Gin’s getting serious. For a while it was the preserve of the pinky-ringed business boys and their once-a-week housewives. Then it was embraced by the bar community. And now? Well now it’s everywhere. ‘Flavoured’ gins are popping up all over the place and will no doubt come and go in much the same way as flavoured vodka trends. But the trend for stronger…

SOMEHOW a whisky speaks of the country from which it came. Scotch can be rugged, hard to get to know, but ultimately deep in personality. Irish whiskey, perhaps like the Irish, is approachable and mostly light-hearted. Japanese is complex and bourbon is big and youthfully exuberant. Canadian whisky’s mildness is surely no accident either. Certainly its mother country’s propensity for understatement goes…

German wines are coming of age in more ways than one. They have been dogged by the epithets “cheap and cheerful” and “cheap and sweet”, from years gone by, but discerning, knowledgeable buyers and consumers now know that Germany makes world-class wines, particularly (but not only) Riesling and Pinot Noir or Spätburgunder. Ernst Loosen of Dr Loosen Estate in the Mosel, is a…

THE TWO TROPICAL FISH that accessorised the blue curacao cocktail that was served to me, may or may not now be dead. Blinking hard and making sharp circles of the base of their little glass home, they looked despairingly at me as I watched on. I prayed that fish do indeed have the mental capacity for only three seconds of cognition. Any longer and…

Vermouth is very much a bartender thing – the consumer is still unsure, so says Shaker UK’s head of training, Amit Sood. High-profile Italian bartender and global ambassador for Martini, Giuseppe Gallo, bemoans the lack of knowledge about the vermouth category. He tells Drinks International: “It is the most undefined, unexplained category.”He points to classic cocktails such the Martini, Manhattan, Martinez and…

Easy to drink, usually fruity and relatively low in alcohol, and that’s just for starters. One would be forgiven for thinking that liqueurs were invented for today’s drinking environment. Indeed, with their versatility and mixability, liqueurs also play a vital role in the expanding cocktail arena and the growing popularity of the cocktail is aiding and abetting progress. As a result innovation is central…

AMERICA’S A-LIST CELEBRITIES have a new toy. It’s 100% agave tequila. And they’re not happy just drinking it – the past few years have seen a jamboree of star-studded super-premium tequila launches, each brand endorsed to the hilt for the American consumer’s consummate reassurance. But are the tequilas from George Clooney, Justin Timberlake and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs the category’s Three…