|
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
Number 13, March 2008 Welcome to our lucky or unlucky 13th edition, depending on your opinion of these things.As a random aside, the opinion that 13 is unlucky (the fear of which being triskaidekaphobia) is thought to be related to the thirteen lunar months, the thirteenth being a sacred time of pagan worship, or from Norse mythology when Loki attended a party for 12 at Valhalla and killed Balder, the god of joy and light, or possibly just due to its indivisibility leaving an unlucky leftover 13th. Personally I’ve always thought of it as rather lucky number, being excitingly unique and interesting, a Prime and Fibonacci number. Besides, you get an extra cake in a baker’s dozen. The Ancient Egyptians believed there were twelve steps on the ladder of eternal life, the thirteenth leading you to immortality. Thirteen is also the number of grape varieties allowed in ChateauNeuf-Du-Pape (though mainly Grenache), so we’ll knock 10% off our Chapoutier La Bernadine for March to encourage you to try. I can also highly recommend the Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye, aged for thirteen years at the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Makes a brilliant Manhattan! There, I knew I’d manage to get it round to drinks in the end. Anyway, aside from the bar being 13 months old, we have our usual selection of great Tuesday Tastings and fantastic drinks the rest of the time. We have also re-designed the menu with a few food and drink matching suggestions included, as well as some lunch-time meal-and-drink bargains during the week. Hope to see you soon to try them out. Cheers!
Paul
EVENTS Tuesday tastings : Last roughly an hour and include random facts, helpful hints and a little bit of tasting. They are free to attend for the moment and you don’t need to book. Just turn up and see what’s going on. Tuesday the 4th March, 7pm Potocki Vodka and Polish food matching. Premium 100% rye Polish vodka, Potocki, will be talking a bit about their brand and how to serve Polish vodka traditionally, with some Polish food on the side. Tuesday the 11th March, 7pm Burgundy. One of our wine suppliers who specialises in Burgundy will be tasting a few fantastic reds with us. A chance to see how pinot noir develops with a little age. Tuesday the 18th March, 7pm Ciroc & Smirnoff Black vodkas and cocktails. Tom from Reserve Brands will be making more delicious cocktails, this time with Ciroc and Smirnoff Black Vodkas. We’ll be giving Tom the run of the back room again, after his great performances for Don Julio and Tanqueray. Tuesday the 25th March, 7pm American craft beers. Our very own Chris will be leading a beer tasting of some of the more unusual American beers available. It will include the Brooklyn and Anchor Steam beers that we sell, plus a few other special and esoteric bits & pieces. Monday the 7th April A little way ahead, but we have a WineDater event on that Monday night. Set up by some friends of ours, WineDater is a combination of wine tasting and dating. Booking is through their website, details below: Love wine? Love flirting? Then you’ll love WineDater The Hide will be hosting a WineDater event on Monday 7th April, from 7.30pm! WineDater is a wine tasting experience for singles and is a great way to meet new people, taste new wines and have a fun night out, so what are you waiting for? Go to www.winedater.co.uk to find out more! Last bit – Gin and all that. We’ve been hearing a lot about gin recently at The Hide. There seems to have been something of a resurgence of juniper in the UK and US, with a plethora of new brands and ideas coming out in the last few years. Lots of these new brands are available in the better bars around town (we have fifteen), but may or may not be worth a brand-call. What follows is a very abbreviated history, a few suggestions, and a few personal favourites having blind tasted quite a few for industry magazine, Imbibe a few months back. As far as the history goes, gin originated as Jenever or Genever in Holland during the 17 th Century (particularly in Schiedam, where are lots are still produced – we have one in the bar if you’d like to try it) where it was sold as a medicinal drink for treating gout, lumbago, gallstones and kidney problems. It crossed the water when William of Orange became King of England in 1689. The English found it a useful way of disposing of poor-quality grain that wasn’t good enough for brewing, and rather took to its inebriating qualities and price (unlike imported spirits, home-produced gin wasn’t taxed at the time) to heart. This led to hundreds of gin stills (supposedly 1500 in 1726!) and even more gin bars all over town. There was even a distillery across the road from The Hide at one point according to planning records. This early gin was produced in pot stills, so had a stronger flavour and was usually sweeter. The cheaper bathtub gin was flavoured with turpentine and sulphuric acid, so possibly not best to try and re-create! There were such great social problems associated with this vast gin consumption that the government tried a couple of times to reduce the amount drunk, finally succeeding to a certain extent in 1751 through the Gin Act. This early, sweeter gin, produced after Jenever and before present-day London Gin was also known as Old Tom. One story behind the name relates to the illegal gin stills and one Dudley Bradstreet in the mid-1700s. To evade the Gin Act legislation, he had a cat-shaped sign on the shutter of his house. This had a metal pipe below the cat’s paw that extended through the window into the house. In his autobiography, he wrote, "... at last I heard the chink of money and a comfortable voice say, 'Puss, give me two pennyworth of gin!' I instantly put my mouth to the tube and bid them receive it from the pipe under her paw." Apparently this method of dispensing and recognising gin spots spread, and ‘Old Tom’ became synonymous with hole-in-the-wall gin. The name stuck until the 1970’s when the style of slightly-sweet gin fell out of fashion. Up until then, it was an essential ingredient in many gin cocktails from the 1880s to the 1950s. In the mid 1800’s, the column still led to the production of purer spirit and the current methods for producing gin. There are two methods of production now, giving two types of gin: compound and distilled. Compound is the cheap and simple way, with the botanicals being added to a neutral grain spirit (vodka), usually in the form of liquid flavourings and extracts. The second method, distillation, involves the addition of the botanicals to the spirit, then the re-distillation to give a more subtle, complex and developed character. Baskets of botanicals can also be hung in the vapour of this distillation to add more aromatic qualities. In addition to the juniper, botanicals almost always include citrus peel, coriander seed, iris (orris) root, liquorice, anise and cinnamon, with many others depending on the brand. The last note on the history concerns Old Tom again. I know a few people in the throes of producing new-old-toms, and one of the first to hit the market has been Hayman’s Old Tom. We’ll be getting some in, but also having a go at making a compound Old Tom, so next time you’re in, pick out one of our old cocktail books and ask us for a classic Old Tom Collins, Silver Fizz (Old Tom, egg white, lemon juice and white sugar shaken and topped with soda) , Martinez (bitters, maraschino, Old Tom, sweet vermouth, shaken and strained) or a Jewel (gin, sweet vermouth, green chartreuse, orange bitters, dash of lemon juice, shaken and strained with a cherry garnish). The older books refer to Dry Gin ( London), Plymouth or just Gin, the latter requiring a slightly sweeter, Old Tom style. They’re also pretty interesting made with a Jenever too… Brands and tasting notes: My favourite and pride of place in our House Martini is Jensen’s Bermondsey Gin. Developed by Bermondsey Street resident, Mr Jensen, this is a fantastic classic-style London Dry Gin. The simple packaging reflects the style of the contents – a smooth, powerful and straight-forward juniper-led gin with a really clean finish. It makes a brilliant martini, but is also great with tonic. To my knowledge, we’re the only bar in the world to stock it at the moment, so if you’d like to try the Bermondsey Martini, we’re the place to come! We also love: No. 209: from a micro-distillery in San Francisco, this gin is produced in a hand-made Alambic still (like those used in Cognac). The product is light and fresh, but packs a punch and has a great, smooth finish. Bergamot and rosemary are apparent on the nose, but its selling point is the really clean palate. Nice bottle too! This was the winner in the blind tasting I took part in for the Imbibe Club Elite awards. Blackwood’s 60: we’ve liked the regular Blackwoods since we opened, and are still big fans of the slightly salty flavour and interesting botanicals, collected annually from the Shetland Islands. It makes a brilliant G&T and works really well with apple juice and elderflower, as in our Hedgerow. The Blackwood’s 60 is the big brother who works out. At 60% abv it packs a punch and while not so subtle in a martini, it’s a lovely cocktail ingredient or a nice punchy long drink, especially with bitter lemon. Miller’s Westbourne Strength: not that we just go on the ABV, but the Westbourne Strength at 45.2% really does help the character of this gin. It’s smooth, but has a great hint of white-pepper allowing it to cut through tonic water and add depth to simple gin cocktails. A very nice ingredient in a Collins. Second to the 209 in the Imbibe Awards. Tanqueray No. Ten: Tanqueray’s top-end gin, this is made with fresh botanicals which include grapefruit peel. As a result, it makes a very fresh and smooth martini with a grapefruit twist, or a very refreshing G&T with a grapefruit wedge. Crown Jewel: Beefeater’s answer to Tanqueray’s Ten, this is also a zesty, fresh gin and scored highly in the Imbibe awards. Junipero: another San Francisco offering, this is produced by the same people who bring you Anchor Steam beer. A great dry juniper and pine smelling gin, also has a kick to it at 49.3%, but is smooth enough for a martini. Particularly good if you like them dirty I think. Beefeater: the famous London Dry Gin produced in London and sold all over the world. It may be readily available everywhere, but we do think it’s a pretty good straight-down-the-line gin and is currently our House pour. Other stuff Our back room is available for hire, and we’d love to hold tailored wine tastings or cocktail classes. Just get in touch and let us know what you’d like to do. We now have a price list of some of our more popular tastings, available from the website at www.thehidebar.com/parties.htm. Likewise please get in touch if you have any comments and suggestions, please email everyone@thehidebar.com. You can also sign up to keep in touch at ‘people who like to drink at The Hide Bar’ on Facebook. The Hide
39-45 Bermondsey Street , London . SE1 3XF t: 0207 403 6655; f: 0207 117 4173 www.thehidebar.com; everyone@thehidebar.com |
||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
©
2006 The Hide |
||||||||||
