Champion of the DI Cocktail Challenge and Santa Teresa ambassador Jim Wrigley knows his cocktail onions when it comes to rum. Here’s his take on the evolution of the rum cocktail. “The many varied range of rums was adopted into cocktail culture early on, with ‘Professor’ Jerry Thomas’ using combinations of Jamaica, Medford (an early American rum) & Santa Cruz rums in different proportions…

A DEBATE ON CLOSURES among the great and the good of the wine trade could easily fill a room – but the same topic would empty a room of consumers.  This apposite comment from Richard Halstead, chief operating officer of Wine Intelligence, comes in his introduction to WI’s 2011 report on wine bottle closures. Said debate has gone from a vitriolic…

There’s romance in champagne – the expensive label, the popping cork, the sense of occasion. Over the past few years, though, headlines on the subject might’ve led you to believe it was about as romantic as a cold cup of tea resting on a tax return. Then there are the subjects of the early harvest, US domestically produced ‘champagne’ and the revision of the…

This is not just a converted warehouse full of offices in north London. No, Britannia Row used to be Pink Floyd’s recording studios. Now though, a receptionist, a flower arrangement and a labyrinth of corridors hide all sorts of businesses. One of these is Tony Conigliaro’s Drink Factory, a laboratory/office that plays headquarters to Tony C’s inventory of imbibing. Behind that door there’s a large…

THE IRISH WHISKEY CATEGORY IS ON FIRE,” says Stephen Teeling of Beam – echoing Diageo’s formal, but no less arresting, assessment that it is the “fastest growing spirits category in the world”. To appreciate the significance of what is happening on the Emerald Isle it’s worthwhile looking at where Irish whiskey has come from. In laconic language, it had a 20th century to…

ONLY 10 YEARS AGO what is now happening in the global gin market would have been unimaginable. With or without a crystal ball it would have taken a brave analyst to say that, come the end of the noughties adjectives such as ‘dynamic’ and ‘robust’ would be used to describe gin’s state of play – but that is the happy reality. It is…

ARMAGNAC has so much going for it that it’s difficult to know where to start. The fact that it begins with the first letter of the alphabet can only help when novices are seeking out the runners and riders of the spirits world. At more than 700 years, the spirit of Gascony in south west France can claim to be one of the…