bringing drinks to life

I’ve been lucky recently to have had some nights that were better than average. You know the sort of evening where everything comes together just right. A good bar, with a talented bartender making drinks, great company and good tunes, the sort of evening where you have a ‘drinking experience’. It got me thinking about the little things that elevate the experience of sipping a cocktail.

I’ve always been startled by people who say that cocktails are too expensive but who don’t mind paying over the odds for a bottle of beer or a glass of wine. I admit that it galls me to pay £7.50 for an overly sweetened daiquiri made using the cheapest ingredients by someone who would rather be anywhere other than behind the bar. But when you go to a good bar and your drinks are made by a bartender who does their job because they love it (well they don’t do it for the money that’s for sure!) and you sip a perfectly balanced drink, well that’s worth paying for!

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.