Henry Jeffreys

On the blog today we have UK brand ambassador for Disaronno Rod Eslamieh, a man who has had a chequered career in the drinks industry. He gives us the benefit of his hard-won wisdom…
Eslamieh began working in drinks when his father bought an old fire station in Brentford, west London, which they turned into a bar and restaurant. It was an odd career move because up to this point Eslamieh didn’t drink alcohol. But he quickly fell in love with the bar culture, and the venue became very successf...

Talk to bartenders about what’s going to be big in the next year and one word keeps coming up: tiki. So, on-trend as ever, this week we’re looking at the original tiki cocktail, the Zombie!
Tiki is the name of the first man in Polynesian mythology, but tiki bar culture owes more to California than Hawaii. The two godfathers of tiki were Don the Beachcomber (aka Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt) who opened an eponymous bar in Hollywood in 1934, and ‘Trader’ Vic Bergstrom whose Oakland bar in nort...

It’s Wednesday evening which means it’s time to get your shaker out. This week we risk the wrath of the cocktail puritans by extolling the pleasures of a Martini that’s heavy on the vermouth.
There’s no cocktail like the Martini for bringing out the purist in certain people. You know the sort of thing they say: “Show the gin a bottle of vermouth, throw the vermouth in the bin and then drink the gin.” Noël Coward wrote, “a perfect Martini should be made by filling a glass with gin, then waving...

This week we show you how to make this modern classic inspired by a childhood spent foraging for blackberries.
The origins of most great cocktails are lost in the mists of time. Not the Bramble though – it was invented in the mid-’80s by Dick Bradsell when he was working at a bar in Soho called Fred’s Club. Bradsell tended bar in some of London’s most notorious venues including Zanzibar in the ‘80s and the Atlantic Bar in the ‘90s. You might remember seeing photos of Noel Gallagher or Kate Mo...

Introducing a new Master of Malt blog series (trumpets sound): every Wednesday we will present our cocktail of the week. It might be a new serve from a swanky bar or something more familiar. First up, we have a forgotten classic from the golden age of cocktails: the Brooklyn!
You’ve probably had a Manhattan, and maybe a Bronx. But did you know that there are cocktails named after other boroughs of New York City, the Queens and the Brooklyn*?
The Brooklyn was invented around the beginning of t...

This week we’re making a drink that appears simple but needs precision to pull off successfully, plus having a look at brandy’s rich cocktail history.
When mixing drinks, most of us reach for gin, rum or whisky, and forget about Cognac and Armagnac. Which is a shame because not only can these two brandies be great cocktail ingredients but in many cases, they were the original ingredient. The Sazerac, for example, according to Eric Felten in How’s Your Drink, gets its name from “a brand of Cog...

Though we might think of ourselves as a post-God society, much of what we do still smacks of religious observance. Take Dry January or Veganuary, for example. These are like secular versions of the Lenten fast. I didn’t do either. In fact it was more like Hamuary in our house. Some people in the drinks trade, no doubt worried that all this abstinence is bad for the bottom line, have come up with an antidote, Tryanuary. I know, another dreadful portmanteau but still, I like the sentiment, be a...

At Christmas parties, the choice is usually between red or white wine. You might get champagne if you’re very lucky, prosecco if you’re not. It makes me think back to the spread my parents used to put on. My father would line up bottles of gin, whisky, brandy and vermouth on the kitchen counter. He’d even get the Drambuie out, though I don’t remember there being any takers. Everyone had their drink: my aunt would have a Martini and tonic, my grandfather a brandy and soda, and we, the boys, wo...

Jonathan Mitchell from the family-owned wine merchant described the relaunch as “the biggest day of all, we’ve had orders for Red Spot for two years.” We were at the historic Shelbourne Hotel and from there we walked to Mitchell & Son’s old cellars beneath Fitzwilliam Lane to try the long-awaited whiskey. The family has been in business since 1805 but their whiskey story starts in 1887 when they began sending empty casks of port, sherry, Malaga and Marsala to the John Jameson and Sons distill...

What could be more hospitable than a properly made drink? Not just a gin and tonic, but a martini or daiquiri? And rather than scrabbling around in the cupboard, wouldn’t it be wonderful We’ll drink to that In his new book, Henry Jeffreys explains how everybody needs a home bar – or at the very least, a cocktail cabinet
The retro bar
The 1970s were a contradictory decade in terms of style, so when searching for a retro bar you have a multitude of looks to choose from: futuristic with glass br...

A new exhibition of classic Campari advertisements at the Estorick Collection in London features images that you’d never get past the Advertising Standards Agency today. Some feel designed to appeal to children, for instance; others link the consumption of Campari to seduction. Thankfully there were no such strictures in early 20th-century Italy, when these posters were commissioned.
Campari, a red, bittersweet, alcoholic spirit, has its origins in the heart of industrial Italy. In 1860, Gasp...

Sherry cask-finished whisky is nothing new, but just why does the combination work so well, and why have the butts become so important? We investigate the magic of sherry and Scotch…
All whisky lovers know that sherry casks and Scotch go together like Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, but the term ‘sherry cask’ isn’t as simple as it may at first appear. To get to the bottom of this much misunderstood part of the whisky process, I spoke to Donald Colville, Diageo global malts ambassador, about ...

Imbibe Live: You might have heard of it. You may even have been along to it. It’s one of Europe’s top drinks trade shows where trends are spotted and ideas shared. Want to know what you’ll be drinking next? Our Henry headed to Imbibe 2018 to find out…
There’s always a moment when I first arrive at a trade show where I feel like a rabbit in the headlights. I am sure this would happen to me at Photocopier Expo but at Imbibe Live, one of Europe’s largest on trade shows, I was particularly overwh...

There are few whiskies that you could truly describe as mould-breaking, but one such single malt is Signet from Glenmorangie. To celebrate the chocolate malt-based expression’s 10th anniversary, Dr Bill Lumsden, director of distilling, whisky creation and whisky stocks at Glenmorangie and Ardbeg, invited a select few for an in-depth look at how this unique single malt is made.
From the moment I arrived at the Glenmorangie distillery it was clear that something unusual was going on; the air wa...