place that I would not have gone in of my own accord. It seemed to be the same as many places that you find here and in Australia, where a lot of money is spent on the outfit of the establishment.

The downside of these places is that they generally use up all of their passion and all of their ideas on that and everything else in the place falls well sort. MIM LOUNGE however was a great exception to this. In fact I had such a great time there that I did not make it to any other bar! Bhakie and Louise were amazing hosts.

Truly great bars

In 2007 I competed in the 42 Below CWC. With this you have international speakers and judges. This year Dale de Groff happened to do a speech for us entitled “the best bar in the world”. Our mission was to guess the best bar in the world which none of us naïve bartenders managed too. Simply put Dales idea of the best bar in the world, was the “place that you feel most comfortable”.

Bramble bar a stand out for Riki

For me I had two of these bars already on my journey and I had not even made it London yet. But without hesitation BRAMBLE and MIM lounge (worlds apart in terms of offerings) are truly great bars.

The next day was spent touring Duff Town and Glenfiddich distillery before driving down to St Andrews to stay with family friends for a few days and try to detox although in Scotland that was never going to happen. A few days and a round of golf later and on I went to London to be a guest judge at the 42 Below CWC UK finals (more of this to come in my next blog).

Over all I have to say that Scotland was an amazing place to go as a bartender not just for the offering of the bars and the distilleries, but also the locals and the passion that the bartenders seem to have about the industry. Great job and I hope that I can get back soon and enjoy some more of the Scottish hospitality.

A buzz of fun and excitement from the crowd, laughter cutting the room, drinks being knocked back at a steady rate, tables moved to the sides to make room for the dancing couples, the worries of a country in trouble being lost to alcohol, good times and the party atmosphere. We have all read the stories and many of us have seen Boardwalk Empire so we know straight away that scene is from a 1920’s Speakeasy.

Look at all those smiling faces, it's like the House of Commons on expenses day

The bar industry like all things goes through trends and whilst the rest of the world seems to be having a whole lot of fun reliving the bright, outlandish, slightly painful 80’s the bar industry has been looking a bit further back and focusing on the dark, low-key 20’s America (not 20’s Europe which was having quiet a jolly time thank you very much with the ‘Golden Twenties’ in full effect ).

There is no doubt that the 20’s Prohibition era was a hugely important time for the liquor and bar industry and I am all for celebrating it, I just think that the way ‘Speakeasies’ are doing this currently is missing the mark.

How the Speakeasy came to pass

There are few drinks writers in the world at the moment who have the academic background to their work to explain this era better than David Wondrich and he makes some very interesting points in his writings on the subject.

Firstly Prohibition was the end result of many years of campaigning against alcohol across the country but not necessarily outlawing it, in actual fact the majority of support came from the Upper Classes who didn’t want to ban alcohol they just wanted to ban alcohol from the working classes. By the time the Volstead Act came into force in 1920 the Upper Class had stocked up their cellars and were well prepared for the dark years ahead.

Speakeasies, were then, by their very necessity aimed at the working class man (and woman who for the first time were allowed to drink in the company of men – well it wasn’t a time to be fussy was it!) and full of the rough and ready characters of the neighbourhood. Jazz became the sound and in a lot of ways the badge of the Speakeasy scene, in the 80’s saying you liked Acid House was code for saying you liked to pop smiley faced pills, in the 20’s Jazz and liquor had the same association.

Of course Speakeasies were also rather hampered by their alcohol selection and quality, spirits were generally made on premise and in nicer areas the real stuff was often cut with water and sometimes with a lot worse (this was largely to make the booze still affordable for the working class folk as well as making more money of course) and as for decent cocktails, forget it. In fact the ability for bartenders to make good drinks was so restricted that many, including the great Harry Craddock, left the US during this period for the UK, France and the rest of Europe.

So let’s recap here a Speakeasy was a rough and ready drinking den full of working class guys and gals wanting to have fun, dance and get drunk without having to spend a fortune, oh and not forgetting to do all of this without anyone knowing you were doing it. Sure in later years once the rich peoples cellars had run dry and their posh restaurants had gone bust they started frequenting their own upper class Speakeasies or joining the riff-raff in theirs but the essence of these bars was always the earlier form.

Modern Speakeasies getting it wrong

Now here is my problem. Today’s Speakeasy bars are generally about as far away as it is possible to get from this. Now I understand that nowhere is going to survive by selling cut liquor in chipped glasses with no mixers but where has the Speakeasy soul gone.

Go back up to the first paragraph (taking out the tobacco part of course), now honestly does that seem like any modern day Speakeasy you have been to? No of course not. It starts out fine with the dark and the jazz but as soon as the feel and atmosphere of the place is included it is lost. Modern Speakeasies all seem to be so exclusive and trendy they have lost the very thing they are supposed to be celebrating. The 1920’s weren’t about the quality of the drinks or the skill of the bartenders it was about being naughty, drinking and having fun – sticking two fingers up at the elitist classes.

Echo... echo...

Oh and bartenders from this period were just that, bartenders. Not mixologists, not drink chefs, not service industry professionals etc but good old fashioned bartenders who concentrated on serving drinks and ensuring people had a great time. Look at pictures of Speakeasies and you’ll find jolly looking guys surrounded by smiling faces (all be it jolly guys who probably kept a shotgun under the bar just in case!).

However that also seems to have been lost – Where in the history books does it mention that a Speakeasy bartender must ‘give across a general feeling of being superior to his customers and produce drinks so serious smiling after the first sip is frowned upon’?

I think it is fair to say that the criticism levelled at these bars that they can’t be a Speakeasy if they tell anyone they exist is a little unfair, they do after all have to make a buck. What I don’t like however is the seeming elitism a lot of them appear to employ. Hosts who seem very concerned with your attire as you enter as if totting up if you can afford a round of drinks. Working Class venues remember???

Many of London’s ‘Speakeasies’ such as Experimental Cocktail Club, Nightjar are great venues, serving great drinks and although they are sometimes more than a little up their own arses for my taste, that is not my problem with them. My problem with them, as you may have guessed by now, is that they are not fucking Speakeasies! Being small, dark and hard to find does not a Speakeasy make.

I believe the closest we have to Speakeasies in today’s culture is the Dive bar. A venue where everyone is welcome, drinks are affordable and dancing and enjoyment are positively encouraged. The rest of you be upfront, admit what you are, you are good at it so why hide behind a false tag.

You are upmarket, expensive, serious drinking establishments – that sounds good to a whole lot of people, stop being scared to admit it.

Picture the scene:

Steady... Steady... Argh get the fire extinguisher off Myles!

Nail this drink, and the competition sponsor will fly you to Mexico for a week. You’ve worked on the recipe for months, perfecting its balance.

You’ve made the drink 20 times at home and honed your patter to perfection.

But, as you take your place behind the bar and look at the three judges sitting opposite you, and the 50 spectators behind them, your heart starts to beat faster, your palms sweat and you just can’t keep the bar spoon still enough to measure out that critical splash of home-made artichoke and sardine bitters…

The Shakes

One thing every cocktail competition I have attended has had in common, be it a crazy, exploding molecular bash or UKBG Martini-off, is ‘The Competition Shakes’.

For the uninitiated, competition shakes are the hand tremors some bartenders get while making drinks in a competition setting.

These shakes can range in intensity from a mild waver to violent tremors, and you can be sure that at least one bartender in every competition will get them, often causing them to cock-up what could otherwise be a winning drink.

Can you hold this for me please?

What judges should wear when shaky bartenders make a Blazer

The shakes are a well-known phenomenon; everyone in the industry has either had them or seen them, and stories abound.

Edinburgh bartenders blame it on the shaky spoon – every bar has one, it’s just bad luck if you pick it up to make your drink.

Alex Turner of the Bacardi Brown Forman Training Team told me that while judging a competition in Manchester, he once had to measure a competitor’s ingredients for him – the bartender was shaking so badly nothing was landing in the Boston.

From personal experience I can also tell you that sitting a foot away from a bartender with a bottle of over-proof rum in one wildly shaking hand and a blowtorch in the other is pretty unnerving, to say the least.

What causes the shakes?

So what can make a bartender who regularly performs to hundreds of punters on a Friday night crack in front of three panel judges?

We enlisted the help of Doctor Edward Fathers, a consultant neurologist, who is expert in the workings of the brain and nervous system to find out. He told us:

“Everybody has a very slight tremor if you hold your hand out in front [of you]; it may be imperceptible but you can’t keep your hand completely still, and that is called a physiological tremor. We all have one to some degree or another.

There are many things that can amplify a physiological tremor – states of sleep deprivation, anxiety before an exam, standing up in front of lots of people – it is normal for the tremor to become more marked and of greater amplitude.

The reason for that is adrenalin is the hormone that we produce in states of anxiety, and it is one of the main things that influences the amplitude of a tremor. That’s why some people who get very anxious can have a higher degree of tremor.”

Be kind to yourself

Don't go out with Nick Nolte the night before a comp

It’s probably fair to assume you didn’t need a doctor to tell you that being anxious can make you shaky, but turn your attention to the ‘sleep deprived’ bit.

Nine times out of ten, a bartender will arrange their rota so that a competition falls on their day off. Stands to reason.

However, that also means the bartender is tempted to go out the night before, resulting in sleep deprivation and increasing their chances of a case of the shakes. Sound familiar?

This leads us to my next question for Dr. Fathers: “Will a hangover make the shakes worse?”

He replied: “Well, when you have a hangover you are producing more adrenalin, because of the toxins that are swashing round the body, so yes, anything that makes you feel ill will increase your adrenalin levels and amplify the tremor.”

So, the first conclusion we can draw from our time with the good doctor is that bartenders prone to the shakes, and who want to do well in a competition, should not go out the night before.

It’s purely medicinal

I then asked Dr Fathers what might help a shake-stricken bartender, and was somewhat surprised by the second part of his answer:

“There are two things that will regulate, suppress that particular type of tremor.

One is a beta blocker, which blocks the receptors that adrenalin works on… GPs will sometimes give that as a symptomatic treatment to get anxious people through interviews and exams, as and when.

The other thing that consistently works in 50% of people, if not greater, is alcohol. It is the best drug for suppressing that kind of tremor.

You don’t normally need much, normally just one or two units will suppress that sort of tremor for an hour or two.”

You heard it here first folks, straight from the NHS, a shot of Jager before you go up will most likely calm your shakes, provided you are not already so tired and hungover that the smell of it makes you faint.

That a doctor would suggest alcohol as the solution to a problem rather than the cause surprised me, so I did a little more research.

It is, in fact, an established medical fact that ethanol treats physiological tremors

Jager: Not (yet) available on prescription from your GP

A paper entitled The Effects Of Alcohol On Physiological Tremor by M. Lakie, K. Frymann, F. Villagra and P. Jakeman of Birmingham University (1993), describes tests conducted on shaky subjects by attaching accelerometers to their wrists, and feeding them booze.

They described the result: The acceleration (and consequently power) of wrist tremor decreased bilaterally in each subject after drinking alcohol.

The paper went on to say: Alcohol consumption causes a large temporary decrease in the size of physiological wrist tremor. The decrease is maximal between 30 and 60 minutes.

Indeed the evidence for alcohol’s curative effects on hand tremor is so strong, it holds ‘banned substance’ status in the Olympic sports of shooting and archery – these events being so reliant on steady hands.

I wonder if one day the UKBG, fans of propriety that they are, will ban alcohol from cocktail competitions, for fear of giving an unfair advantage to bartenders who drink…?

To conclude: drink just before, not the night before

So, armed as we are with medical science, it is safe to say that you should arrive at a cocktail competition well rested, without a hangover but with shot glass in hand if you want to escape the shakes.

We must point out however, that neither BarLifeUK nor Dr Fathers endorse the irresponsible consumption of alcohol or prescription drugs, for cocktail competition success or otherwise.

On the other hand, we fully endorse Angus Winchester’s idea that endorphins might stop the shakes and that the best way to stimulate them is to ‘pleasure oneself’ before a comp.

It’s a theory we can really get behind.