Diamond Jubilee by John Walker & Sons

Nice bit of work from the fine folk at Johnnie walker this. They have released a special commemorative bottling to commemorate HRH’s sixty years on the throne.

As far as crafted authenticity goes, this one  is a doozy. The whiskies contained in the blend have all been resting in the Johnnie Walker warehouse since they were distilled in 1952, the year Elizabeth was anointed Queen and ascended the throne.

The selected liquids have been married together in barrels handcrafted from oak provided by the Queen from her estate at Sandringham.

The diamondshaped Baccarat crystal decanters stand on a crystal base with six radial legs to reflect the decades of The Queen’s enduring reign, and are adorned with Britannia silver, selected for its purity. Leading Scottish silversmiths, Hamilton & Inches, has fashioned the collars set with a half-carat diamond, the Royal Arms, John Walker & Sons monogram and individually numbered seals.

Each edition also includes a pair of lead Cumbria Crystal glasses engraved by Philip Lawson Johnston and a commemorative artefact book, hand bound by Laura West at her Isle of Skye bindery and personalised for each owner by Sally Mangum, Calligrapher By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen. All the elements will be housed in a chest made by the cabinet makers at N.E.J. Stevenson, incorporating oak from Sandringham to echo the whisky marrying casks and Caledonian pine from The Queen’s Balmoral Estate.

Aside from the bottle the Queen and Prince Philip are set to enjoy, the others will be sold around the world, to the benefit of the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST.) Support is guaranteed at a million pounds, so you can expect to pay at least seventeen thousand pounds to call a bottle your own.

Chairman of QEST, Richard Watling, commented: “The creation of this beautiful work, a monument to the skills of its craftspeople and the definitive tribute to 60 years of Her Majesty’s reign is of enormous significance to QEST. The donation will enable us to significantly increase the number of scholarships we award, helping to secure the preservation of vital craft skills for generations to come. For this, QEST is extremely grateful.”

Sesquicentennial Bitches

150 years is a long time to have been doing anything.  As such, hat tip to the familia Bacardi and their efforts in the distillation, distribution and consumption of rum. Their rum is sold in more than 150 countries around the globe these days. Here’s a bit of brand wank which puts some ridiculously large numbers around what the brand has achieved:

http://www.multivu.com/swf/jwplayer-2011-09-01/player.swf?job=53403

The family has chosen to mark this auspicious day with the limited release of Ron Bacardi de Maestros de Ron MMXII.

It’s $2,000 a bottle, and there are only 400 of them going on sale around the world, plus whatever they keep back for family occasions and to keep the brand’s ambassadors motivated. For your hard earned cash you’ll get just 500mls of a maple coloured liquid that represents the finest Bacardi production in existence.

Aged up to 20yrs and then finished in 60yr old ex-Cognac barrels, the resulting liquid expertly crafted by eight family blenders.

Tasting notes, and further details just seem a wee bit hard to come by at present but a 20+ year aging the heat of the Caribbean is sure to have delivered an epic result. Update: a few quiet drinks with Enrique Comas has yielded that the heart of the 600 litres of this spirit that were produced were one 12 yr old barrel that had been mistakenly left in the Solera and a mystery barrel that used the old numbering system but was improperly dated and, as such, must be at least 10 years old, maybe more. This then is a true vintage product. As its inputs were a mystery, it can never be reproduced.

Anyone who hasn’t had enough Bacardi from this article can go here, and drink from the fire hydrant.

Oxley Gin

Two real treats arrived for me off the plane from England. First, my good friend Marty, back from a couple of years as Brand Ambassador and general rapscallion for 42 Below over in England. The second treat was the hip flask of Oxley Gin Martin had slipped into his luggage.

I had first heard bout Oxley over at the Dizzy Fizz, and a few times on Twitter. Marty managed to fill in a few more juicy details.

Oxley has been developed by Bacardi, in response to an acknowledgement that the traditional style, premium Gin segment is growing very quickly and that the stalwart of their portfolio, Bombay Sapphire, doesn’t really deliver a good enough juniper hit amongst its 12 beautiful, if a little floral, botanicals.  Bombay uses the Carter Head still, reckoned by many to be the pinnacle of distillation.

Oxley is a big step away from the Carter Head still. Bacardi have patented a new type of still, to produce the spirit at sub zero temperatures. At sea level, the world over, alcohol is known to boil away at 78.3 degrees Celsius and water at 100. It is precisely this gap that makes the wonderful process of distillation possible. What some smart bastard at Bacardi must have noticed is that boiling points drop at higher altitude. Boiling a pot of water on Everest will only be tepid, as opposed to piping hot. Getting stuff to boil at sub zero temperature requires considerably more effort, there being no mountains higher than Everest and running a still in an unpressurized plane being frightfully expensive.

Now, according to the marketing spiel, the process is a closely guarded secret, distillation occurs at -5, then at -100 the vapour is cooled back into pure, lovely Gin. It does sound  very fancy and hard to work out. However, it’s really not. Those standard temperatures for boiling are at 760 mm Hg, which is an expression of pressure, as measured by mercury in a vacuum, or barometer, as it has come to be known. What Bacardi have done is to create a still whose pressure can be cranked down to a mere 12.6mm Hg approximately 1/350 of the normal pressure on earth. Which pretty much means they create an environment pretty close to the atmospheric pressure on the Moon. (actually about ten times the Moon’s pressure, but it’s a factor of ten we can’t really measure). Water would boil around 11 degrees at that pressure.

The point of all this physics (for any of you who are still reading) is that in normal distallation, the heat quite literally cooks the botanicals, degrading them and bringing out odd tastes, the freezy method means the 14 botanicals that Oxley includes stay snap frozen fresh. The result is a Gin that is very smooth, with good juniper and a nice balance of grapefruits. A little less spicy than the Beefeater 24, but very much its own thing as well.

The leather strapping, the tin bucket, the four day a week production schedule, the 240 bottle batches, the individual numbers all point toward a pretty special product. The 60 pound price tag will be seen by many (including me) as taking the piss, in the same way Absolut’s  Level did with vodka.

All that said, I can’t wait to try it in a martini.

Bacardi Reserva Limitada

If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know I’m a big fan of a good story and an even bigger fan of using special products to promote a brand.

Last night at the Sydney Rum Club, the boys from Bacardi bought along something that’s pretty special. Bacardi Reserva Limitada.

This rum is the jewel in the crown of Bacardi’s rum empire. Aged rums are blended after as many as 16 years languishing in the Caribbean sun, the result is a rum not quite as robust as Bacardi 8, and not quite as smooth as Ron Zacapa Centenario XO. Reserva Limitada wins the race in terms of how fine a spirit it is. Subtle, with nary a trace of heads nor tails, Bacardi’s masterpiece is comparable to a cognac or a great grappa, it is distillation at it’s finest.

Where can I buy a bottle? I hear your say. This wonderful rum is only available at two locations (although the guys from Bacardi Lion claimed only one.) Both are are fair trek from this, the Lucky Country. Your options are  (1) The Bacardi Distillery in Puerto Rico and (2) The Bacardi Store in Nassau. You will save yourself a whole 5 bucks if you’re in the Bahamas.

I think it’s going to be a while between drinks on this one. I’d love to try it in an old fashioned with some Fee Brothers orange bitters.