The venue itself is labyrinthine. What looks from the street to be a hole-in-the-wall whisky bar opens into a multi-level, five-room drinking enfilade. Upstairs, the focus is on speed of service. Guinness and whisky flow and cocktails arrive by tap, typically carbonated, crushable and seasonal. Downstairs is where the cocktails take centre stage. Here drinks are refined and served up à la minute.
“The fresh produce we use comes from a farming cooperative called Shrub,” says Tanner. “That’s why our menu is in a degree of flux but the drinks themselves are quite process-led – lots of fermentation, lots of making fruit wines.
Banana Wine
With this new menu we wanted to work with single ingredients for each drink and use technique and processing to make sure we get the absolute most of each ingredient,” says Tanner.
“I love the idea of simplicity. I’ve done a lot of overly complicated things but to strip everything back to two or three vital ingredients is even more fun and creatively rewarding. Here the focus is single ingredient, but it’s worked and it’s refined.
Banana wine, Brugal rum, fino sherry
Technique: “Bananas are blended with water and we add amylase to break down the starch and produce a sweet slurry. We take the slurry and ferment it using champagne yeast up to 18% abv, then clarify in the centrifuge and adjust with sugar, acid and a little bit of wine tannin. It yields a delicious banana wine which we mix with a little fino sherry and rum.
Cherry Soka
Cherry water, Empirical Soka, macerated bird’s eye chilli
Mac Daddy Grasshopper
The Macallan 12 redistilled with cacao and mint, sake
Apricot Coffee
Coffee kombucha, apricot cordial, rum
