The Spectator.co.uk Scoff Blog

Tailored Scotch

Dave Broom — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:37:36 +0000

While it is an accepted fact that a true gentleman will make his tweed jacket last a lifetime - there is nothing more likely to raise the eyebrows of your companions on a shoot if you turn up wearing a garment clearly fresh from your tailor - there will always be people starting out on their journey towards true British sartorial elegance who will require such a garment.

And it does indeed appear that the young blades who are embracing the delights of single malt whisky are now also in thrall to the art of the weaver of tweed. Some of them may be your godchildren.

If only there was a way, this Christmas, to satisfy both of their new-found loves. Thankfully, there is.

The Hebridean island of Islay is home not only to eight distilleries, but an excellent woollen mill run by Mr. Gordon Covell, whose tweeds are in demand by the country’s finest tailors. Over the past few years, he has also designed tweeds for each of the island’s eight distilleries.

One of the eight, Bowmore, has allied itself with Mr Malcolm Plews of Welsh and Jefferies to offer

The Ambassador of Smiles

Dave Waddell — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:13:41 +0000

‘I have been working with this rum for years and even now it still brings a smile to my face.’ Tito Cordero, rum master for Diplomático, has a singularly beautiful face, the sort that wins awards for the kind of photographs that make it into Magnum. It is not, however, and despite his claim, a face presently wreathed in smiles. In fact, while Cordero is most smartly turned out, his tie perfectly knotted, I immediately get the feeling that even on an occasion such as this, the launch of Diplomático’s much feted Ambassador Selection, he’d prefer to be back at Destilerias Unidas S.A (DUSA), in Venezuela, sleeves rolled up, overseeing the production of some the world’s finest rums, doing what he has been doing for the last quarter of a century.

Of course, I’m wrong. Entirely. Cordero is more than happy to be here, in London, at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace. It’s just that this is serious business. Speaking without notes, through a translator, a glass of Ambassador in one hand, the other rising and falling to sound of his voice, this is not the time for smiling. It is the time for listening. Fine: we’ve drunk many rum

A Sidecar Named Desire

Dave Waddell — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:00:25 +0000

‘It’s rubbish, actually.’ I am at the Boutique Bar Show in London, in a curtained off section of the Royal Horticultural Halls, part way through the day’s first seminar, and Tristan Stephenson, bartender, co-founder of Fluid Movement and wizard chemist to spirits writer Dave Broom’s sensual exposition of the history, vagaries and future of cognac, is referring to that sourest of mixed drinks, the original Sidecar. To prove his point, Stephenson passes a couple of glasses around. It is, as he says, a rubbish drink, and all the more so for the fact that we’ve already eaten, licked and sipped our way through a dizzying array of cognac based cocktails, including warmed, egg-based late eighteenth century-type ‘custards’, a typical Stephensonian iced cream cognac, and two versions of the Sazerac, the second of which, the Green Fairy Sazerac, substitutes the absinthe rinse for ‘absinthe air’, a foam designed to make every ‘sip slightly different’.

Still, super-sour or not, the Sidecar remains a major player in the world of cocktails, its origins the subject of much debate, its name first attributed to a nameless army captain, patron of an equally nameless bar in first world war Paris, who, according to David

Hollywood; The Heart of Good Taste

Tim Harrison — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:24:32 +0100

I’m sitting in the pin spot-lit interior of the Library bar of Hollywood’s historic Roosevelt Hotel. With its dark walls, leather sofas and wood panelling, it has the feel of a gentleman’s club - with a heady spritz of Hollywood glamour and the merest promise of sin.

Opposite me sits a man of southern-European complexion and indeterminate age, eyes glowing with health and mischief. He leans forward. “Try this,” he says, with a conspiratorial smile – his eyes glinting in the dimly-lit bar. With a showman’s flourish, he hands me a strawberry.

The fruit is almost black in its ruby intensity. I put it in my mouth. The flavour flares on my taste buds then explodes, a deep sweetness accented with an alpine tartness – delicious and distinctly ‘heirloom’. I grin, caught off guard by the very… berry-ness of the fruit. The man smiles and shrugs. “That’s nothing. We’re early in the season. In a couple of months, those flavours get really intense.”

He is Matthew Biancaniello and I’m having a cocktail experience like no other. In the heart of old Hollywood, opposite Graumann’s Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame, Biancaniello is pursuing his unique

Pinot Envy

Peter Grogan — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:24:15 +0100

After you've been writing about wine for a while you tend to start running out of words. Anybody with any doubts about this only has to read Robert Parker's descriptions in recent years to realise that, if S+P were rating the language of wine, they'd give it junk-bond status. (Mind you, Uncle Bob's words were the first to enthuse me to try to describe wine. I suppose once you've done a few tens of thousands it does get a bit same-y and most people are really only interested in computing his numbers anyway).

But if you and I think it's tricky to talk about wine - and most people would rather tell you about their salary or their sex life before venturing much of an opinion on what the wine in their glass actually tastes like - try doing it without a voice box. That's what the brave Andrew Hedley of Framingham Wines was doing the other night at Peter Gordon's The Providores in Marylebone High Street. And he made everybody laugh rather a lot.

It was at the first of a series of New Zealand winemakers' dinners in the upstairs room, with typically fabulous food

Gourmet Andalusia

Antony Julyan — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:26:09 +0100

Usually, when I’m in the shower all I see is the reflection of a pale, middle-aged man staring steamily back. But things are looking up. I have been showering at the Hoopoe Yurt Hotel, with a view (unimpeded by glass) of the Andalusian mountains, with the occasional butterfly to provide scale. I think most would agree this is an improvement.

It is difficult to mention Yurts (round Mongolian tents), composting toilets and solar power without provoking an immediate Pavlovian cry of hippies. Nothing wrong with caftans and a bit of crystal gazing of course, but the ethos here is quite different.

Ed Holdsworth Hunt, the hotel's owner, acquired over the course of his travels around 10 hectares in the foothills of Andalusia, near Cortes de la Frontera. A combination of planning restrictions and practical concerns delayed his decision over what to do with the land, but when he was joined there by his wife, Henrietta, the question became ever more pressing. A yurt hotel seemed the perfect solution, both ecologically sound - Ed designed and constructed all the timber-buildings on site himself, using tools powered by solar energy - and taking advantage of the beautiful, remote landscape. Each of

Triflemisù

Marguerite Foulkes — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:52:40 +0100

In my willingness to blend into my adoptive country, I have watched the full series of Blackadder and Yes Minister, brought competitive cakes and jams to the school fair, tried (and failed) to understand the rules of rounders and
started wearing Boden and M&S knickers. Although I rarely stray from my Gallic repertoire of tarte au citron, îles flottantes, Charlotte and tarte Tatin, once I spent almost a day making a proper trifle from scratch, including the jelly - using fresh strawberries - and vanilla-flecked custard.

The home-made trifle was delicious, but I now compromise with this pudding, which is far less time-consuming. The love child of a trifle and a tiramisù with a soupçon of Charlotte, it offers the best of three worlds: part British, part Italian, part French – just like my children, who can’t get enough of it.

Serves 6-8
300 g boudoir biscuits (ladyfingers)
10-15 cl rum
4 eggs
80 g caster sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla essence
250 g mascarpone
1 punnet strawberries
1 punnet blueberries
1 punnet raspberries

Rinse and trim the strawberries, slicing the biggest ones. Rinse the blueberries. Reserve a few berries

Jura Swap Shop

Jane Carswell — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:46:49 +0100

This week, we had our first swap shop on the island. I organised it and, coincidentally, did really well out of it, swapping some loganberry jam for a fine big cabbage, a vintage apron for a marrow, a sack of chive plants for 'six magic beans' and some bonus cuts rosemary from a neighbour 'for the luck.'

This has led to Swap Shop cooking: we had fine bubble and squeak for breakfast, and I made Jura's answer to dolmas for a lunch for three. I had leftovers from supper - tuna with cumin seeds, chickpeas, spinach, almonds and black olives with some steamed rice. The outside leaves of the cabbage flounced at me invitingly and I wondered how edible they would be wrapped around portions of last night's meal. I duly put on a large pan of salted water, blanched them and set to work on a tangy marinade.

First, I chopped a generous sprig of the rosemary and added some cooking whisky. Next went in olive oil, a generous amount of nut vinegar, soy sauce and a spoon of dark brown sugar. Since it tasted a bit angry, I added a teaspoon of peanut butter. I hovered

Where the Wild Things Are

Dave Waddell — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:25:11 +0100

‘If I was in one of my wilder moments I’d get down on my knees and lick that off the floor.’ Dr. Bill Lumsden, Head of Distilling and Whisky Creation at Ardbeg Distillery on the Isle of Islay, has spilt a couple of drops of Ardbeg Corryvreckan. We are mid-tasting, in the Chairman’s Study, the distillery’s innermost sanctum, a small cell-like room consisting of a back-lit cabinet of Ardbeg whiskies, a tasting table and not much more.

Before us stand five extraordinary bottles of single malt whisky: a 10 years old, a Uigeadail, the aforementioned Corryvreckan, an Alligator and a sample from Cask 4714. Voted the world’s best single malts 2008 and 2009, the first two are whisky world legends, as is the Corryvreckan, which single-handedly netted much of whatever was on offer by way of awards in 2010; the Alligator, due for general release in September 2011, is hotly tipped to follow suit; and Cask 4714, distilled in 1975, is the sort of thing that makes hedonists froth with joy.

I’m not at all surprised that Bill Lumsden has spilt the Corryvreckan. Nor that he might, on another occasion, were he not repairing (by car) to Edinburgh this

Musical Taste

Dan Jellinek — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:57:37 +0100

Last week saw one of my favourite events of the food year – and it was a music event.

It’s true that these days, every music festival is busy adding a few celebrity chefs in an increasingly desperate attempt to differentiate themselves in an ever more crowded marketplace.

But world music festival WOMAD’s ‘Taste the World’ stage is something different – a long-established exploration of the ties between food, music and other aspects of hundreds of different national cultures. As regular readers will remember as I’ve been banging on about it for years (search this website for ‘WOMAD’), it’s a unique and mesmerising global cookery school that fascinates and entertains in equal measure.

First up this year was Khaira Arby, a superstar singer from Mali who sang as she created a beef stew traditionally served at Tuareg weddings or other feasts, based on a musky, fragrant Malian herb which grows in the desert after the first rains of the season and which sounded in English like ‘fukkahoy’, a coincidence enjoyed more by the audience than the on-stage translator.

In the kind of satisfying circularity often found at Taste the