London-based whisky bar Black Rock has crossed the seas and carved out a temporary home in Central.

Located inside “Frank’s Library” at Foxglove, the pop-up bar offers single malts from Highland and Speyside whiskies, along with some extremely rare malts from the Diageo library.

Dubbed “London’s best whisky bar”, Black Rock is co-owned by industry veterans Tom Aske and Tristan Stephenson, who take a unique approach to storing whiskies.

Selections are grouped by descriptions, which include balance, fragrance, fruit, smoke, spice and sweet.

Drinks are served on a monumental 12-foot-long table, which is by far the most distinctive feature of the bar. It houses two rivulets of whisky – Morello cherries and spices on one side and a house-style blend on the other.

Items on the menu include Hong Kong-flavoured dishes made by local chefs. For every dish sold, $10 will be donated to charity.

Apart from The Singleton, other classics on offer include Johnnie Walker King George V, Lagavulin, Glenkinchie and Cragganmore.

The pop-up bar is open from 22 July to 5 August.

“Hong Kong has such an amazing selection of bars and it’s such a great opportunity to be part of that for a short period of time,” says Aske.

To book, call Foxglove at 2116 8949 or email reservation@foxglovehk.com.

An Ernest Hemingway-inspired bar, The Old Man, will open in Hong Kong later this month.

Inspired by the American writer’s style and taste in drinks, The Old Man will be run by cocktail and bar pioneers Agung Prabowo, James Tamang and Roman Ghale.

Hemingway is arguably just as famous for his ability to drink as he is for his writing. The author once said: ”Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares, if you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars,” which is what the owners of The Old Man will be hoping people do.  

The literature-themed bar will be primarily led by Prabowo, with Tamang and Ghale expected to manage day-to-day operations.

It will be located in Aberdeen and the drinks menu pays tribute to Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Old Man and the Sea.

Before founding The Old Man, Prabowo managed the Bar & Beverage programme at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong and he also led Island Shangri-La’s award-winning Lobster Bar & Grill.

The bar is anticipated to include a moody and charming vibe, and a heterogeneous collection of drinks inspired by the late literary genius.

Warm weather is a mixed blessing for the wine and spirits lover. Summer is a season for cold drinks, and the finer points of many favourites tend to be obscured when they are over-chilled. It is not a time for full-bodied red wines – the bigger Bordeaux and Barolos for example – or for undiluted fine cognacs, single malt whiskies or other strong brown spirits.

So what should we be drinking over the next couple of sweltering months? Wine drinkers traditionally gravitate to crisp white wines with relatively high acidity – sauvignon blanc from France’s Loire Valley and New Zealand in particular – or rosé, which has shed many of the negative associations it acquired during the years when pink Portuguese sugar water dominated international sales of the category.

There is now a wide choice of readily available rosé wines. Some of the cheaper ones are still marred by the sickly sweetness of yesteryear, but there are many more dry or off-dry options from both the Old and New Worlds to choose from.

It is true of wine in general that you get what you pay for, but this is particularly true of rosé. Don’t be put off by the underwhelming plonk someone poured for you from a bottle bought in a supermarket for less than HK$70. Be willing to pay just a few dollars more and you will be amazed at the difference it makes.

Good rosé wines at higher but perfectly reasonable price points are available from France, Spain, Italy, Australia and California in particular.

Provence, of course, is well established as rosé country, but red Bordeaux lovers may want to try sipping some of that region’s paler wines in the summer heat.

Chateau D’Esclans in Provence has a stated mission to produce the world’s greatest rosés, and it certainly makes serious wines. For casual summer drinking, Whispering Angel is a good default choice, but seek out Les Clans, or the rarer and considerably more expensive Garrus grand vin, to see what heights can be achieved in this often underrated area.

You don’t have to abandon red wines entirely for the summer, though. Reds that are relatively low in alcohol – generally 13 percent Alcohol by Volume (ABV) or less – can stand being slightly chilled.

Consider pinot noir from Burgundy or the lighter reds of the Rhone Valley as alternatives to heavier Bordeaux blends. The wines of the Beaujolais region are particularly suitable as summer reds and, considering they’re generally underestimated, are often competitively priced. Wines from Fleurie and Morgon are also worth sampling.

Tiki cocktails are usually quite potent, but if properly made with fresh fruit juices, they can slip down with deceptive ease

Champagne – which is generally served colder than it should be, even in the depths of winter – and prosecco, which is experiencing a boom in interest worldwide, are obviously appropriate summer tipples. It’s also the season for bubbly-based cocktails, with classic favourites including the bellini, mimosa and Aperol spritz.

Spirits, and spirit-based cocktails which generally pack more of an alcoholic punch, are a more complicated matter.
“Modern tiki” bars are now en vogue, and Hong Kong has two that were featured on the highly competitive Asia’s 50 Best Bars list: Honi Honi and Mahalo Lounge, both created by bartender/owner Max Traverse. The tiki trend has also made its presence felt in other Asian cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Because of the strong beach associations of the fruity drinks and the décor of the bars in which they’re served, many people like to unwind after work by spending an hour or two in a tiki bar. The ritual offers a little escapism and a taste of the tropical holiday they’ve been meaning to make time for.

Tiki cocktails, often rum-based, are usually quite potent, but if properly made with fresh fruit juices and plenty of ice, they can slip down with deceptive ease. Beware.

There are some excellent creative cocktails being made in some of these bars, and there’s a good chance you will find yourself at some point this summer drinking a mai tai, zombie or plantation punch. Make sure it’s a good one, and sip it slowly.

Although there is growing interest in spirits which come from warm climates, such as rum, tequila and mescal, bartenders say the two that attract the most interest in this part of the world are of cool climate origin – gin and whisky.

Although gin was originally consumed primarily in the Netherlands and later in England, it came into its own in 19th century India with the development of the gin and tonic – a classic combination now enjoyed worldwide.

We have become much more adventurous in our choice of gins, which are plentiful thanks to a plethora of boutique producers as well as established brands such as Gordon’s Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire and Hendrick’s. There are now gin-themed bars that offer tens or even hundreds of them, including another Asia’s 50 Best Bars venue, Hong Kong’s Ori-gin.

Long gin drinks seem made for summer – not just the gin and tonics, but also fizzes, slings, the French 75, the gin rickey and many others – but brandies and whiskies are more of a seasonal challenge.

It is possible to serve high-quality brown spirits heavily diluted with soda and served over ice to produce a refreshing long drink. One can order a Hennessy XO with ice and Perrier in the Cognac region, but it seems a bit wasteful.

Most single malts drunk with less dilution, even if on the rocks, are too powerful for hot weather consumption. There are still options, though. Lowland single malts are traditionally much lighter in style – though generally not in alcohol – than their

Highland or Island counterparts. Glenkinchie, for example, is often designated a pre-dinner malt because of its light floral style, and it takes well to a cube or two of ice.

A cask-strength 24-year-old edition of Glenkinchie, bottled in 2016, has just been added to the Asian Moet Hennessy Diageo portfolio, although you may want to sip that one with a little chilled spring water instead of ice. Auchentoshan is another gentle Lowland single malt that’s suitable for summer sipping, but it’s best to leave the more intense Laphroaigs and Lagavulins for the onset of autumn.

Summer is also, of course, an ideal time to try a few craft beers – particularly the seasonal ones made by local microbreweries.
While we’ll all be drinking differently during the muggy months of July and August, with a little bit of seasonal know-how, we’ll at least be drinking well.

Text: Robin Lynam

Johnnie Walker has launched the 2017 limited-edition John Walker & Sons private collection, Mastery of Oak.The one-off blends were created by Master Blender Dr Jim Beveridge and fellow blender Aimée Gibson.

“Every whisky starts out full of the promise of its distillery character,” said Beveridge. ”Oak casks offer us an astonishing number of ways to differentiate these styles further as they mature, broadening our palette of flavours for blending.”

The blenders used American oak for the first vatting, selecting fine examples of ex-bourbon casks that had contributed rich, creamy, toffee and spice notes to Malt & Grain Scotch Whiskies as they matured. The two men then focused their attention on finding refill casks for the second stage of vatting. And for the final stage, they returned to American oak combinations using experimental casks, particularly new oak that has created an intensity of vanilla sweetness.

The John Walker & Sons collection comprises a limited release of 5,588 individually numbered decanters.

Winston Churchill, who was among other things a discerning drinker, was once given a glass of fortified wine from the late 18th century. He is said to have remarked, “My God, do you realise this Madeira was made when Marie Antoinette was still alive?”

Part of the allure of very old fine wines and spirits is that they provide a direct sensory link to history. Wines and spirits dating back to the days of Churchill are rare enough, let alone bottles from the 18th century.

Madeira is remarkable in that it is often still drinkable after more than a century. That is partly because a degree of oxidisation – regarded as a serious fault in most other wines – is an essential part of its character. As recently as 2015, Christie’s auctioned a bottle of Madeira thought to be the oldest still in existence, made before Marie Antoinette was born in 1715. It fetched nearly US$20,000 (HK$155,800).

Most other wines, however carefully stored, would be undrinkable by that age, but spirits can live much longer. However, at the prices old spirits now command, very few people can afford a taste of real spirit history. A Scottish whisky company which recently launched its range in Hong Kong and Macau, through distributor Adega Royale, has come up with the next best thing, though.

The Lost Distillery Company is not another broker of exorbitantly priced old liquids – there are plenty of those – but rather an independent bottler creating facsimiles of Scotch whiskies that went extinct long ago when the distilleries that made them closed. Fortunately, records of how the spirits were made survived.

Using that information, the company is producing whiskies it believes to be close – if not exactly – to what Scots were drinking in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At the very least, it’s close to what those distilleries would probably be making were they still in business today.

Inendent bottlers do a service to diversity within an industry in which individuality is prized, but is constrained by the fact that so many distilleries are owned by an ever-shrinking number of corporate behemoths. British beverage company Diageo operates 28 malt distilleries alone, accounting for around one-third of the Scotch whisky industry’s total capacity.

It was not always so, though. Most single malt distilleries were originally independent operators. But during the 20th century, many were bought up by larger corporations, and more than 100 others closed their doors forever.

Some, of course, made spirits of no special distinction and went out of business for that reason. Others, however, made noble spirits but succumbed to external economic pressures. These included the catastrophic effects of prohibition in the United States between 1920 and 1933 under the Volstead Act, two world wars and the loss of captive local markets beginning in the 1860s when railways reached the Scottish Highlands.

All of these pressures contributed to the consolidation of the distilling business through the acquisition – often followed by the closure – of independent distilleries by bigger businesses. That process began in earnest as long ago as the 1920s.

Now, some of that heritage is making a Lazarus-like comeback, according to Ewan Henderson, global brand ambassador for The Lost Distillery Company. The company was established in 2013, co-founded by two Ayrshire Scots, Brian Woods and Scott Watson, with the ambition of reviving what Watson calls “Scotland’s former whisky legends.”
Henderson, an ebullient whisky enthusiast with a colourful turn of phrase, describes the company as “The Indiana Jones of whisky” and likens the research behind the recreated whiskies to “archaeology.”

The Lost Distillery’s archiving team is led by whisky historian Michael Moss, a professor at the University of Glasgow, and its members have compiled data on a steadily growing portfolio of extinct distilleries. Research has established the types of still that were used to make the spirits, the casks used to mature it and each distillery’s sources of peat, barley and water.

The whiskies are available in three ranges, each presented in self-consciously retro black bottles in homage to the type that Scotch whisky distillers used before the modern age of diversified packaging. The Classic, Archivist and Vintage lines include spirits from all the Scotch whisky regions – the Highands, Lowlands, islands (including Islay), Speyside and Campbeltown.

“We’ve created a range which goes right across the flavour profile from the lighter styles with floral cereal notes right the way through to the big smoky, peaty Islay style in Lossit,” says Henderson.
The Lossit distillery on Islay closed in the 19th century. Among other spirits in the range, Auchnagie, Gerston and Jericho in the Highlands, Dalaruan in Campbeltown and Speyside’s Towiemore all disappeared during the reign of King George V, which lasted from 1911 to 1936 – although there were two Gerston distilleries, the first of which was scrapped in 1882.

The Lost Distilleries have some support from George V’s great-grandson. The company is based at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, a royal estate of Charles, Prince of Wales, although the Scots – the royalists anyway – prefer to call him the Duke of Rothesay. The association, according to Henderson, “opens a lot of doors.”

“The Lost Distillery makes whiskies which are close to what Scots were drinking in the 19th and early 20th centuries”

The company is not operating its own distilleries. The modus operandi is to blend different single malt whiskies, bought from across the industry to produce spirits with the flavour and aroma profiles that research has determined the “lost distilleries” would produce if they were still in business today.

It’s an interesting experiment. The whiskies are premium priced, but nowhere near the figures old spirits from Scotland’s better known “silent distilleries,” such as Rosebank,
can command.

The heritage recreation theme sets The Lost Distillery Company apart from other independent bottlers such as Compass Box, which is also buying whiskies and marrying them together, but its creations tend to be more experimental and modern than its nostalgic, heritage-influenced counterpart. More traditionally minded bottlers such as Gordon & Macphail and Cadenheads also produce blends, but concentrate on special expressions from single distilleries.

It all adds to the growing diversity of the world of whisky, and as interest spreads to the many new international producers, this initiative serves as reminder that Scotland is still a creative leader with a rich history worthy of spirited celebration.

Text: Robin Lynam