I have just returned from my annual Christmas and New Year escape. You see unlike many people I don’t particularly enjoy the ‘festive’ season so I normally grab a group of like-minded individuals and head for the hills. As well as being a keen imbiber I also enjoy mountain biking, so a trip to deepest darkest Wales for a week of playing in the mud and snow up the side of a mountain always cheers me up, while others sit watching TV re-runs and eating Turkey.
 
 
This year was no exception, but where as I usually accept a week of drinking beer in place of Manhattans, this year I decided no compromise would be allowed. Here’s my simple philosophy… ‘there is no excuse not to drink cocktails’. No matter where you are or what you are doing, cocktails enhance the occasion, so why compromise?
 
 
So with that in mind I set about planning which bottles should go to Wales, with the obvious dilemma of taking enough variety for 8 days drinking, whilst still being able to fit everything else into the car! I would have loved to have been able to take the entire 'drinking room' collection with me, but practicality forced me to dig deep and cull my packing to no more than a couple of boxes, covering spirits, syrups, bitters, tools and fruit.  A real challenge!
 
 
I also decided that I should provide a cocktail list for my fellow mountain bikers, offering a broad range of drinks to suit their varied tastes. This made life both easier and harder; at least I could narrow down the list of ingredients to cover a small selection of drinks… but it also meant I had to bring enough ingredients to cover the whole range of drinks, not just the drinks I like best… so much for a bottle of rum, a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of Antica Formula vermouth!

All cheesy puns aside, we have just had one hell of a week what with a sample bottle of gin arriving on Bitters & Twisted HQ's doorstep on Monday, the small but perfectly formed Boutique Bar Show Tuesday and Wednesday, a Cachaca tasting day held at the Brazilian Embassy on Thursday followed by a night in Brighton with good friends and excellent cocktails. If every week was like this my liver would fail me within the next year but I would die happy! 

I almost don't know where to begin with this blog, but since I have recently talked about both Cachaca and The Boutique Bar Show, I think it only right to talk about Brighton and Gin. So let's start with the rather excellent gin that we at B&T HQ have been eagerly anticipating for some time. Geranium gin!

Over in New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail we met a talented young bartender from Copenhagen named Jimmy Olsen, and over several days drinking got to know him pretty well, so we were pleased when he dropped us a line to tell us that he has just become the Brand Ambassador for Geranium, a new London Dry gin that is launching in Europe as we speak. We were even more pleased when he told us that he sent us a bottle to play with, to see what we think of it.