Tag: cocktail
London Cocktail Week…or Zombie Apocalypse?
It’s that time of year again. The dazed and confused wander London’s streets in rumpled, slept-in clothes, cradling their heads, clutching their stomachs, and uttering agonized groans. Are they extras auditioning for “The Walking Dead,” or…could it be…the actual ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?
No, my friends. It’s something far more dangerous. It’s London Cocktail Week.
Through the 9th of October, 250 bars around the city will be offering £5 cocktails to folks who have purchased a £10 wristband—and that’s not even counting all the free samples. If you’re familiar with the usual prices in London’s bars, you’ll recognize that’s a small price to pay for a very big hangover.
One of the key venues is Old Spitalfields Market, which has been transformed into a “Cocktail Village” with nearly 40 stands. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a village where I’d like to live FOREVER…which might not be that long, considering how quickly my liver would give out.
Here are a few of my favourite discoveries.
Beluga Vodka at Rocco Forte’s Brown’s Hotel in London: A Superior Sipping Experience
Flash back to the last millennium. (Wow, that makes me feel old). I’m standing on an Atlanta street corner outside the Metroplex, a grimy mosh pit of a music venue that never aspired to a title as noble as “nightclub,” waiting to see a punk band with a rude name that I wouldn’t repeat in polite company…if I ever kept any.
I’m drinking clear rot-gut fluid—ostensibly vodka, which tastes as though it was brewed in the bathtub of a flophouse—out of a Coca-Cola can. Why? Well, I’m technically a wee bit underage to be seen drinking alcohol, and hiding the contraband liquor in a soda can seems somehow classier than slurping out of a bottle in a paper sack. Not that anyone else cuing at the Metroplex is terribly bothered about keeping up appearances. They’re more concerned about keeping up their spiky, gravity-defying mohawks in the Southern humidity.
I have no pictures of the Metroplex, but this pretty much sums up how you felt after a night at that infamous venue.
Fast forward to last Friday. Now I’m sitting beside a marble fireplace in the Donovan Bar at Brown’s Hotel in London. This Rocco Forte property is a paean of wood-paneled elegance, lit by flickering candles and bright laughter.
Donovan’s Bar, courtesy Brown’s Hotel
Beluga Gold Vodka at Brown’s Hotel
Once again, I’m drinking vodka—but this time, it’s served in a respectable shot glass emblazoned with a sturgeon, and the fluid is so smooth, it slips past my lips and glides over my tongue like a warm, breathy whisper.
While the stuff I guzzled outside the Metroplex may well have been poured from a gasoline can, this nectar comes in a limited edition bottle with an embossed silver and gold label.
It’s sealed with wax and opened with a tiny, Barbie-sized hammer and brush, for heaven’s sake.
This, my friends, is Beluga Gold Line Vodka.
It’s made by the Mariinsk Distillery in Siberia, and it’s not even the same species as any vodka I’ve tasted before. It is, quite simply, dangerously delicious stuff. (more…)