Drinks World Middle East | Dubai #3

DUBAI NO. 3

MEHMET NUR SUR A World Class Act

DUBAI

WINE WEEK 2015

PERONI

NASTRO AZZURRO

Infusions Range By Jason Clark

HOPFEST

2015

PATH BAR SCHOOL Opens Its Doors!

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Dubai Calendar

FOR FURTHER DETAILS STAY TUNED TO

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HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES TO BE WORLD CLASS? World Class 2015 Christmas Party 21/12/15 CHALLENGE: 1

CHALLENGE: 2

CHALLENGE: 3

DESIGNING WORLD CLASS DRINKS FOR YOUR MENU!

MINDFUL DRINKING!

MASTERING FRUITS & PLANTS!

21/12/15 PATH BAR SCHOOL MASTERCLASS - TECOM

18/01/16 PATH BAR SCHOOL MASTERCLASS - TECOM

07/03/16 PATH BAR SCHOOL MASTERCLASS - TECOM

01/02/16 DRINKS DESIGNED, ADDED TO MENU AND SUBMITTED TO WORLDCLASS.JC@ANE.AE

13/02/16 DRINKS DESIGNED AND SUBMITTED BY 3PM TOP 15 SELECTED TO COMPETE

02/04/16 DRINKS DESIGNED AND SUBMITTED BY 3PM TOP 15 SELECTED TO COMPETE

01/02/16 - 15/04/16 PROMOTED ON MENU, SOLD IN VENUE AND JUDGED

21/02/16 INTERNATIONAL GURU SEMINARS - VENUE TBC

10/04/16 INTERNATIONAL GURU SEMINARS - VENUE TBC

18/04/16 TOP 2 SELECTED FOR SEMIFINAL

22/02/16 CHALLENGE COMPETITION TOP 3 QUALIFY FOR SEMIFINAL VENUE TBC

10/04/16 INTERNATIONAL GURU SEMINARS - VENUE TBC

16/5/22 20/04/16 DUBAI’S TOP 8 + 1X OMAN + 2X ABU DHABI + 1 WILDCARD RECEIVE BRIEFING PACK FOR SEMIFINAL. 4 WEEKS TO PREPARE FOR THE COMPETITION 16/05/23 22/05/16 SEMIFINAL CHALLENGES AT WORLD CLASS HOUSE POP UP - TOP 4 QUALIFING FOR FINAL

23/05/16 UAE NATIONAL FINAL EVENT AT WORLD CLASS HOUSE POP UP INCLUDES CHALLENGES GURU SEMINARS, AWARD CEREMONY & CELEBRATIONS

WINNER BEGINS PREPARATION TO COMPETE IN THE WORLD CLASS GLOBAL FINAL IN MIAMI 2 DRINKS WORLD MIDDLE EAST °

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Credits CREDITS Publisher Ashley Pini ashley@hipmedia.com.au EDITORIAL Publishing Editor Ashley Pini Editor Lindsay Trivers DESIGN Art Director Evelyn Rueda Senior Designer Racs Salcedo PRODUCTION Production Manager Sasha Falloon SALES Sales Director Marc Rodrigues PHOTOGRAPHY Photographers Bahr Karim and Matt Terrey ILLUSTRATIONS Illustrator Robert Durrant CONTRIBUTORS Writers: Neal Cameron, Chris Chambers, Ken Gargett, Brent Henderson, Lorena Tapiero, Mark Thomas, John Treadgold, Lindsay Trivers

FEATURE: PATH Bar School opens its doors! Story on pages 8-15.

Lindsay Trivers Lindsay Trivers is a the founder of The Tasting Class and writer for Drinks World Middle East. Her professional beverage experience spans seven countries across five continents and she has qualifications with The Wine & Spirit Education Trust, The Court of Master Sommeliers, Auckland University of Technology, and she is also a Belgium beer specialist.

With The Tasting Class she provides fun and interactive wine training and consultancy to staff and clients of bars, restaurants and also to private clients.

Produced and published by

Editorial Enquiries: If you, your bar, or your brand and company have news or events you would like to share with Drinks World Middle East please contact: ashley@hipmedia.com.au and/or sasha@hipmedia.com.au Although Hip Media Asia endeavours to ensure the accuracy and correctness of the information and drinks trade and drinkstrade.com.au, we do not accept any liability or responsibility for any inaccuracies or omissions. The views expressed by authors of publications or event presentations, published drinks trade, do not necessarily represent the views of Hip Media Asia. Decisions or actions based on the information and publications provided by Hip Media Asia are at your own risk.

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drinks world @drinksworldasia drinksworld

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Welcome Welcome to the third edition of Drinks World Middle East; 100 pages packed with competitions, trainings, parties, festivals and good old-fashioned drinks features – rounding out our first year of publishing into the UAE. Now it seems like we have always been here – reporting on the best restaurants and bars, bartenders and sommeliers, new products to play with and tips on how to incorporate them into your everyday repertoire.

During the last year we’ve seen the industry grow and some awesome talent emerge with many of the best competing in the range of bartending competitions now available to UAE bartending talent.

This edition we give you the low-down on everything World-Class starting on page 16, including an interview with the winner Michito Kaneko from Japan and our very own World Class winner Mehmet Nur Sur from Zuma Abu Dhabi.

We are very fortunate here in Dubai to be able to offer you what many would consider to be the most advanced and comprehensive bartender training facility anywhere in the world. The PATH facility is put under the microscope on page 8 through to 15 - we hope you get the opportunity to take advantage of these African + Eastern owned and operated facilities. Check out the feature for some of the most awesome bartending toys going around.

Festivals and events are aplenty at this time of year, and it’s been no different in 2015 with Hopfest, Peroni Cocktails, World Class, the Stoli Lab and Matusalem Speed Comp all gracing these pages.

Finally, I encourage you to take advantage of the regional network that Drinks World magazine can play in your career and general enjoyment of our wonderful industry. Also published across Asia and Australia, Drinks World magazine offers you the opportunity to contribute – become a drinks writer, blogger or even get behind the camera for drinksTV. For all the opportunities visit drinks.world and stay in touch with all the latest regional news and opportunities to get amongst it. We hope to see you there soon.

Cheers Ashley Pini

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Contents

24

Feature

27

8 26 27 36 64 82

Profile

54 66 71 86 92

Soda Jerks

46 54

Johnnie Walker

Muddle Me

Laurent-Perrier

Ornellaia Blanco 2013

Meet

24 46 72 80

56

16 56 60

How Travelling Can Enrich Your Craft How Beer is Made

The Whisky That Got You Serving Champagne

72

World Class UAE Final

Stoli Lemonade Lab

Matusalem Rum Speed Competition

Drink

42 88 94

Dubai’s Hopfest 2015

Dubai Wine Week 2015

World Class Global Challenge Winners

Competition

News

30 74

PATH Bar School Launch

Peroni Nastro Azzurro Infusions Taste of Japan

Hakkasan Somelier Dinner

94

World Class Global Winner Michito Kaneko Celebrating Dubai Bartenders Formula 1 with Ivan Haller Steve Fernandez

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° FEATURE °

PATH BAR SCHOOL LAUNCH “

They’ve managed to create Schlauraffen Land for Bartenders!” was Raïssa Giger’s reaction to seeing PATH Bar School for the first time. The freelance event bartender and manager of Confiserie Sprüngli Café & Boutique went on to explain that “Schlauraffen Land is like a paradise candy land in Switzerland”. When you put it that way there are few bar professionals who would disagree. This 3500 square meter space boasts five rooms packed with state-of-the-art bartending facilities that have been developed to support the region’s drinks industry professional.

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PATH, launched in 2011, which aptly stands for Professional Alcohol Training for Hospitality, was largely a mobile service that brought a beverage training regimen directly to the bars and restaurants across Dubai. PATH Training Manager, Richard Cohen said that “from the start we were not just about delivering brand training, it was about offering our customers, which at the end of the day are the hotels and bars, training that really added value to their business. Such as supporting to improve customer service, therefore increase repeat customers, helping with the speed of service allowing for more customers to be served and give tips on how to up-sell, whether that be single to doubles or premium to ultra-premium products. With these key aims laid out we drove an agenda that was very much around accredited training; whether that be The Wine & Spirits Education Trust, The Institute of Beer & Distilling Academy courses, or one of courses from bar academies we have teamed up with over the years to deliver different practical trainings.”

To date PATH has trained over 25,000 bartenders across the Middle East & India.

Within its first two years PATH has become the single largest WSET Spirits Training provider in the world, and within four years it has become one of only three institutions worldwide that offer WSET Level Three Sake; no small feat for a relatively small city. Richard illustrated further, “the demand that we saw when we started running trainings was so high. Customers kept coming to us asking for more practical and bespoke trainings. From that we felt there was a real opportunity to support those customers and to grow our overall responsibility around training.”

It was clear that PATH needed its own headquarters; a place where junior bartenders could learn the skills of the trade in a quality controlled environment and where senior bartenders could access to the best professional tools and ingredients to creatively participate in the evolution of the global bartending community.

In September this year, a mere four years after PATH’s conception, PATH Bar School opened its big red doors. The PATH team had considered what was required to support every skill-level of every type of drink professional, from bar backs to beverage managers, from wait staff to sommeliers.

PATH Bar School is divided into five rooms. The

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° FEATURE °

largest of which is a lecture theatre that seats up to 40 people, and can facilitate more than 100 at standing events. In fact, as the only fixed element in the space are the walls, any function ideas can be brought to life with relative ease.

Since its launch, this room has already been transformed for an ice carving tutorial, has had a neighbourhood farmer’s market installed, lined up more than 400 open bottles for the Wine Week 2015 festivities, hosted several bartending competitions, lead cocktail menu styling workshops and even caught the attention of professional photographers who want to make use of the versatile space.

The area that elicits the most excitement has to be the hands-on training room with 17 bartending stations, each equipped with its own ice well, sink, tools and fully stocked speed rail. By laying the bespoke white laminate countertop over the stations they are quickly adapted into a professional wine evaluation stations for when the occasion calls for it.

This room is the favourite space of Benjamin

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Nicholas, Head of Intersect by Lexus. “It has the wow factor. Through its visual presentation, with all the equipment available, along with the spirits and beverages available for professionals to play with, it is the perfect facility for new hospitality venue’s opening up in Dubai.”

And Mickey Biro, Bar Manager at LBD has been doing just that, “We have used the Bar School in the previous weeks quite a few times in the lead up to our opening. What we have been doing is training and drinks development.

With the versatile tools of the bar school and the wide selection of alcohol, bitters, liqueurs, condiments and roots it is interesting to see the outcome of the drinks. We have used the sous vide and the induction cooker to the maximum for macerations and infusions. The guys got the chance to make their own tinctures and bitters.

It was nice to introduce this equipment to the junior staff.”

Tucked away behind the reception desk is a room featuring a sturdy repurposed wood table that comfortably seats six people for more

intimate tasting sessions. This room’s walls are dominated by floor to ceiling sliding glass doors that provide a modern juxtaposition to the worn antique wooden features within.

Each of these spaces is equipped with permanent camera fixtures, which are ideal to aid PATH’s clients in developing video cocktail manuals among other creative projects, like the PATH cocktail series’ that have been popping up on their Facebook time line.

A storage room out back doubles as a photo studio, complete with cyclorama for getting those seamless cocktail shots. Bartender, Raïssa Giger added, “I do like the photo booth in the back; where you can capture your newest creation and put it online on social media”.

Stickman, an international design firm that specialized in hospitality spaces, planned the space with the help of his team in collaboration with PATH. Stickman Founder, Marcos Cain had this to say on what they set out to achieve, “essentially what we were doing was designing a bar facility that looks and feels like it is a bar,

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and also has the versatility to be able to hold different events, tutorials, and be a function space; a multiple purpose space that can still look good when there is nothing in it, and still be altered depending on the actual event or promotion that PATH is working on. Overall the space was to be a blank canvas where they can create what they want and need, but then have a very strong educational bar set up as well.”

Marcos elaborated on how the look of PATH Bar School evolved, “They wanted something very comfortable for the consumer. Also, they wanted to activate certain brands without any material or finishes relating to any particular brand. From our brief we looked at a couple key elements. First one being in this region we need to be sensitive not to show any liquor branding externally, and give a more of speak easy style of entry statement.” Stickman and PATH brought this idea to life by installing a narrow tunnel entrance that looks more like a secret entry you’d find in a 19th century back alley in London than in shiny and polished Dubai. Marcos continued, “We wanted to relate [the entrance] to multiple beverages; whiskey cellars, wine cellars, Champagne houses, and so forth. That’s why you see the arch entry. Ideally we wanted to make the focus from the door to the brands, almost like a telescopic view as you come through, and create some suspense as to

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what’s around the corner”.

Once you turn the corner at the end of the arched entrance it opens to the wide and well-lit lecture space. With another quick right turn you’ll find the bartender training room. The unfinished ceilings allow for event theme versatility, and the stressed oak details throughout mirror the barrels used in the production of a wide variety of alcoholic beverages.

Marcos added “the other key thing was the AV setup. Considering that it’s an education space [PATH] wanted to be able to demonstrate and make sure that everyone in the room could actively see what they’re doing at any angle; and at the same time be able to record it”.

Lastly, Marcos touched on how they strived to maximise the storage capability; which was an aspect of the design that stood out for freelance event bartender Raïssa Giger, “It’s not only really big and organised, it has everything a bartenders needs to be creative and experiment”.

In true Dubai fashion the toys and tools at PATH Bar School are of the highest quality, and traditionalists could argue that they border on excessive. Like the limited edition Ferraris that line Dubai’s valet parks, no cost has been spared when considering the add-ons for this luxury performance machine. The bar necessities are from the most reputable manufactures, like the freezers and fridges from Williams, the KoldDraft ice machine and the Meiko Glasswasher; and the shelves were loaded with everything required for cutting edge cocktail development including a blast freezer, rotary evaporator, PolyScience Sous Vide and vacuum chamber, Pacojet, four different types of blenders and juicers, a dehydrator and a PrO-Xtract Centrifuge.

With so many toys to play with every bartender that walks in finds something they can’t wait to try. As for Richard Cohen’s favourite, “In true bartender geekiness, it’s got to be the ice machine. We’ve got a really top end Kold-Draft ice machine and the quality of our ice is fantastic. It’s solid, a great size and great quality”. Raïssa Giger weighed in with “I am personally stoked that they have a Rotovap machine. I hope I can use it in the future for some experiments”.

Sourcing such a huge range of quality bartending equipment, plus ensuring that everything arrived according to its planned installation date was a challenge handled by Muddle ME. Their Managing Partner, Simon

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Chabowski had this to say on the project; “to have a client that knows so much about this industry, and were looking for the best of the best in equipment and tools for a fully functioning bar school, was a great challenge for our team; and one we thoroughly enjoyed working on. Timelines for these types of projects are always difficult to manage with so many people involved, but our team are used to working under pressure and PATH Bar School were very happy when we delivered and installed in time for their launch. Muddle ME’s portfolio is all about the latest technology, techniques, service methods and trends as well as the timeless classics; something that we hope we got across in our product selection for the bar school.”

Now that PATH is up and running the trade is firmly behind the project. Marcos from Stickman says “It is one of the most unique and advanced bar schools that I’ve seen’’.

Benjamin Boyce, The Head Bartender at the recently launched Bagatelle Dubai said “It is very rare that you discover a place that allows you to tweak and perfect your craft in any trade, especially hospitality, but in PATH Bar School you find it by the boatload. The support that [instructors] Richard, Jason and the guys provide is incredible and it is reflected by the drinks that are popping up across Dubai at the moment.”

Raïssa added, “I believe that attending a training and listening to [instructors] Jason Clark and Richard Cohen is already very helpful, but if you have the chance to be active and do the same as what the trainers are showing you then you simply learn easier and it stays in your head.

You have a great cocktail station to copy what the trainers are doing in the front; this is the way to learn and play around with the product and get creative”.

Benjamin Nicholas, Head of Intersect by Lexus added, “In regards to the equipment available in PATH it is every bartender’s dream. It will allow bartenders to push their knowledge and understanding as well as push the quality of beverages being served in Dubai. This in turn will support beverage quality and experience in the UAE. Along with the equipment, [Educators] Richard and Jason’s hands-on involvement means that the training facility will have a huge impact on the beverage scene in the UAE.” To the sceptics it may seem that is just a place for the region’s bar staff to have a lot of fun, but Richard Cohen, Manager of PATH Bar School, explained the grander mission that is

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playing out. “In every industry education plays a role. The aim of hospitality has always got to be around improving the consumer’s experience.

Therefore education in whichever form it comes in has a positive effect on the consumer experience. From an educational point of view PATH has a responsibility to support the UAE and Oman on-trade in improving what is already a really good customer service ethos. It has a responsibly to continue to help build the community that exists within the F&B sector and, of course, we are a drinks distributer and we have an aim to ensure that the amazing brands, that we are custodians of, get the full respect and love that they deserve because they really are world class brands.”

Clearly a very passionate man when it comes to bartending and training, Richard proudly rattled off exactly how he sees PATH Bar School affecting the region’s hospitality trade. “We

have built a truly one-off trading establishment.

I’ve been doing this now for 18 years and I’ve never come across a bar school that has 17 stations; it’s just unheard of. Forget all the top-end equipment we have and the beautiful design of the place, the practicality of being able to bring in a large team and have them all work on their own station; and have them be instructed on how to make anything from the most straightforward gin and tonic to the most complicated molecular concoctions is phenomenal. Add the professional photography studio and its ability to film SOP manuals instead of writing them. It will help hotels streamline internal trainings and ensure product consistency on classic and signature drinks.

PATH not only gives bar teams the space and products to develop recipes, but our two hundred types of glassware even allows them to get the presentation right. For the beer

focused outlets we have 180 brews from 50 countries, and one of the few beer sommeliers in The Middle East is a PATH trainer. Throw on top of that we have more than 400 of the world’s best spirit brands, 3000+ different wines and Champagnes, and we’re ahead of the trend with about 150 sakes available. This resource is a dream come true for any bartender anywhere in the world.

What was started as a small, mobile team of beverage all-rounders educating junior staff in Dubai’s emerging hospitality market, in less than five years, has snowballed into a full service beverage training headquarters, equipped with a team of cocktail, spirit, beer, sake and wine specialists, who are aligned on their mission to support and improve the hospitality industry as a whole, backing Dubai to the 2020 tourism vision, and putting the UAE on the map of great culinary cities.

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° COMPETITION °

DIAGEO WORLD CLASS RAISES THE BAR IN 2015

S

ome say competition brings out the worst in people, others say it inspires self-improvement.

Whatever stance you take, there is no avoiding that competition leads to better products and sets the bar higher for the next round of contenders. The Diageo World Class competition has been running for less than a decade and it already has a reputation for pushing the bartending industry to new limits year after year. It is recognised as the world’s largest, most prestigious bartending challenge, and it is only getting bigger and more competitive. Participants are tested through a series of challenges that showcase skills learned throughout a career spent over a bar well. It is the Iron Man of bartending competitions; training is crucial, talent is a must, and consistently strong performances across multiple disciplines is required to claim the trophy at the finish line.

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Considering the youthfulness and comparative small market size of the UAE, it has punched well above its weight in recent years. Some of the region’s hometown heroes include Jan Liska, Bar Manager at Boca, Angus McGregor of PACHA Ibiza Dubai, and Jimmy Barrat of Zuma Dubai, who finished second in the world in 2012.

Of all the bartending competitions what is it that has put World Class on a pedestal? One easy argument is that it is based on an entire portfolio of brands as opposed to a single product. Furthermore the portfolio happens to be the luxurious Diageo’s Reserve range.

Mixologists can choose between Ketel One and Cîroc, Tanqueray No. Ten and Ron Zacapa, in addition to the full line of Don Julio Tequilas, Grand Marnier liqueur; Bulleit Bourbon, The Singleton of Dufftown, Talisker, Cardhu, Haig Club, plus Johnnie Walker’s tops shelf drams which encompass Gold, Platinum, The John Walker and King George V – this is a fine liquor cabinet any bartender can get excited about.

World Class is held in such prestige due to careful organisation ensuring only the best bartenders from around the world are

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° COMPETITION °

brought together to compete. Perhaps it’s oversimplifying the process, but by following the brief overview is how the brightest bar stars are identified.

First candidates must be trained, and regardless of PATH Bar School’s support, the skills required to win at the Global level take years of practice. Next, entrants submit a Signature drink recipe that they have developed according to competition guidelines; which change every year. Of those, the visionaries behind the 12 best recipes compete in a knock-out series of challenges that test speed, knowledge, creativity, technique, food pairing and their ability to engage with guests. The regional winner then travels on an all-expense paid trip to represent their nation at the global level.

A look at the 2015 statistics reveals that 15,000 bartenders from 56 countries entered the World Class competition, and more than 400

of those where from The UAE and Oman. Each of these participants had to create a cocktail that was either inspired by the written word, showcased the ageing process of the spirit used, or create a drink that could be enjoyed with all five senses.

For the 7th year in succession, African+Eastern, in partnership with Diageo, were charged with separating the good from the great in a series of trials that took place at Grosvenor House. The 12 finalists, who’s signature cocktails had earned them competition entry, were Adam Hrapko and Razvan Mijea of Zuma Dubai, Stephen Muigai of Skyview Bar, Claudiu Mnerau and Adam Masoudi of COYA, James Estes of Blasé, Dicky Hartano of Shangri La, Muscat, Brett Bell of La Residence, Aditya Wiguna of Hakkasan Dubai, Mehemt Nur Sur of Zuma Abu Dhabi, Emilio Valencia of Asia de Cuba and Alessandro Stringardi of Stratos and LRM.

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THE CHALLENGES On May 31 the all male line-up competed live in three challenges, knowing that at the end of the day only four would remain in the competition.

The first challenge was a written test that brought new meaning to the words bar exam.

Later that afternoon each would make a cocktail to pair with a meal, and also design a cocktail that engaged all five of the drinker’s senses.

The Cocktail & Sensory “Toast” Challenge, took place at Embassy Bar in Grosvenor House, and required competitors to create a cocktail using Haig Club. The drink had to engage the judges with not only the usual taste, sight and smell, but also with sound and touch.

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Furthermore, Haig Club had to be served from the bottle in a ritualistic way that would spur the judges to raise their glasses in a toast. While there were a lot of boxes the bartenders had to tick in order to get full points in this challenge, at least they had the opportunity to prepare themselves beforehand; a luxury they didn’t have in the test.

Three dishes were brought from the kitchen.

The bartenders tasted them and then they had 15 minutes to make a cocktail that paired perfectly with one of the dishes. To up the difficulty level they were limited to a choice of three base spirits that were only revealed to them during the challenge. The second drink of this two cocktail challenge was an after dinner

drink using either Ron Zacapa 23 Year Old or Ron Zacapa XO. Points weighted in favour of originality, and Mehmet Nur Sur’s concoction of Ron Zacapa 23, Pedro Ximenez sherry highlighted by notes of coffee, chocolate, bitters and orange saw him progress to the final round of the UAE regional competition. Succeeding at his side were Razvan Mijea of Zuma Dubai, James Estes of Blasé and Dicky Hartono of Shangri-La Muscat.

These four were in for their biggest challenge yet and years of experience behind the bar was the only way of preparing for the mystery challenges ahead. Nerves were at a high as the best in the business had been flown in to both mentor and scrutinize these finalists.

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° COMPETITION °

The judges included Charles Joly, the reigning World Class Global champion, Jeff Bell, 2013 World Class runner-up, and Justin Smyth who is both the global brand ambassador of Ketel One Vodka and the appointed national host at the World Class Global competition in his home Cape Town, South Africa.

Finally the mystery challenges were revealed.

Each of the four remaining competitors pulled a Diageo Reserve brand from a hat, and were given 100 AED and 30 minutes inside the Spice Souk to get ingredients for their bespoke cocktail. The best cocktail would win; simple as that.

The second mystery challenge was to make a Ketel One Bloody Mary. Each finalist was given ingredients and five minutes to design and present their ultimate Ketel One Bloody Mary to the panel. For even the newest bartenders making a Bloody Mary in five minutes may seem like a simple enough task, but part of being a great bartender is being able to absolutely nail the classics.

In addition to making a few cocktails, the mystery round probed at core bartender responsibilities. Competitors had to prepare their own bar station for the evening’s service, ensuring they were ready to make both their mystery cocktails, and also the Signature cocktail they designed to gain entry to the World Class competition in the first place.

Sweat beads formed as bartenders were judged on their mis en place. The beads turned into drips when they had to field questions from the omnipotent judges as they constructed drinks of their own design; defending their creative choices with confidence, maintaining a steady hand while demonstrating technical ability, and charming the judges with their outwardly cool and calm personalities.

No time to pat the sweat dry. The final test would only get their hearts pounding harder.

The judging panel increased in size and now included The UAE’s former World Class global contestants. These eight thirsty men took their place in front of the bartender to judge the speed competition. Eight drinks in eight minutes, lets go.

Alas, there could only be one champion, and that evening Mehmet Nur Sur from Zuma Abu Dhabi earned the title of UAE World Class Champion 2015. Later that month he packed his tools and boarded a flight to Cape Town, South Africa, to represent the region in the ultimate World Class challenges.

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2015 UAE Winner Mehmet Nur Sur from Zuma Abu Dhabi at the Global Finals in Cape Town, South Africa

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DIAGEO WORLD CLASS 2016 Are you up for the challenge?

World Class 2016 is officially underway!

Masterclasses have rolled out throughout Dubai with bartenders being trained and briefed about this year’s programme and how to compete!

Changes have been made to the format this year with challenge #1 designed to push bartenders to design World Class signature serve competition level cocktails and promote these on their menus from the 1st of February through till April.

Bartenders can use any of the Diageo Reserve brand products and must submit evidence of their cocktail on the menu by the 10th of Feb. All those competing will then be mystery judged. With the top 2 bartenders from this challenge being put straight through to compete in

the Semi-final in May. More info can be found at www.facebook.caom/worldclassuae Challenge No2 on the topic of mindful drinking begins in January with bartenders designing cocktails to submit online for a chance to compete on a stage in February.

We welcome all UAE bartenders to come along to the masterclass events to learn and challenge the best in the region to compete for a chance to be crowned World Class UAE National Champion.

For the winner a chance to compete on the global stage against the world’s best in Miami and be judged by cocktail greats such as King Cocktail Dale Degroff, legendary bartender Peter Dorelli & many more.

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JAPAN’S MICHITO KANEKO

WINS WORLD CLASS 2015 T

he owner of The Lamp Bar in Nara defeated a global collection of bartenders in possibly the most competitive World Class Global Final ever.

Michito Kaneko from Japan was crowned the world’s best bartender at the Diageo Reserve World Class Bartender of the Year 2015 competition, held in Cape Town, South Africa.

After four days of challenges, judged by leading figures in the world of bartending, Michito was picked out from an original complement of 54 contenders.

“When I heard my name, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I was in total shock,” said Michito at the gala awards dinner on 5 September. “I’m very happy to have won. But I must remember that even though I am the World Class champion, I must stay humble and true to what I love.”

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The level of skill was consistent across all competitors - exceptionally high!

In the final ‘Cape Town Shakedown’ challenge held at the city’s V&A Waterfront, the final six bartenders had to create a pop-up bar to reflect their personality and bartending style.

Michito looked to his own name for inspiration.

Michito means ‘Man on the Road’, so he incorporated the iconic Striding Man of Johnnie Walker into the theme for his bar, and called it ‘The Travelling Bar Man’. The installation was covered in maps and treasure chests, and Michito took visitors on a journey from Scotland to France to Japan with his creations.

“Michito was the personification of Japanese hospitality,” said Spike Marchant, World Class judge and global brand ambassador. “His cocktails across all the challenges were subtle, harmonious, and impeccably calibrated. He is a complete professional and produced a sustained level of excellence throughout the competition.”

As World Class Bartender of the Year, Michito will have the opportunity to travel the world as a global brand ambassador for World Class, and gain a degree of celebrity status. Plus, as part of a recently announced partnership between luxury resort group One&Only and Diageo Reserve, Michito also wins a trip to the One&Only Palmilla resort in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Michito was inspired to quit his job as a construction worker to become a bartender 13 years ago after tasting cocktails in the most famous bar in his home region of Nara, Japan.

Three years ago he opened his own bar in Nara – The Lamp Bar – where he is the manager and sole bartender.

During the gala ceremony, the top performers from each of the five first round challenges were also honoured. Jurgen Nobels of Belgium earned top scores in the ‘Against the Clock’ test; Kenneth Bandivas of the Philippines took the judges on a journey of flavour during ‘Around the World’; Tyson Buhler of the USA delivered a perfect pair of cocktails in ‘Night and Day’; Filip Navratil of Slovakia dominated in the ‘Street Food Jam’; while champion Michito served up a

trio of masterpieces in the ‘Future, Retro, Disco’ challenge.

Israel’s Ariel Leizgold, who was among the top six finalists, also delivered a standout performance during the ‘Cape Town Shakedown’ where he created a ‘Secret Garden’ that was a “sensory joy and a cocktail paradise”, according to the judges.

“It was almost impossible to predict who the top six would be because the level of skill was consistent across all competitors – exceptionally high,” said Marchant. “It was the toughest competition we’ve ever had the honour of judging.”

Johanna Dalley, Global Director for World Class said: “These are incredibly talented professionals whose skill is on a par with the world’s best chefs but who also deal directly with the public on a nightly basis. They have the flexibility to create great drinks that to the exact specification of each and every one of their guests.”

In elevating the craft of bartending, Diageo Reserve World Class has become a leader in setting trends and standards for fine drinking experiences in the best establishments worldwide.

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CHALLENGE WINNERS

AT THE GLOBAL FINAL IN CAPE TOWN

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he WORLD CLASS Bartender of the Year competition is a celebration of the most talented mixologists on earth. The challenges set were designed to push the mixologists to the very limits of their skills and creativity. Each of the 55 finalists, had to compete in five gruelling challenges over three days and present to a panel of industry experts and WORLD CLASS Hall of Fame champions.

Below is listed the talented individuals who won each of the challenges.

AGAINST THE CLOCK

AROUND THE WORLD

NIGHT AND DAY

RETRO, DISCO, FUTURE

STREET FOOD JAM

CAPE TOWN SHAKEDOWN

WINNER: Jurgen Nobels (Belgium)

WINNER: Kenneth Bandivas (Philippines)

WINNER: Tyson Buhler (USA)

WINNER: Michito Kaneko (Japan)

WINNER: Filip Navratil (Slovakia)

WINNER: Ariel Leizgold (Israel)

This challenge put the bartenders under immense pressure, and only the very best were able to pull it off with style and panache. Jurgen made a pressurecooker round look deceptively easy. His range of ten cocktails encompassed a sensational goat’s milk Bloody Mary twist called a “Mèèèèry” (his spelling to emulate the sound of a goal) and a brilliant Boulevardier variant.

Bartenders were asked to tell the story of their homeland and South Africa through cocktails. Kenneth took the judges on a journey of flavour from the Philippines with the exotic taste of Bittermelon and Palawan fruit, to Cape Town with a deftly made Marula and Zacapa cocktail.

Tyson Buher hails from one of the great cocktail bars of the world, and he showed his exceptional skills by producing the Café Brulot Celeste using Don Julio 1942 and Cameronbridge Estate cocktails with Tanqueray No.10. He delivered the spirit’s character perfectly with a display of cocktail mastery.

Michito Kaneko went time travelling in this challenge, starting in the past with ‘The Judge’ – a Bulleit and Tanqueray No.10 cocktail, through to disco with his Tiny Bouquet masterpiece.

He completed the journey in the future with a Cîroc experience combining sauternes wine and a secret ‘sunshine’ spray.

This was one of the most demanding food-matching challenges World Class has ever staged.

Snook, stinky bokum, kudu, boerewors, chakalaka, and Malay prawns were the mystery South African dishes confronting our bartenders.

Filip tackled the intensity of the dishes with cocktails that demonstrated his ability to master extremely tricky food and drink combinations.

Without a doubt this was the toughest test of all. Twentyfour hours to open your own pop-up bar at the end of the world’s most intense cocktail competition against a field of six extraordinarily talented bartenders.

The winner of this challenge had to master design, ambience and three cocktails to produce a compelling and professional environment. Ariel created a ‘Secret Garden’ that was a sensory joy and a cocktail paradise.

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째 FEATURE 째

HOW TRAVELLING CAN ENRICH YOUR CRAFT

WORDS 째 Mark Thomas

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s a bartender, it has become essential more than ever to travel and see the world and the myriad of bars and bartenders out there. Not just because of what you will see and learn, but to understand different ways of looking at things. By travelling and exposing yourself to different environments and demographics, you begin to understand the different elements of bar service. You become an all-rounded person and professional.

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We, in the industry, have to be careful because due to the resurgence or should I say the boom of the cocktail industry, the influx of suspender clad barmen and women has been overwhelming to say the least. And getting in touch with our peers across borders is good to re-align our booze chakras once in a while.

As what Harry Gerakis of Loves Company, Shoreditch, UK said “We must remember that when a guest sits at the bar, they are the star.” This was so simple yet so true. To build a successful bar culture, the impact must be made not with the product but with the interaction.

During my stint at the lovable bar just across from Nightjar, I was exposed to the UK drinking culture, the revival of bar tricks, jokes and smiles and pure interaction between strangers.

On a craft standpoint, I learnt how bartenders overseas adapt flavours and tastes depending on seasons and the availability of particular ingredients. “A little bit of honey goes a long way,” says Harry, a Greek by birth. The core of the bar industry has remained just that in Europe from Paris to London.

Focused on the fact that when you step into the bar, you never know what adventures you might end up having. This process is two-way

Travelling doesn’t just show you other cultures and experiences.

It teaches you and shows you a lot about yourself

ERIC LAM

Owner of Mrs Pound, Hong Kong

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as shown during a lecture about spirits and cocktails I gave at the Westminster Kingsway College of Hospitality in Victoria. The session didn’t only give us culinary greats such as Jamie Oliver, but it also enable me to share with the students Singaporean and Asian bar culture and drinking habits. The lecture, spirits and kits were sponsored by the London office of Diageo, showing the industry’s extensive reach and generosity when it comes to teaching.

Travelling also teaches you to be humble since you get to see how the lives of these men and women differ in terms of what they sacrifice to be able to do what they do – from expenses to travelling to lifestyle. Not to mention that it enables you to compare and examine the differences in styles between cultures.

In the city of Taipei, cocktail culture has taken Oriental bartending techniques and blended them with the fast-paced volume of clubs.

“Using the local scene around you and learning the produce and terroir is important”, says Angus Zhou of Alchemy Bar. Watching Angus and his team work as well as working alongside them was a treat as the combination of grace and speed was in a word “beautiful”. Angus has a predilection for using local herbs and spices

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which definitely teaches you to use what you have on hand – and adaptability. Because produce is always best fresh, we followed Viktor Yang (one of the bartenders at Alchemy) around Taipei to hidden nooks to find interesting herbs and spices. It’s amazing to see their relationship with the farmers and people that supply their ingredients.

In Hong Kong, the cocktail culture is making good headway as more and more locals and expats are starting to flock to these speakeasies and bars springing up all over town. Because of the fast-paced nature of the city and its people, working there proved to be quite a challenge.

Having a good knowledge of classics and the ability to work in small places is a plus in the dense city.

At Post 97, my night at the bar was spent dishing out simple classics and my own drinks; learning how bartenders arranged their stations and adapted their tools and station setup was so valuable. Watching them prepare their ice and syrups in different methods proved that necessity is the mother of invention.

Lastly, travelling introduces you to the bonds of friendship and the sharing of information – from new spirits to new methods to having a couch to crash on. It also shows you different rituals as well as various ways people enjoy their tipples. Competitions and guest shifts expose you to camaraderie best left to war movies.

Bartenders as a faction are synonymous to the masons of yesteryear. We belong to a society bound by the love of serving and creating masterpieces that echo through time. And we are no longer an all-boys club, which is amazing.

The sharing of knowledge with social media and more and more bartenders travelling opens you to the fact that we, as an industry, should question everything – methods, flavours and service standards.

In closing, I would like to share a quote from Esher Williams, who is on the Board of Directors at Westminster Kingsway College in London.

She was the one who invited me to give a guest lecture and coincidentally enough, also worked at the Fat Duck in London during her early years.

“Travelling and working in other countries not only broadens your skills, but also reminds you every time why you started doing it in the first place”. I asked her over dinner if she has ever regretted travelling and constantly moving, and her response was “Nope, not one bit. My F&B life has been enriched through every step, even the smallest one”.

Who is Mark Thomas Mark Thomas venue manager of Club 39, is as passionate as they come.

Holding a degree in Political Science, Mark decided to pursue his career in the hospitality arena. For the second year in a row, Mark has been recognised as one of the Top 25 Bartenders in Singapore by Drinks World and is no stranger in the cocktail competition scene. Today, he continually pushes for perfection, both surrounding himself by the best in the business and challenging himself to always improve on his ever-evolving craft.

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DUBAI’S

HOP FEST 2015 WORDS ° Brent Henderson

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hat magical time of the year, when beer lovers and connoisseurs and even your odd wine drinker head on down to Hopfest at the Irish Village, to grab some of the vast range of delicious and mouthwatering beers that are on offer. Almost like clockwork people arrived in full force to order weird and wonderful beers such as Jaipur, Brooklyn Chocolate Stout and Boulevard Tank 7 Farmhouse, just to name a few.

Celebrating its 11th Anniversary, Dubai’s Hopfest has grown over the years to become one of the most loved and eagerly anticipated events in the city’s busy event calendar. With over 153 different beers available at this year’s event covering a multitude of beer styles, Hopfest yet again delivered on its unique position of offering a truly extensive and diverse range of beers worthy of a festival!

What liquid tickled everyone’s taste bud this year….

As with all good beer festivals seeking to showcase global brewing and beer brands, the ‘capital’s’ of brewing culture feature quite heavily – with Belgium, German, Czech, British and Irish bars making up the cornerstone of the offering, Dubai’s Hopfest is no different.

The British, ale bar includes Hobgoblin as its lead ale, backed by the infamous Pedigree and Oyster stout.

Firstly, there was Hobgoblin making its third outing as a draught beer, having been trialed

for the first time two years ago with great success. This full bodied ruby dark ale, delivers a chocolate/ toffee malt flavour with a rounded fruity bitterness. Arguably the best ale on offer and quickly becoming an event favourite. In addition to that, and for the first time, Hobgoblin Piledriver made an appearance, quickly becoming a stern front runner. This nectar of the gods had a very smooth mouth feel but backed by a heartwarming bitterness. Other new comers to mention included – Brakspear Triple, and a range of Hobgoblin varieties, all of which were given the tip of the old hat by the steadfast ale drinkers.

The German offering was notably impressive with an arsenal of crisp, perfectly brewed, Pilsner styles from Lowenbrau, Spaten, Warsteiner and Becks.

In addition were the wheat based beers synonymous with Munich. The Erdinger family was very much the front-runner this year with a number of variants.

Coming from the tap one of the favourites this year had to be the Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel. Which did notably well last year in the bottle so the addition of this was long awaited by many, which brought many beer drinkers to a standstill and appreciate some of its beauty, from the roasted malts giving us an eruption of flavours. Prost!

Whilst Belgium has to offer an abundance of beer as a country we had managed to acquire 36 of these rare and remarkable beers.

The backbone of the Belgian range was the always good noble Stella Artois , backed by an outstanding range of Belgian styled beers, such as Oude Geuze, Duvel, the fittingly Delirium Tremens, and many many many more.

The wonderfully different fruit beers this year came from a host of different brewers.

Belle-Vue Kriek (cherry based beer) which is brewed via spontaneous fermentation, giving it a sour and tart taste. It is then mellowed by the addition of cherries and aged in oak barrels over

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a number of months – all in all a feat of brewing heeding back to the middle ages. Notably a Hopfest favourite and has been on draught now for the last 7 years. Bring more fruit sensations was the Floris Range. This was a great success again this year with the induction of Floris Ninkeberry. The other flavours which were great triumph including such flavours as Apple, Passion Fruit, Strawberry, Raspberry and even a Chocolate beer.

However the beer that stole the show this year was Fruli . A wheat based beer influenced with Strawberry, with the masses diving into the lovely sweet liquid causing it to sell out with in the first day.

It wouldn’t have been a beer festival in the year 2015, if there wasn’t an acknowledgment at least of the innovation and contribution craft brewers are beginning to make to this constantly changing world.

Last year where we had a smaller selection of craft beers, we went big and almost doubled the range to include some real beauties. The ever-impressive Brooklyn range, Anchor steam, Liberty Ale, Sam Adams, Boulevard and the ever-infamous Flying Dog - Ranging Bitch beer were all on offer.

Screaming at the top of its lungs this was the Brooklyn lager and India Pale Ale (IPA) , which did not disappoint any lips that it came across. The single wide IPA was changing minds of numerous beer drinkers and becoming a steadfast choice. Sam Adams from Boston was also available again– a Hopfest favourite in years gone by. This full bodied beer, with its robust and rich character, is respected worldwide and has been helping to lead the US beer revolution from the beginning.

However the choice of the day went to the Brooklyn half summer ale based on an old Saison beer style of beer, which has been influenced by new world American and German hops .

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Even the Australians are coming in heavy footed into Hopfest with an amazing showing

by Fosters and The Australian craft beer scene. Brewers such as ‘Matilda Bay, and their superlative range of beers, most notable of which is Fat Yak. Fat Yak is a distinctive, hop driven, fruity/ herbaceous beer with some passion fruit and melon notes. A hit amongst beer enthusiasts at Hopfest for the 4th year running – it is a truly impressive craft beer.

Attention in the Hopfest cider offering continues to grow every year, with 2015 being no exception. Aside from the much loved, crowd pleasing cider of Magners – their Original Apple variant, which remains one of the biggest sellers at the event, there is now a family of Magners flavours that have made it through the ranks to become big sellers in their own right. Namely the increasingly loved Pear option and the newer Berry mixed fruit cider.

On the sweeter, but by no means less sessionable, Somersby Cider offered a great cider alternative and bought along a family of its own, to include – Somersby Blackcurrant, and the Somersby Ginger & Lemon. To continue the ginger theme, Ginger Joe, Hopfest’s only Ginger Beer option, a product that is dangerously

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easy to drink with a subtle zingy ginger kick, continued to impress customers looking for a less Hop orientated liquid.

However our new launch this year was Stella Cidre, which took the minds of the loyal cider drinker and threw a spanner in the works. With its subtitle sweet notes and ease ability to be drunk at all times of the day, took this cider to new level and won many hearts at this years Hopfest.

Hopfest is truly a wonderful event to be a part of. It brings all corners of the beer world under one roof. This is truly the biggest and best beer event in Dubai, so mark your calendars now for Hopfest 2016 – it’s a beer event not to be missed.

See you next year for more great bands, fancy dress, hot dogs and burgers, sawdust, and of course a star line up of some of the world’s best beers!

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HOW BEER IS MADE BARLEY – HOPS – YEAST - WATER WORDS ° Neal Cameron

O

ne could be fooled into thinking that a process needing so few ingredients must in itself be simple. But you would be wrong. Ever since Louis Pasteur peered down his leather-bound microscope and became the first person to actually see yeast cells – the tiny powerhouses of fermentation – we have been striving, scientifically, to fully understand what is happening during the brewing process.

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Nowadays we know a lot, but not everything.

Even the greatest brewers, with a myriad of technology and techniques, still cannot control the brewing process completely. The creation of a perfect beer therefore still contains a degree of mystery that makes the experience even more special. As one understands more and more about the brewing process, there emerges a breathtaking synergism in the confluence of these four simple ingredients; between them they contain everything that is needed to create beer and very little that is not.

Dare one even suggest that if ever there could be a poster boy for the anti-science of creationism, beer brewing might just be it?

Could it be that a divine hand was at work in the creation of a humble grain, a sticky flower and a tiny single-celled organism such that they could later be brought together to create the miracle that is beer?

WHAT MAKES A GREAT BEER Socrates, Plato, Kant, Steven Wright – all great philosophers who have bent their considerable intellects and wills on some of the great questions of life. But if one adds up the legion of lesser intellectual horse-powers of the many men in the street who have debated the relative merits of a beer, one could postulate that more hours have been spent on the question ‘what makes a great beer?’ than any other. Ergo, perhaps by answering this question, we may find ourselves closer to the meaning of life.

However, there is no one thing that makes a great beer. Everything must be perfect – a great brewer with good equipment, great raw materials, a knowledgeable consumer in a great frame of mind; every detail must be right even down to a clean glass. Only then can a beer be great. So when you find yourself in the rare and treasured moment of enjoying a great beer, think of the entropy defying control that has occurred to bring you to that moment.

THE BREWING PROCESS Malt + Yeast + Hops + Water = Ethanol + Carbon Dioxide + Flavour MALT Has it ever crossed your mind how a seed has the energy to drive its sprout up through the soil and into the sunlight? The answer is in the starchy bulk of the seed or grain. Upon the signal of moisture, the self-reliant grain releases enzymes into this starch to break them down into their component sugars. It is these sugars

It is the job of the brewer to create the perfect environment for yeasts to do their job; after all, happy yeast means great beer.

that the seedling uses to power itself until photosynthesis takes over and it is these sugars that are extracted from barley to feed yeast in the brewing process.

In the classroom this is called germination, but in the process of fooling our hapless grains into believing it’s spring and adding a few procedures here and there, the process’s name changes to malting. Hence, brewers use malted barley or just malt to brew beer.

THE MALTING PROCESS Steeping – Grain is put into tall silos full of water for 36-48 hours and kept on the move with columns of air bubbles running through them.

Water and oxygen get the sprouting process moving.

Sprouting – The adolescent malt is spread on a large floor and continually turned with a rotating rake to keep the grains aerated and stop them tangling. The grain is already starting to ‘modify’ in a typically complex biological process. All we need to know is that the starchy flours are beginning to be converted into sugars that are more accessible for brewing.

Drying – At this point the maltster (as they are known) has many choices that are of great importance to the brewer. Always though, he must stop the germination or conversion by drying or kilning the grain. Hot air is generally used and a gentle approach to this step results in a very pale malt – the workhorse of the brewing industry.

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But by keeping the heat on, a spectrum of darker and darker malts can be produced, up to the point of roasting them in drums like coffee.

These darker or roasted malts go into stouts and porters with their characteristic inky black appearance.

The maltster has other tricks up his sleeve and a look at some of his creations starts to help us in building our knowledge of the flavours of beer. There are literally hundreds of different malts created around the world with each country having variations that are dear to the hearts of their brewers, often generating the key character for the nations best-known beers.

THE MALT SPECTRUM Pilsner malt – The palest of malts, first created in Pilsen, in what was then Bohemia and now the Czech Republic. Clean and pale, it produces the golden hue and bready malt characters of the best lagers.

Munich Malt – A touch more heat and a little more colour generates some rounded toasty character. Much used in pale ales, amber lagers and German dunkels.

Crystal Malt – Stewed before kilning, sugar crystals are formed that later caramelise. From light to super dark, they add reddish brown colour, and caramel and toffee flavours. Much used by the English in bitters and the Americans in pale ales.

Chocolate Malt – With the dial in the kiln turned way up, this dark malt really does give a chocolatey and coffee flavour to beer. Porters and stouts are the main beneficiaries.

Black Malt – Drum roasted, black malts are distinctly burnt toast to taste, but stouts would be a lesser pleasure without their ashy astringent palate from black malt.

BUT THERE’S MORE...

While barley is the king of malts, geography, economics and a search for flavour have pushed and pulled brewers into using a myriad of other sources of sugar in brewing, collectively known as adjuncts. Other grains in this category include rye and oats, particularly in colder northern climes where these grains flourish. Rice is big in Asia and the USA, as well as maize. Wheat is particularly favoured in Germany, and in the search for lightness of palate and, more sadly

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lightness of flavour, sugar and corn syrups are a staple in our bigger brewers’ diets. And while we’re on the subject of diet, we must talk about low-carb beers. Good, glad that one’s out of the way.

YEAST STRAINS & THEIR CHARACTERISTICS BEER CHARACTERISTICS

KNOWN STRAINS

Ale

Soft, smooth palate Fruity aroma Malty (sweet) body

**********

Lager

Crisp, cleansing palate Clean, neutral aroma, some sulphur Dry, light body

********

Wheat

Highly aromatic, fruity or spicy Dry, almost acidic palate Highly carbonated, fluffy head

****

Belgian Wit

Highly aromatic, spicy, cloves Light, acidic palate

**

Belgian Ales

Highly complex fruity aroma High in ethanol and other alcohols

****

Kölsch

Wine-like complex aroma Delicate soft, clean palate

*

Wild Yeasts

Highly complex, spicy, medicinal aroma Woody, musty and sour palate Dry, astringent body

***************

Rye – this cold climate malted grain is becoming the darling of the brewing world as the malt that has everything – a gentle spicy aroma, a bittersweet flavour and lovely reddish hue.

Oats – high in protein and oils, this cheap and plentiful grain adds a silky smooth texture and full mouthfeel to beer. Used un-malted in many stouts to create an unctuous creamy palate.

Rice – plentiful and cheap but a nicely made lager with a hefty portion of rice is quintessentially refreshing and easy on the palate. A staple in Asia and the USA, where the need for volume seems to outweigh most other considerations.

Asterixes indicate the relative number of strains known

YEAST

YEAST Saccharomyces cerevisae – Ale Yeast Literally: Fungus that eats sugar to make beer.

Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis – Lager Yeast Literally: Fungus that eats sugar, named after a well known brewery.

The translations may not actually be literal but they work for figurative purposes and only the pedants will complain. It gives us our first way of dividing up the bewildering variety of beers that are available into lagers and ales – more on that later.

Saccharomyces yeasts are dynamic singlecelled organisms that come in hundreds of marginally varying forms. Bakers use them to create bubbles of carbon dioxide in their bread, winemakers use them to turn sweet grape juice into wine and, of course, brewers use it to turn malt derived sugars into beer. There cannot be a more loved, nurtured and revered being anywhere in the universe.

It is the job of the brewer to create the perfect environment for yeasts to do their job, after all happy yeast means great beer. Yeast needs simple sugars – glucose and maltose – to live on, alongside a wide array of micronutrients and amino acids. And there again the perfect symbiosis of brewing ingredients comes to play – all these essentials are found in barley.

Yeast leads a simple life. It consumes sugar to feed its need to grow, divide and populate its environment. In doing so, it excretes mainly ethanol and carbon dioxide, but it also produces a myriad of other flavour and aroma compounds that makes the drinking of beer such a sensory pleasure.

The many different slight variations in yeast are much treasured by brewers. Some breweries have been using the same strains of yeast for centuries, carefully storing them to ensure they never die out. Old English breweries, like Timothy Taylors in Keighley in Yorkshire, use a yeast with a number of different strains that they pitch from ferment to ferment over decades. The yeasts, like any living thing, evolve and change over time but generate extra subtleties and great depth of flavour.

Whatever strain or type of yeast a brewer uses it adds great character to the beer, and in some cases, it is the yeast that defines the beer style as can be seen to the right

HOPS If there is one part of brewing that excites the brewer as much as the drinker, it has to be the hops. And no wonder – these are exciting plants, deeply bitter and resinous, oozing aromatic oils and pungent sticky resins, capricious in their willingness to share their spoils and multitudinous in their variety and

geography. If wine and beer philosophy ever touch, it is in the care of the hop and the vine to ensure their terroir and nature are contained, so as to be fully captured in the final beer.

While hops have not always been used to flavour beer, balancing the sweetness of malt sugars to create a harmonious whole, there’s no doubt that hops are king. Bog myrtle, pine needles, nettles, juniper berries and gruit just don’t cut it when it comes to cutting what would otherwise be a sweet and sickly brew down to size.

Hops do two things. When boiled with the sweet malt wort, they impart bitter alpha acids to the mix. A few hops sometimes, just to avoid a beer being cloying as in a scotch ale, or at other times by the bucket-load, to impart a vicious, eye-wateringly addictive bitterness in a mighty triple IPA. Measured in International Bitterness Units (IBU), beer can range from a delicate, whywould-you-bother 10 IBU to a searing, mind and tongue numbing 1000 IBU (claimed by the famed Danish brewer Mikkeller in his logically named 1000IBU beer).

But more than the pleasure/pain of bitterness that hops add to beer, it is the aromas and flavours that can be wrought when these plants are used wisely and well in a brew. The range of oils and resins present often mimic flavours found in nature – fruits (like citrus,

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blackcurrant, passionfruit, lime), herbs (like mint, aniseed, basil, sage), woods (like pine, cedar, sandalwood), and florals (like camomile, grass, rose, violet).

As one would imagine, to both generate and keep these delicate and complex flavours in a beer takes great skill and attention to detail.

Alternatively, you can just keep adding more and more hops into your beer – it might not be a graceful technique but it’s one that seems to be currently in favour and it keeps the beer geeks happy.

Hops survive best in temperate climes in both the north and south hemisphere and there’s no doubt that, like grape vines, terroir – the impact of the local soils and climate – plays a big part in the characteristics of each country’s hops.

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MAKING BEER Now that we understand the materials that go into making beer, there follows a process to make it that, in essence, has changed little for centuries. The tanks may get shinier, the control panel flashier and the packaging more automated but it’s all there to put yeast to work and reap the benefits.

MILLING Choose your malts and choose the right quantity, remembering that more malt gives you more sugar, which gives you more alcohol.

Crush the grain gently, just enough to let the water in but leaving the husks complete to act as a filter during lautering.

COUNTRY

HOP CHARACTERS

EXAMPLE HOP

EXAMPLE BEER

AUSTRALIA

Fruity, citrus, bitter

Galaxy

Stone & Wood Pacific Ale

ENGLAND

Earthy, herbal, honey

Styrian Goldings

Timothy Taylor’s Landlord

USA

Citrus, resiny, grapefruit

Cascade

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

NEW ZEALAND

Herbal, spicy, peppery

Motueka

8 Wired Hopwired IPA

GERMANY

Fresh, grassy, minty

Hallertau Mittelfrüh

Jever Pilsner

CZECH REPUBLIC

Grassy, herbal, complex

Saaz

Pilsner Urquell

MASH Mix thoroughly with water into the mash tun to create a loose porridge and now it’s all about temperature. You need the water hot enough to gelatinise the starch and make it soluble, but not too hot that you kill off the enzymes that are going to break those now soluble starches into component sugars. Between 63 degrees Celsius and 71 degrees Celsius, depending whether you want a dry beer (lower temperature) or a malty sweet beer (higher temperature). Leave for about an hour and then increase the temperature above 75 degrees Celsius to stop the enzymes working. Your mash will now be sweet and syrupy and smell divine, but you need to get that sugar solution nice and bright and clear and away from all the husks and other bits and bobs.

LAUTER Pump the mash over to the lauter tun, essentially a big strainer, where the husks are used a bit like a filter. The now clear wort is pumped away from the spent grain and into the kettle. Hot water is sprayed or sparged on top of the grain bed to wash the sugars out for a couple of hours until the correct amount of wort is in the kettle. It’s a tricky process and requires a fair degree of skill to ensure the wort is sparkling and bright.

BOIL Add bittering hops to taste, and boil vigorously for an hour or so. Boiling extracts bitterness,

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° FEATURE °

There’s no doubt that, like grape vines, terroir plays a big part in the characteristics of each country’s hops.

coagulates cloudy proteins and sterilises your wort. Add some more hops through the boil as you wish – the later you add, the more flavour and less bitterness you’ll get. Once the boil has finished, the bitter wort is spun in a whirlpool to remove much of the solids – made up of hop matter, protein and probably a little grain. The wort is now ready for fermentation, apart from the fact that it’s still nearly boiling which would kill all the yeast. Cool it through a heat-exchanger and into a sparklingly clean and sanitised fermenter. From now on, great care is needed. You’ve created a beautiful, tasty, sweet, nutrient rich liquid, the perfect home for brewing yeast – along with every other bug and bacteria that you can think of. Sanitation, sanitation, sanitation is now your imperative.

to around zero degrees Celcius and left. For an ale we might need just a couple of days, for a lager, and especially a pilsner, this might be a matter of months before the flavours have rounded and developed enough. Unsurprisingly, this extended cold maturation is often referred to as lagering from the German word lagern – to store. It’s an expensive and space consuming exercise and is often minimised for economic reasons. Do lagers really require such an extended period of maturation? Yes they do, but a great label and a largely unknowing public will let the pretenders sneak through unnoticed.

FILTERING/CARBONATION/PACKAGING Most of us like our beers sparkling and bright and we can either use various filtration methods

to achieve this, or do as the English do and add dried fish bladders to their beer to make it settle out quickly. Yum. An appropriate amount of carbon dioxide is injected into the beer to give it a fizz and then there’s a choice to be made. If all beer was drunk straight from the keg just down the road from the brewery, we could package the beer as is, but as we know, this isn’t the case.

With beers being transported sometimes across continents and sitting for long periods on shelves and in warehouses, like any food, it needs to be stabilised. Choose either sterile filtration (best for the beer but risky), flash pasteurisation (not as good for the beer but safe-ish) or bottle pasteurisation (very safe but not that great for the beer).

FERMENT Add your yeast of choice – about one billion to 10 billion yeast cells per litre of wort will do nicely – and a lick of pure oxygen to make them feel at home. Almost immediately your yeast will start to multiply until they’ve used up all the oxygen, and after 6-12 hours they’ll start to chew on the sugars, excreting alcohol and carbon dioxide. The early starters will also begin to fall by the wayside and ride the bubbles up to the surface of the fermenting beer, causing a thick foaming, bubbling white/brown head. After four to seven days the yeast will begin to run out of puff and sugar and fall or flocculate down in the bottom of the tank. Not all the sugar will be consumed, some of the longer chain sugars or dextrins produced during the mash will remain in the beer giving it a richer, rounded mouth-feel – without these dextrins, all beer would taste thin and watery.

MATURATION/LAGERING After all that hard work, the yeast is left for a couple of days to clean up some of the less savoury flavours it has produced, such as diacetyl and sulphur, and then it’s crash cooled

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° DRINK °

PERONI NASTRO

AZZURRO INFUSIONS

F

or those who follow PATH Bar School on social media you’ve likely seen one of the instructional videos of how to make sophisticated cocktails with Peroni beer. The exquisitely groomed, James Bond-like figure, is, believe it or not, not a hired model. Jason Clark is the PATH Trainer in charge of educating the region on luxury alcohol brands, and he’s the man who designed these three Peroni Nastro Azzurro Infusions for your viewing (and ideally, drinking) pleasure: Peroni Royal, Tuscan Gold and Sorbetto Superiore.

Every time a new Peroni cocktail video popped up on our news feeds from mid-September through to mid-October, we were reminded that beer is often overlooked as a cocktail ingredient, and when it’s presented with such technical flair and complimented by so much deliciousness, it’s difficult not to be inspired.

While Jason leaves the talking to his ingredients and tools in the video series, he had a lot more to say when asked why Peroni works particularly well in cocktails. “Mixing cocktails with beer is difficult, especially with a lager.

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However, Peroni has a rich maltiness, subtle bitterness and a clean, fresh, effervesce that stands up well when adding other ingredients”.

Jason spends a lot of his time teaching bartenders about luxury beverages, but he’s the first to admit that beer isn’t the most common cocktail ingredient; which perhaps explains why he considered this project such a worthy one. “I love making cocktails with premium ingredients, so when asked if I’d be interested I jumped at the opportunity to design drinks using Peroni.

My goal was to accentuate the taste and texture

of Peroni rather than submerge or mask it under too many other flavours. The drinker should still be enjoying a great beer but with other flavours seamlessly invigorating their experience.”

At the training he generally focuses on spirits, we asked Jason if he’d worked a lot with beer as a cocktail ingredient in the past. “I have had a wee dabble at mixing cocktails with beer over the years, but it’s certainly not a very common ingredient. Most of us will know of the infamous Lagerita. A Margarita made using beer, generally blended in a large goblet and

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often with the bottle submerged, however there is so much more that can be mixed with beer to accentuate, alter and accompany the characteristics.”

Every artist needs their muse, and the inspiration behind The Tuscan Gold, a cocktail of fig jam, lemon juice, honey grappa and Peroni, was an Italian dining experience. “Normally antipasto is enjoyed with wine, but I felt the flavours of Peroni also worked well; especially when boosted with the addition of honey and fig.”

“For the Peroni Royal I wanted to mix something easy so anybody could make it on a hot day, in the kitchen at home. I took inspiration from the Kir Royal cocktail of Champagne and crème de cassis, which is also very similar to the classic British favourite, Lager & Currant, which is enjoyed in pubs all over England. The addition of Cointreau matched really well with the malt of Peroni.”

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° DRINK °

The final cocktail of the series will take a little more planning if you want to whip up at home; and with its addition of liquid nitrogen, it’s fair to say that it’s nicely suited to a Michelin star kitchen. For the Sorbeto Superiore Jason wanted to make a fun and innovative after dinner experience using Peroni, and figured a sorbet was the way to go. “The liquid nitrogen freezes the ingredients and intensifies the flavours, giving you a vibrantly fresh, cooling, malty beer sorbet that is complimented by

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honey, saffron and lemoncello. The experience shocked some guests at first, but upon tasting big smiles spread across faces and I even caught a few licking the empty vessel to ensure every last drop was finished”.

Whether you’re just relaxing at home, or striving for a cutting-edge culinary experience, or whether you prefer to cool down with a fruity cocktail or an ice cold beer, these beverages are meant to please. “While, at first it may seem a little odd to some, and perhaps even sacrilege

to passionate beer drinkers, The Peroni cocktail range is designed to be refreshing, cooling, crisp, invigorating, while appealing to a wide array of drinkers.” Jason continued, “Those who aren’t beer drinkers should enjoy the addition of fruit sweetness and further cooling with ice.

While beer drinkers can enjoy something they’re familiar with, only twisted with other exotic flavours.”

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O

STR A N I N RO

o r r u s Azz n o i s u f In nge PE

Ra

The Peroni Roya

l

Tuscan Gold

Sorbetto Superiore

INGREDIENTS: • 20ml Cointreau liqueur • 15ml Crème de Cassis • 2x Orange wedges • Top with Peroni Nastro Azzurro

INGREDIENTS: • 1 bsp. Fig jam • 15ml Fresh lemon juice • 25ml Honey Grappa • Top with Peroni Nastro Azzurro

INGREDIENTS: • 20ml Limoncello • 15ml Saffron honey syrup • 100ml Peroni Nastro Azzurro • Liquid Nitrogen

METHOD: Add crushed ice to a tall glass.

Add all ingredients and top with Peroni Nastro Azzurro. Swizzle to combined all ingredients and drizzle 15ml Crème de Cassis

METHOD: Shake and strain over crushed ice.

Top with Peroni Nastro Azzurro

METHOD: Stir until it freezes into sorbet. Scoop out and serve

GARNISH: Garnish dried fig, honeycomb, crushed nuts and cinnamon. Match with classic Italian Antipasto

GARNISH: Garnish with Amarena Cherry and syrup

GARNISH: Garnish with fresh berries, orange wedges and mint sprig

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째 MEET 째

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WORDS ° Lindsay Trivers

T

he notion of celebrating bartenders is not completely new; most thankful patrons do this by sharing a contraband shot of tequila mid-shift, or by quietly leaving a tip in the bill fold and closing the drinking session with a handshake or hug.

But could more be done to celebrate the men and women who are the heartbeat of the bars they work in; those whose regulars are more loyal to them and their well-made drinks than the watering holes they work in? Can more gratitude be shown to those who do extra hours during inventory, long after their colleagues have knocked-off? Can more thanks be given to the people who grin and bear the citrus stinging their soggy hands in the name of drink garnishes; to recognize those who are

perpetually wet and sticky, those who keep the relentless micros printer at bay, and those satiate a veritable zombie apocalypse of thirsty vacationers clamoring over their bar counter?

How does one best give a shout out to these unsung heroes?

Give credit where credit is due, of course. And a professional photoshoot is a perfect way to recognise the people who define their venues in Dubai’s world-class night scene. Bartenders are people who have found a way to make their

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° MEET °

social life into a career, they love to show off the drinks they make, they are proud of the beverage knowledge they have acquired, and in a region where poaching hospitality staff is just business as usual, they are proud of the venues they handpick to work at. This project pays homage to the bartender’s hard work, social tendencies, and it credit’s their outlet for being a place to get a proper drink.

April, 2015 marked the 3rd installment of The Celebrate Dubai Bartenders Photoshoot.

A range of outlets from across the city where invited to the newly launched PATH Bar School to have their photo immortalized in a professional photograph. Bahr Karim was the man behind the lens. He is one of the region’s top fashion and portrait photographers, and has worked with princes, high-profile politicians, Hollywood stars, including Kevin Spacey, and now he’s captured some of the best bartenders in the country on film.

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째 MEET 째

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Every year the setting and theme of the photoshoot changes. This years’ theme motif had a moody 1930s feel to it, with a touch of Laurel and Hardy old Hollywood styling. The teams that came along on the day included Nola Eatery & Social House, Sass Café, The Gramercy, Froul, Coya, Boca, La Résidence, Burj Al Arab, Grosvenor House, Neos, Huddles, Citymax, Le Royal Méridien, Blasé, Mahiki, Maison Mathis, Atleier, Qbara, Hakkasan, Provacateur, Stereo Arcade, D&A, Cargo, Grand Hyatt and The Belgian Beer Café. Forty beverage professionals got into character with props that could have come straight from Al Capone’s closet; Depression glass, fedoras, playing cards, a Champagne saber, a shot gun and plenty of drinks pouring everywhere. The models of the day dominated PATH’s various spaces. They were posing across desks and counters in the tasting and storeroom, balanced precariously on the speed rails in the bar training room, vogued in the photography studio, and simply got messy in the main lecture room.

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° MEET °

This project has been ongoing for three years now and the plan is to keep going according to Richard Cohen, Training Manager at PATH. “Our long term aim is, over time, to be able to get more and more bar teams involved from across the region; and come 2020 we’ll release a book documenting and celebrating the bartenders who graft so hard and deliver exceptional service.”

Considering the youth of the beverage scene in Dubai, and current influx of foreign investment in bars and restaurants, and the importance of the food and beverage sector the UAE continues to forge its path as both one of the world’s greatest tourist destinations and simply being a nice place to live, these bartenders have a big role to play. They influence the region’s evolving beverage culture, and a beautiful and timely photo commemorating their contributions will surely be only a part of what they leave behind.

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WORDS 째 Lorena Tapiero

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째 PROFILE 째

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째 COMPETITION 째

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STOLI LEMONADE LAB

J

ust how fast and loose can you get while staying true to a drink’s core character?

In the first days of September the PATH Bar School set out to demonstrate just how far you can push the boundaries when making the Stoli Lemonade – a drink that is both refreshing and simple, yet this four-ingredient drink has thousands of tasty variations. Variations make the drink unique to each bartender’s creative flair or can be an opportunity to highlight an outlet’s concept.

In the first phase of the event Richard Cohen, PATH Bar School’s Training Manager, donned a lab coat complete with laser pointer, and delved into the science behind distilling vodka three

times before putting it through two stages of purification thus achieving Russia’s highest quality rating of Alpha spirit.

He shared the history of this iconic drink and Stolichnaya’s role in its success, including how Stolichnaya created the first lemon flavoured vodka in 1986. In demonstrating how to make the original Stolichnaya and lemonade the crucial right balance of sweet and sour became evident.

The mission: To create the best variation on this classic.

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Now the time for the ground rules.

Competitors could use any market ingredient fathomable and they had free run of the state-ofthe-art facilities at PATH Bar School. The contest controls were as simple as the drink itself; It must contain Stolichnaya, lemon and be served in a mason jar.

Now to go shopping.

Part of PATH Bar School was transformed into an idyllic neighborhood market complete with candy stripe awning, green grass and a white picket fence. Contestants grabbed their shopping baskets and feverously pillaged the market shelves as though they had waited until

Christmas Eve to start their holiday shopping.

They routed through fresh fruit, veg and herbs; inhaled dried citrus, flowers and spices; they racked their brains for perfect flavoured syrup and bitters compliments; and consulted Google for insight into exotic extracts and roots.

Contestants, with heaving baskets of market fresh goodies in hand, headed to their own bartending stations. With sieves, paring knives, swizzle sticks, muddlers, jiggers and strainers splayed in front of them, more decisions would need to be made. Cubed, crushed or chiseled ice? Freshly squeezed lemons, squash, pink or Victorian lemonade? To shake and strain or muddle and build? To sweeten with syrup, agave, honey, jam or any number of the sugars available?

It didn’t take long for the really fun toys to make an appearance. The juicer centrifuged fresh mango nectar, blow torches scorched citrus halves, nitrous oxide siphons toyed with texture; one contestant manipulated thyme into a concentrated extract in the sous-vide, and another smoked her cinnamon sticks and vanilla pod.

The final stage of the night was to bestow some Stolichnaya professional bartending swag, and a trophy adorned with a lemon and a mason jar, on those who created the standout drops. The winning drinks of course contained lemonade and Stolichnaya, but were also enhanced with dragon fruit and passion fruit and maintained the classic cocktail’s best qualities of being perfectly balanced and entirely refreshing.

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° COMPETITION °

Matusalem Rum

SPEED COMPETITION T

he Mojito is celebrated as one of the best cocktails of the century; and for good reason. The demerara sugar and lime juice strike the perfect balance of sweet and sour, mint and ice are an incredibly refreshing duo, and the selection of Solera aged Matusalem Rums allow for subtle flavour versatility; like delicate fruit and floral notes in Matusalem Platino, or rich toffee and nutmeg characters in the Matusalem Clásico. The mojito’s ‘classic cocktail’ status is attributed to more than perfectly balanced ingredients; its story is bartender’s have been charming customers with for more than 80 years. What started as a simple farmer’s drink found its way to the party beaches of Havana just as the American tourists arrived to let loose during prohibition. Matusalem Rum rose to their height of popularity during this same era gaining 50% of the market share. We can’t help but wonder if those first, and most influential mojitos were made with Matusalem Rum.

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While its story and flavour win the customer over every time, on the other side of the counter is a bartender who knows that making multiple mojitos can be time consuming when you’re busy. In a hot city with a vibrant night life, like Dubai, it is important that every bartender be not just good, but fast at constructing this popular drink. And, skill and speed is exactly what Matusalem Rum Speed Competition was all about.

200 bartenders from across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman took their places behind the bar in

the Den by McGettigans, Dubai World Trade Center. Contestants had to demonstrate first and foremost their hustle behind the bar, but also poise under the pressure of 400 observers, as well as the accuracy in following Matusalem Rum’s Eight Steps to a Great Mojito.

The steps include spanking the mint, adding lime juice and sugar, gently muddling, icing, pouring a double shot of your favourite Matusalem Rum, churning the drink, then topping it with more crushed ice, soda and a mint garnish.

The early stages of the competition tested the bartender’s speed at building the Matusalem Rum mojitos. The first round saw 14 heats of 6 bartender’s pumping out four cocktails at a time. The fastest competitors progressed to the next stage where they made eight mojitos at a time, then 16 in the next round, and the maximum number of mojitos made at once was 32. With some drinks flying over the bar top it’s fair to say that the crowd enjoyed more than an entertaining show that afternoon.

Alas, there could only be one champion, and

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the fastest, most accurate Matusalem Rum mojito muddling hands in The UAE belong to Arthur Provensal of the soon to open Maison Bagatelle, and previously of Mahiki Dubai. We asked Arthur what set his performance apart in the ultimate stages. “The first three rounds were just about speed. You get points for maximum speed, minus points for missing a step”. “I competed four times and then the final was just two cocktails. This time it was not only about speed. It was speed, efficiency, qualityof-drink, taste and look. There were three of us, and I took time to make a nice presentation. The cocktail was balanced and how it was meant to taste”. “I know I was not the fastest, but I was the cleanest and most accurate with Matusalem Rum’s Eight Steps to a Great Mojito cocktail recipe in the final round, which is why I won”. “I respected every single step”.

Arthur started honing his Mojito skills five years ago as a bar back in Babble City, London, where he quickly progressed to bar supervisor.

He further developed his knack for speed first at Be At One in London, “You get crazy happy hours and you need to make drinks superfast”, then at Mahiki in Dubai where there is certainly no time for dawdling. Now as a cocktail bartender at Maison Bagatelle, Arthur is enjoying the chance to focus on exquisitely made drinks, “It’s a French bistro, it’s going to be busy but the cocktails are of a high quality”.

After years of making mojitos he’s still a fan, “It’s a drink that I’ve made thousands of times now. It’s a recipe you can tweak easily. You can decide if you want to make a quick one in a busy bar, or take more time and make it special”.

Considering Metusalem’s range, which including young rums, and those from solera maturation systems that are seven, 10, 15 and 23 years old, there are certainly options to make mojitos more special.

While Arthur is increasingly a regular on the cocktail competitions scene, this was his first victory. He had this to say, “Creation wise I love to enter competitions and [winning] is a big step forward for me”. While he won’t divulge how he spent his prize of 2000 AED worth of Mall of Emirates vouchers, with a cheeky grin he concluded, “The most important part is the glory of it, and that I can brag about it for a while”.

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° FEATURE °

The Whisky That Got You WORDS ° Chris Chambers

N

o matter how hard we tried to deny it. No matter how impossible it seemed. It was still true.

Scotland had beaten France at football.

We thought pigs would fly and I in like we were visiting royalty, we * Heart, lungs would willingly order a lager shandy were led to a discreet table and and liver of a before that would happen, and my presented with the whisky menu – sheep, minced Scottish friend and I were stunned. though ‘menu’ seems an inadequate then cooked in Sitting in a nondescript Tokyo bar word. It was of a size that makes its own stomach. nursing a beer and a hangover, the average Encyclopedia look like Much better than we were re-energised. Scotland! something you could bash out in an it sounds.

Winning at Football! Against the afternoon. ** A treeFrench! They’re good at football, Still a novice whisky drinker at trunk. How we and somehow we did it. Naturally that time, I was fascinated by the entertained we needed to do something seemingly endless lists of exotic ourselves before Scottish to celebrate. distilleries and bottlings we were getting electricity Japan being short on haggis* assured were all available for us last week. to eat and cabers** to throw, we to enjoy. After going from South settled on getting a glass of whisky.

Korea, which at that time had only My friend, knowing both the city heard of maybe 4 malts at best and the language, took us both to a hidden bar (served in a shot glass), this was revelatory. that like most of the places we ventured looked Settling on a Millburn, a distillery that had very little from the outside but unveiled hidden existed just down the road from where I went depths upon crossing the threshold. Ushered to school, I realised that whisky was the drink

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for me. Not only that, but it was the moment I decided I wanted to work with whisky for a career.

Why have I opened with this slightly longwinded anecdote? Because a common question I ask and have been asked when settling in with a few drams with a new friend is which whisky was the one that ‘got’ you – the epiphanal glass that made you join the esteemed ranks of whisky fans.

It may be the first one you have, sneaked out of your parents’ liquor cabinet at too-young an age or it may be your hundredth, shared with the person who became the love of your life.

The whisky you had may have been the best one you’ve ever tasted, or it might have been slightly ropey in hindsight – but even though there are hundreds of versions of this story, the key element is the same. It was not about what you were drinking but where you were, who you

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were with, and who you were at the time that made the experience memorable.

For a good whisky (or tequila or rum for that matter) is rarely ‘just a drink’ – it’s something that, when enjoyed at a measured pace, reminds you of earlier times or helps cement the current moment in your mind. Thinking back to the first time you tried, say, the Glenfiddich 12 year old is not just a moment to pull out a few tasting notes but to go back in time. This is why it’s important, when setting up a good whisky bar, to be mindful of every detail in creating the perfect environment for generating these memories.

One of the most important things though is carefully choosing your menu. To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, “Good people drink good whisky”, so you must make sure to have good stuff available.

Now, before you think that by good whisky I mean you should stock exclusively 50 year old malts from obscure distilleries in cut-glass decanters, let me reassure you that that is not the case. Everyone is different in their likes and dislikes, including their whisky preferences.

This also does not mean that you have to have a bottle of every single whisky in existence. But you do have to be able to cover a wide range of tastes and backgrounds. By all means, provide venerable Mortlachs and Glenfiddichs for those that can afford them, but have some more reasonably priced malts in as well.

A good rule I feel is quite easy to stick to is to have 2-3 representatives of the main flavour

types. Rich and spicy, sweet and honeyed, peat monsters, light and floral, salty and briny and finally ‘a bit of everything’ for those rascally Campbeltown whiskies.

I prefer going by flavours instead of by regions as they are easier for the beginner to understand, while the experienced hands already know which region from which they are drinking.

If you have the facility then by all means expand the number of malts in each category, but you want to have a more affordable and a more extravagant representative for each one as a minimum.

Also don’t neglect your blends! A whisky drinker who tells me ‘I only drink malts’ to me is

the sort of person who says ‘I only eat Western food’. To refuse to try the full spectrum of whiskies is to miss out on some great things.

What about non-Scottish whisky though? Well that depends. I would put the likes of bourbon or rye whisky into their own section, because they are made using different ingredients, but anything made along similar lines to the Scottish model can be included. Controversial perhaps, but I think the acknowledged success of Japanese whisky has proven that in terms of quality they deserve to be considered equally while also furthering the newcomer’s willingness to explore their options when grouped in the above way.

Lastly, make sure that if you are the one creating the menu that you and your staff have tried everything and understand the flavours.

Whisky drinkers tend to have fine palates and an even finer nose for a bland sales pitch, so it’s important to have a bartender who genuinely knows just how good the stuff they want you to drink is.

There are of course other factors at work in creating the right environment, such as the lighting and the décor, but fundamentally the environment is created by the people you’re with. Those behind the bar play an important role in contributing to that, just so long as the capacity is there to select the very best whisky for the moment.

Whether it’s an entry-level blend or the finest malt that money can buy, the memories it generates are priceless. Hit the notes right, and your favourite watering hole could be the setting for some more of those epiphanal whisky moments.

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Johnnie Walker WORDS 째 John Treadgold

T

he story behind the most famous name in whisky began almost 200 years ago, in 1820.

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A young John Walker had just lost his father.

He sold the family farm, for £417, and opened a grocer’s store in Kilmarnock. Seemingly a tough task for a 15 year old but one that the ambitious young man handled well. Times were good in the ports of Glasgow and Greenock, both imports and exports were thriving, and luxury products were even venturing as far afield as Kilmarnock.

The young John, known as ‘Johnnie’, had built a healthy trade in the spices and teas that were coming in from the New World.

Part of his success was his ability to blend to ensure balance and to harness the best flavours. Before long, he began to apply those skills to the creation of new whisky blends and the famous lineage of Master Blenders was born. His whiskies were sold through his store but he would also create exclusive blends for certain favoured customers. They soon gained a reputation amongst those seeking superior quality and consistency – consistency, especially, being an issue with many of the raw whiskies made at the time. The whiskies were popular but at the time of his death in 1857, still represented less than 10 per cent of the firm’s business.

It was Johnnie’s son, Alexander Walker, and his grandsons, George and Alexander Walker II, who took the whisky business to the next level.

By the time Alexander, who inherited his father’s blending ability and who has been attributed with an even greater entrepreneurial zeal, was ready to hand the business on, more than 90 per cent of their income came from whisky.

The first ‘official’ blend produced by the Walkers came in 1867 when Alexander offered ‘Walker’s Old Highland Whisky’. The third generation of this family was well matched to take the company forward. George was an astute businessman; Alexander II had the blending skills of his forebears. ‘Old Highland Whisky’ was the blend that established Alexander’s reputation as a blender of supreme ability.

In the 1860’s, Alexander moved to the famous square bottle, still inextricably linked to the Johnnie Walker brand today. He felt it reduced the number of broken bottles and it also allowed for more economical packing of the bottles.

The label was applied at an angle (of 24 degrees). This meant that the text used on it could be larger and hence, more visible to potential customers.

Alexander wanted to see his whisky sold in ‘the four corners of the earth’ and believed that

with the explosion of travel via the sea routes established by the expanding British Empire, this was more than possible. The Walkers had every intention of creating the world’s first global brand. It was made possible by the system known as the ‘Adventure Merchant Business’. Merchants would ship goods on board vessels heading for the various ports of the Empire. The captains of these vessels (early

brand ambassadors) would sell the products – in this case, Walker’s Highland Whisky – at the ports of destination, retaining part of the proceeds. It opened the markets for the new products. By 1889, theirs was the leading whisky in Sydney, having arrived in the1860’s.

South Africa, America, India, Penang, Singapore, New Zealand and Paris all followed.

In the early 1900’s, Johnnie’s grandsons,

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together with the Managing Director James Stevenson, expanded the line of whiskies available. They also introduced the famous ‘colour’ names. In 1908, the brand was renamed – from ‘Walker’s Highland Whisky’ to ‘Johnnie Walker Whisky’. The famous slogan, ‘Born 1820 – Still going Strong’, was first used and the image of the Striding Man, still used today in their advertising, was created – it was originally sketched by a cartoonist, Tom Browne on the back of a menu card. The idea was to honour the founder.

In 1909, the ‘Special Old Highland Whisky’ became the ubiquitous ‘Johnnie Walker Red Label’. It is still the number one whisky on the planet. ‘Johnnie Walker Black Label’ was also named in 1909. It had been ‘Extra Special Old Highland Whisky’ but in 1906, Alexander Walker II had altered the label, placing the brand name on a black label. Within no time at all, they found that it was simply ordered by its nickname, ‘black label’. It was time to make it official. ‘Black Label’ was well known as Sir Winston Churchill’s favourite whisky and his tribute to it, a painting called ‘Bottlescape’, still hangs at the Churchill family home.

Within a hundred years of commencing the family business, Johnnie Walker Whisky was sold in more than 100 countries, winning medals in competitions around the globe. King George V had knighted Alexander Walker and, in 1934, also granted the company a Royal Warrant, an honour that would subsequently be bestowed by the British Monarchs to follow.

By 1956, ‘Johnnie Walker Red Label’ was selling over a million cases a year. The company continues to seek the highest levels of quality, while also keeping an eye on their traditions.

1992 saw the introduction of ‘Johnnie Walker Blue Label’, a new standard of blending excellence while keeping the tradition of the legendary ‘1867 Old Highland Whisky’ alive. The Master Blenders at Johnnie Walker estimate that only one cask in every 10,000 will reach the sublime quality that is needed for consideration as a blending component of Blue Label. Of course, at the heart of the Johnnie Walker story is the art of the Master Blender, the silent heroes of the brand’s success. For the first 100 years of the business the company’s Master Blenders came exclusively from the Walker family with John Walker himself beginning an unbroken lineage of blending expertise that continues to this day. Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve is a proud representation of this

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history having been personally handcrafted by Master Blender, Jim Beveridge. Out of much forethought, Jim has specially chosen casks from selected parts of his unrivalled reserves and then skilfully blended them to create a bold confident blend finalised to become the premium and well enjoyed whisky it is today.

We have also seen the ‘The John Walker’ and ‘King George V’ variants, as well as ‘Johnnie Walker Double Black’ and ‘Johnnie Walker Platinum Label’ enter the market. The ‘Platinum Label’ is an 18 Year Old blended whisky, which is crafted from both single malt and grain whiskies, each matured for that minimum 18 years.

In recent year’s we have seen some exciting innovations from this iconic whisky house such as that of John Walker & Sons Diamond Jubilee and the newly launched Odyssey.

Diamond Jubilee has been produced by John Walker & Sons to celebrate 60 years of reign of Her Majesty The Queen, culminating in 2012. Carefully crafted using a unique blend of grain and malt whiskies that have been distilled and matured since 1952 (the year the Queen acceded to the throne), it represents the pinnacle of super-deluxe whisky from John Walker & Sons. Jonathon Driver, John Walker & Sons global brand ambassador, said of the Diamond Jubilee, “While using normal whisky descriptors for Diamond Jubilee doesn’t do this any justice, whisky enthusiasts can anticipate a nose of light, clear fruit and a cleansing sweetness which deepens before drying.

Refined fruity aromas balance creamy-sweet and spicy wood. The palate is firm and clean, with a complex balance of sweet green-fruit sharpness and hints of smoke, warm spice and smooth vanilla. This incredible drinking experience finishes with a delicate balance of dried mixed fruit and freshness.”

Also, in honour of Sir Alexander Walker II and guided by his hand-written notes, today’s Master Blender has crafted the House of Johnnie Walker’s first triple malt Scotch. The blend was developed from three of the finest malts from three Scottish distilleries Alexander called the ‘hidden gems’. These rare single malts were blended and married in European oak casks until reaching a level of perfection when only then could the blend become the John Walker & Sons Odyssey.

Now we wait in anticipation to see what this exciting whisky icon will produce next.

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ANOTHER ROUND OF

FORMULA 1 H

FOR YAS MARINA CIRCUIT

amilton, Vettel and Rosberg were on route to The Middle East with their fast cars, pit crews, fan followings and party people at the end of November as we saw the return of Formula 1.

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Ivan Haller, Director of Food and Beverage at Yas Viceroy, Abu Dhabi

The Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi hosted its 7th Formula 1 race, and if fast cars weren’t your forte, chances are the back-to-back Enrique Iglesias, Florence + The Machine, and Blur concerts were.

The wide appeal of these stacked events ensures the busiest weekend of the year in Abu Dhabi’s hospitality sector. And no one knows this better than Ivan Haller, Director of Food and Beverage at Yas Viceroy, Abu Dhabi; one of the only hotels that is situated on a race track. “We have a unique selling point because nowhere in the world can you watch the F1 race from the terraces of a restaurant or from the balcony of your own room”.

This may be Haller’s second Formula 1 with Yas Vicaroy, but he is no stranger to hotels that cater to race fans. At a former role in Singapore “we had a restaurant directly on the racetrack. It was a similar thing, but now I have 11 times the outlets to take care of”.

The Yas Vicaroy’s proximity to the racecourse is certainly an advantage, but even with the success of the previous years’ events Haller let us know that the hotel has no plans to rest on its laurels, saying that “We plan to top last year by offering even more high quality events and by getting differing international promoters in to work with us. We had a two Michelin star chef who cooked in our Italian restaurant, which defiantly topped last year. All the other companies we had on board were different nightlife venues. Nightclub operators from the US, brought in some good acts to the hotel”.

That’s right, fast cars were complimented

by Michelin stars at Amici Restaurant; where legendary chef Antonio Mellino presented some of his restaurant’s, Quattro Passi’s, most loved dishes.

The Yas Vicaroy was also proud to present an Omakase dinner in Kazu. Omakase is a much-loved Japanese tradition of letting the chef choose what dishes will come to the table.

Those happy to explore new foods and culture could try the experience over lunch or dinner, during race times, while overlooking the track.

Haller isn’t kidding when he calls Kazu “a really prime location”. To top it off, the experience included a free flow of sake, Laurent-Perrier Champagne, wine and beer.

For the clubbers, the big-dogs of the industry were enlisted to ensure that the place to party was the Yas Vicaroy.

Cirque Le Soir pitched up its big top at Rush on Friday November 27th, bringing their own

circus sheik brand of decadence. The fire eaters, aerial acts, burlesque dancers and acrobats entertained like never before in Abu Dhabi. And for the guest who wanted to take their night to the next level, Jeroboams (4 x standard bottle size) and Methuselahs (8 x standard bottle size) of Cristal Champagne and Cîroc Vodka were on ice and ready for popping.

Saturday and Sunday the circus left town, to make room in Rush for the American club 1 OAK; a venue that has stood the test of time in New York’s nightlife culture. This venue oozes sophistication, an egalitarian spirit that mixes the famous an infamous with art, fashion, the new and the unknown.

For those who think of star lit skies when someone says nightlife just as much as they think of banging DJ beats, then Skylite was the venue for them. Dubai’s 40 Kong took over for the entire weekend, bringing their big city lounge vibes along with a breath of fresh winter air.

Last but not least, the home of the official

‘after race party’ was Latitude. This rooftop venue boasts views of both the racetrack and the marina. Guests sipped on the specialty cocktails that pay homage to history’s best Formula 1 drivers and iconic racetracks. The go to cocktail was the La Racasse, which honours the Monaco Grand Prix, and is made from Laurent-Perrier Brut NV Champagne, Courvoisier, honey orange bitters and lemon sorbet. Another popular tipple was the Andretti Old Fashioned, composed of Bulliet Bourbon, maple syrup, cinnamon bitters, hand carved ice and a cherry. A DJ played tunes until 3AM every night and there was a best-dressed award given to the most stylish partygoers in the venue. Images can be viewed using the hashtag #viceroystyle.

Whether you’re a foodie, a club-head, purveyor of fine beverages or a motorsports fanatic, the Yas Vicaory certainly know how to entertain.

With so much on offer this venue has something to offer everyone and a venue that should be on everyone’s bucket list for 2016.

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THE DUBAI WINE WEEK 2015 E

arly September shows the first signs of the diaspora returning to the UAE after a long hot summer. And the event to mark the migration is African + Eastern’s now annual, Wine Week.

Dubai in its second year, and Abu Dhabi’s first, the emirates are celebrating everything ‘wine’ with activities for wine lovers from both sides of the bar counter.

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Founded in response to both a public and trade demand for more information about wine, Wine Week’s intention is to give both consumers and professional service staff the skills and confidence to branch out from the usual wine choice, to gather a few tips on pairing food and wine, and to raise brand awareness.

Beverage professionals were welcomed to PATH Bar School over four days to try more than 400 wines from the A+E portfolio. This tasting and networking opportunity serendipitously aligns the time when wine lists are being developed for the approaching peak season.

Everything from the fast moving glass-pour bottles to the most elite vintage-relevant wines are open for tasting. Wine rep’s are on hand to talk business and share their personal favourite drops with their clients. Above all else Wine Week is a chance for industry peers to taste and discuss wines together, and make the buying decisions that shape the growing wine scene in Dubai.

Also on offer to the movers-and-shakers of the F&B scene, were a series of Masterclasses led by representatives direct from the wineries.

Export Manager Marcelo Marasco of Bodega Catena Zapata explained the importance of altitude in Mendoza’s sub regions, while Export Sales Director Joan Mourgues of Clarence Dillon Wines highlighted the tiers of wines from the classic Bordeaux Clarendelle range through to the celebrated first growth, Chateau Haut-Brion.

Dr. Loosen’s Export Director, Matt Giedraitis, of the Mosel region of Germany, led a tasting of six Rieslings and provided practical tips to decoding the German wine classification systems.

Commercial Sales Director, Olivier Watrin of The Rolland Collection invited the class into the mind of famed wine consultant Michel Rolland, leading them through Michel’s passion projects in France, Spain and Argentina.

All the fun wasn’t just for those from inside the trade. The general public had access to some incredible value throughout the week, like Ernie Els Signature for AED 214 at The Els Club. They had rare opportunities to try some top shelf wines by the glass, like at Rhodes W1’s ‘Salute to the Mavericks’ which showcased producers forging new paths in winemaking right now.

Ynot, Vintage Wine Bar and The Pepper Crab tested their client’s blind tastings skills, and Hakkasan, Geales, Qbara, and Cut, among others, offered multi-course degustation menus with perfect pairings.

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The Dubai Wine Week 2015

MASTERCLASSES

BODEGA CATENA ZAPATA

The first masterclass welcomed Export Manager Marcelo Marasco of one of the most highly awarded wineries in Argentina, Bodega Catena Zapata.

The role that winery founder, Nicolas Catena Zapata played in developing Mendoza as a quality production region has been pivotal to not only the winery’s accomplishments, but the country being recognised as a high quality wine producer.

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In the 1980’s Argentine wine was relatively simple, and only consumed locally. Zapata made the bold step to plant vines higher up the Andes Mountain foothills at nearly 5000 feet above sea level. It was commonly believed that grapes would not ripen in the cooler mountain temperatures, but Nicolas believed the higher altitude, among other charters of the Andes terroir, would have a positive influence on grape quality.

The gamble paid off according to Marasco, and it is now widely understood that heat is not the most important consideration to ripening fruit. The cool temperatures at high altitude ripen grapes more slowly, but it also retains their fresh acidy. Increasing hours of sunlight ensure that ripe flavours develop, not just sugar. And the altitude encourages thicker, deeply-coloured grape skins which result in the uniquely ink-like colour that Argentine Malbec is famous for.

Marasco explained that despite their success Bodega Catena Zapata has no intention of resting on its laurels. Their five vineyards, spread between the revered Mendoza sub-regions of Maipú, Luján de Cuyo and the Uco Valley, serve as more than a grape farm. Extensive research and developmental study of soil, climate, sustainable viticulture, high-altitude winemaking, the different clones of Malbec, and micro blending is carried out constantly in these vineyards.

The future of Bodega Catena Zapata is in good hands, as fourth generation vintner, Harvard and Stanford educated physician, Dr. Laura Catena works alongside her father, Nicolas, to uncover the mysteries of Mendoza’s wines.

Perhaps Wine Spectator Magazine said it best, “Nicolás Catena Zapata … has helped Argentina raise wine quality and earn recognition on the world stage, bringing it fully into the New World of wine”.

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THE ROLLAND COLLECTION Commercial Director, Olivier Watrin led The Rolland Collection masterclass.

He gave the class a peek into the philosophies of the man at the heart of this label, Michel Rolland. Today Rolland is the world’s most famous wine consultant. He established himself after completing a winemaking degree then opening a laboratory to assess wine samples in Bordeaux.

To date Rolland has completed more than 40 vintages and consults to more than 100 wineries. “Michel is an amazing blender,” says Leonardo Raspini, manager of Tuscany’s Tenuta dell’Ornellaia, where Rolland has been credited with turning Ornellaia’s Masseto into one of the best red wines from Italy. While he lends his talents to vintners’ world over, the wines from The Rolland Collection come from properties he has invested in personally.

At the masterclass, held in the African + Eastern offices in Tecom, special attention was given to The Rolland Collection wines from France, Spain and Argentina. The tasting started with Château La Grande Clotte Bordeaux Blanc 2010. The white grapes for this wine are sourced from Lussac-Saint-Emilion, a rare, one hectare plot in a region dedicated to red grape production. The wine was beautiful, yet as unusual as the vine plot is comes from. The full-bodied and citrusy palate had aromas of yellow apples, dry hay, vanilla and biscuits. This is a wine to recommend for white wine appreciators who are interested in trying something well-made, and like nothing they’ve had before.

The next two varietals were Château Fontenil 2005 and Le Défi de Fontenil 2005. Both wines are Merlot based and both hail from the Fronsac region in Bordeaux. That said they are made in very different ways.

The Château Fontenil is made using traditional high quality winemaking practices which include hand picking, then manually separating unfit grapes twice, according to Watrin. The finished wine boasts bold black fruit, which takes a back seat to earthy and roasted characters. A great wine for true Bordeaux lovers.

In the making Défi de Fontenil, Rolland was experimental in his approach. Most notably, he laid tarps in the vineyard near the end of the ripening season to prevent water from reaching the roots of the vines. This means that grapes don’t absorb excess water, which dilutes their flavour, so close to the harvest. The finished wine has strong black berry and plum characters along with baking spice, aniseed and grippy tannins. Ripe fruit is at the fore of this bold wine.

Moving from France to Spain, The Campo Eliseo 2004 is a shining example of why the Toro region is enjoying a wine renaissance. Michel, his wife Dany, and Francois Lurton joined forces to create a 100% Tempranillo from 70 year old bush vines. The wine has powerful aromas of candied

orange, red fruits, vanilla, leather, smoke and clove. On the palate it is lusciously rich, with more dusty earth characters on the palate than on the nose.

The final two wines of the tasting were 100% Malbec from Argentina.

The first was the Val de Flores 2004 from Mendoza’s acclaimed Uco Valley. The other, Yacochuya 2006, hails from the highest wine region in the world, Cafayate in Salta Province. This comparative tasting highlighted how the same grape can perform and age differently depending on where it’s from. The Val de Flores was tight at first, showcasing aromas of oily leather, black earth, vanilla and malt, but airing coaxed more flavours of grilled beef, plum and dark chocolate. There is a wine that needs decanting and can evolve in glass for hours.

The Yacochuya 2004 was comparatively fresher and more delicate but, make no mistake, this too is an incredibly powerful wine. This Malbec was more herbal, had notes of fresh black fruit, chocolate, cedar and clove.

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CLARENCE DILLON WINES Clarence Dillon Wines is an important wine merchant in Bordeaux, and is currently the producer of six different labels. The most notable of those being the first growth, Château Haut-Brion.

Export Sales Director Joan Mourgues, and winery representative Anna Tcheliapova, shared several wines from the greater Clarence Dillon Wines collection, illustrative of the classic styles of red, white and dessert wines from Bordeaux.

Mourgues explained that the associated vineyard’s properties not only have a long history of wine production dating back to 1934, but they also have a history rich in notable proprietors and directors, including bankers, politicians, and royals.

The first two wines tasted were classic examples of dry white and a red Bordeaux from the Clarendelle range. The 2012 white is a skilful blend of the three traditional varietals, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Muscadelle.

The wine was fresh, citrusy, with some tropical fruit, herbal and waxy aromas. The palate mirrored the aromas perfectly.

The Clarendelle Rouge 2009 is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. It had sweet cherry, cinnamon spice, a touch of tarragon and a medium body weight. Typical of the grape variety and region, the palate had stone and peppery characters.

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The grapes for Château La Mission Haut-Brion come from directly beside the revered Château Haut-Brion vineyard. While this is a wonderful example of well-made Bordeaux, the notable sweet aromas drew similarities to New World Meritage. Mint chocolate, red cherries and roasted coconut, dust and eucalyptus notes were all present on the nose.

The palate was dense with earthy characters like composting leaves, graphite and coffee grounds. Overall it is well balanced and forthcoming in character.

The reason everyone got out of bed that morning had finally come. Today they would taste Château Haut-Brion; one of five estates to achieve the highest ranking in the 1855 classification of Bordeaux, and it was the only property from outside of the Médoc to make the list. It is also the smallest first growth, with only 42 hectares under vine.

The vintage of a wine is pivotal in top quality Bordeaux as their red wines are intended to age for about 18 months in barrel minimum, then an addition two years minimum in bottle before they are released to the market. The 2003 vintage of Haut-Brion was exceptional with very low rain fall, and record breaking heat according to Mourgues. The wine was exquisitely balanced and had characters of chocolate, toast, red cherry, black berry, aniseed and spice.

The tasting wrapped up with a dessert wine, Clarendelle Amberwine 2003. This wine is made in the same way as Sauternes, but comes from the Montbazillac region just outside of Bordeaux. The combination of late harvest and botrytis affected Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle grapes, created characters of pineapple, port, hazelnut liqueur, dried orange, peaches and pepper.

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DR LOOSEN Matt Giedratis Export Director of Dr. Loosen dazzled the room with a Riesling collection and an easy approach to explaining German wine terminology.

The story goes the man behind Dr. Loosen wines, Ernst Loosen took over the family winery after the passing of his father, and transformed the company into one of the most iconic estates in Germany. While this is the case, Giedratis shed some comical light on how Ernst found himself in the position of proprietor. Due to his niche area of studies, archaeology, and his brothers assumed that Ernst would struggle to find work. When his father became ill, Ernst defaulted into taking over the business as his brothers already had more ‘notable’ careers. An archaeologist’s knack for discovery, it seems, paid off and addition to his many wine accolades he was named Decanter Magazine’s Man of the Year in 2005.

Ernst’s father owned vines but was not especially interested in making wine. When Ernst took control and ventured into the overgrown vineyards he found vines that had survived the devastating Europe-wide Phyllxora infestation of the late 1880s. Ernst suddenly found himself in ownership of some of the oldest and rarest grape producing vines in Western Europe.

An added bonus was that they happened to be located among the best rated vineyards in Germany. To top it off, Ernst actually quite liked Riesling.

At this point Giedratis switched focus from the man behind the wines, to his creations laid out in front of the audience.

The first two wines provided a comparative tasting between Dr. Loosen Blue Slate Riesling 2013 and Dr. Loosen Red Slate Riesling 2014. ‘Blue slate’ and ‘red slate’ refer to the soil the vines are grown in. The main difference between the two types of slate is that the red is affected by volcanic activity, making it more iron-rich. Both wines embodied the typical qualities of dry Riesling, light and refreshing with lemony acid and floral

aromas. However, the blue slate was more delicate with chalky minerality, and the red slate produced wines with stronger spice and pepper characters.

Next was the Dr. Loosen Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Grosses Gewäches 2013. This drop is made from 100 year old ungrafted vines from a single vineyard. Old vines tend to produce a smaller amount of grapes with more concentrated flavours, qualities evident in this wine. It had uncharacteristically intense spice, flower, banana and melon aromas. The acid was high and the texture was delicately creamy with a touch of yeast from extended lees contact in the barrel.

The final three wines focused on levels of sweetness in German wines.

Dr. Loosen ‘Dr. L’ Riesling 2014 was a fresh, fruity and slightly sweet entry level wine. It is 100% Riesling unlike many of its competitors, who legally blend up to 15% of another grape variety, or sweeten their wines with grape sugar from another variety.

Dr. Loosen Riesling Kabinett Blue Slate 2013 provided the tasting’s first Prädikatswein, a wine belonging to the German system of classifying wines according to how much sugar they have when they are harvested.

Kabinett has the lowest minimum sugar permitted on the tiers of the Prädikatswein, and the finished wines might be dry or off-dry. This one had a delicate, baby powder nose with a touch of pungency, and off dry flavours of lime and honey suckle.

The final glass, Dr. Loosen Beerenauslese QmP 2013, had a light, 6% of alcohol. To make this wine, grapes are picked individually and have been sufficiently affected by botrytis; a fungus that dehydrates a grape thus concentrating its sugar. These wines are lusciously sweet, and not easy to come by. The 2013 was mildly spicy, with yellow apple and straw characters, and it was a perfect way to wrap up an incredible week of wine masterclasses.

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is back in The UAE

STEVE FERNANDEZ

° MEET °

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even years ago he was part of the Atlantis opening team where he worked under two Michelin star chef, Giorgio Locatelli. After spending the last five years in the Maldives working Six Senses Resorts & Spas and The One & Only he has returned to the UAE. As the head sommelier for the St Regis Saadiyat Island Resort in Abu Dhabi, and armed with a diploma from The Wine & Spirit Education Trust he is ready to take on the wine program in The St. Regis Saadiayt Island Resort’s seven F&B outlets.

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He has selected The St Regis Saadiyat Island Resort in Abu Dhabi for several reasons; the history, the clientele and the opportunity to educate people on wine. “The St Regis has a very nice long history. Mr. Astor, who was the founder of the St. Regis, did not survive the sinking of the Titanic. It was his son who carried on the legacy of the brand. And the brand has always been a very high class and sophisticated place.”

Based on the St Regis’ particular clientele he felt it would provide a great platform of people who want to learn more about wine. “By being over here I thought I could definitely bring about a lot of education to these people, and of course give them the experience they are looking for.”

Fernandez began his career in 1999 with a hospitality management degree in Bombay, India. Upon graduating he started working with the The Oberoi and Kempinski Group “That’s where I kindred my interest in wines. I worked at an Italian restaurant called Stella. It hosted around 250 only Italian wines labels, so when I started working with them I had to develop an interest in wines. It started to fascinate me; all the different terroirs, soils, etc. And from there I moved to Italy. It was fun, I moved over there to work with wine and with winemakers like Masi and then Alvaro Palacios is Spain”.

Fernandez has now travelled to 29 countries to learn about wine and different cultures first

hand. “These things go hand in hand, and I’ve always been fascinated by learning people’s culture and also the history of different regions”.

Now that he’s settled back in the UAE he has a clear idea of how he wants to impact the wine scene. “When I talk about wine, especially with regard to educating people, I think it is one thing that is missing in Abu Dhabi, and even in most places in the world. People are getting curious about wines and educating them is an important factor that we overlook. When you go to a wine dinner or tasting the sommelier plainly speaks about the wine having certain aromas but he doesn’t go in depth to explain to people why those aromas are there, break it down to the bare bottom level. People will understand”.

“The way I conduct wine dinners over here, I bring it down to the bare basics and let people understand why all this happens.” “It’s not just eating food and drinking wine. It’s to take them through the entire experience.”

One way that Fernandez plans to share his knowledge is through wine dinners. The next one will be on biodynamics. “It will be in Turquoiz which is on the beach front. So people will able to see the full moon, and then I will be able to explain how the moon affects grape growing and the entire cycle of biodynamic wines”.

The St Regis has also relaunched their brunch to highlight all the F&B outlets at the property.

“We have created a theme of ten bars which are spread over the entire area, as well as 10-12 cooking stations. The chef focuses on food from Sontaya, our Asian restaurant, and at the same time there are drinks from that restaurant in the bar which is called Sontaya. Then you have Turquoiz doing their own food and drink”.

When asked why he chose Louis Roederer Champagne for the brunch Fernandez replied.

“Champagne is Champagne. It is the best always. But you’ve got some which are really high class and some are which are super market everyday drinking Champagnes. When I talk about high class Louis Roederer, Laurent-Perrier and Bollinger fit those categories for me.”

“Keeping in mind not to take too much from [our clients] pocket. Louis Roederer is a wine that is very reasonable and something people love to spend on.”

What interview with a sommelier would be complete without an inquiry to their favourite wine? Steve says that “With every mood and taste, wines differ”. He describes his favourite wine as “A woman in a glass. It’s one of the most complicated wines ever. I like my red wines a bit chilled. After that I let it come down gradually to room temperature, and with every change in temperature the wine is completely different. The wine changes aromas, changes flavours and changes characteristics. Hence, I say it’s not a wine for me, it is a woman.”

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° FEATURE °

SERVING CHAMPAGNE T

here is little point in spending good money on a bottle of Champagne if it is then diminished by the manner of serving, especially when it is so easy to get right.

WORDS ° Ken Gargett

Despite certain newspaper reports from socalled experts, do not serve your Champagne at room temperature (unless you live in an unheated basement in a castle located within the Arctic Circle). It should be chilled. Around 7 to 12C is ideal. Many would suggest an even narrower window – 8 to 10°C. Some insist on 6 to 8°C. If one wishes to be a little pedantic about this, the fresher and younger the Champagne, the more chilled it should be.

Older and more complex Champagnes benefit from not being quite so chilly, though certainly that does not mean room temperature. Think chilled, but not ice-cold. Remember, the cooler the wine, the less forthcoming it is. Cold mutes flavours, whereas the warmer the wine, the more it reveals itself. But if too warm, it will look blousy, dull, clumsy and lose its finesse.

Chilling the Champagne is usually done by placing it in the fridge (depending on the temperature of your fridge, somewhere between three to six hours will suit), or an ice bucket (at least 30 to 40 minutes) well in advance of opening. Make certain the ice bucket contains a near-equal mix of ice and cold water – far more effective than just ice. In emergencies, soak a tea towel in cold water, wrap it around the bottle and then place it in the freezer, though gentle and gradual chilling is always preferred. It is not unknown, though certainly not recommended unless as an absolute last resort, for some drinkers to put an ice-cube or two in their fizz to chill it. To be honest, if you are

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at that stage, put your good Champagne aside for another time and grab a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc .

If in a restaurant, feel free to ask the sommelier to bring an ice bucket if your Champagne needs an extra chill or to ensure it stays cold. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to have the sommelier remove it from the icebucket if it is too cool – some sommeliers have a bad habit of shoving the bottle deep into the ice every chance they get.

To open the bottle, remove the foil wrapping and then carefully remove the wire cage – six rotations will do it. During this procedure, make absolutely certain that the bottle is, at all times, pointed away from yourself and away from everyone else in the room (and from the bitter experience of friends, aim away from any lights in the room – an errant flying cork smashed a fluorescent light over the table upon which their Christmas dinner had been laid out, resulting in every dish ruined by shards of glass). As you remove the wire cage, keep hold of the cork, no matter how tightly stuck it might seem. The figures for serious eye injuries and even blindness, resulting from flying corks, are staggering. Statistics confirm that, in France, most eye injuries are caused by flying Champagne corks. I’m sure that is the case in many other countries as well.

To remove the cork, hold it and twist the bottle – the cork is far less likely to break off if you do this – until you feel it coming loose.

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° FEATURE °

Then ease it out gently. The Champagne should make very little noise – ‘a contended sigh’ is one famous description. A loud pop might be festive, but it is inevitably followed by a foaming rush of the precious liquid all over the floor. Unless you have just won a Formula One race, this is best avoided. Let’s be honest, Champagne is not cheap – why waste it?

If you are having trouble getting the cork out, putting a towel over it for better grip can help. If, for any reason whatsoever, you take your hand off the cork after removing the wire cage, no matter how solidly jammed in it might seem, then make certain that there is a tea towel or rag placed over the cork. That won’t save any Champagne, which happens to foam up and out, but it might save an eye.

Most crucial of all in serving Champagne is the glass; it is crazy to spend a fortune on great Champagne (and this applies to wine as well), and then drink it from a sub-par vessel, which inhibits the glories that the Champagne can offer. Buy the best glasses you can afford, and if that means you have a little less to spend on the fizz at the moment, don’t worry. You will be rewarded in the long-term.

First, ignore anyone who suggests you should pre-chill your glasses. It will diminish the sparkle and is to be avoided.

Also to be avoided are the atrocious coupe style glasses – they are better left to nostalgic 70s-themed prawn cocktails. They are allegedly modelled on the breast of Marie-Antoinette (the cover of Patrick Forbes’ excellent book, ‘Champagne’, has a photo of the last remaining ‘original coupes’ from the four originals – at the time of publication, it was in the possession of ‘The Antique Porcelain Company of London and New York’).

The original coupe was around a few centuries before the Queen of France offered her services as a model – perhaps she simply wanted a suitable vessel from which to drink her Champagne while she enjoyed her cake. Although, today, the coupe is rightfully considered to be the closest thing to a crime against humanity for use in drinking Champagne, centuries ago the wine was far less effervescent, meaning that it was not quite such a travesty to use a coupe to drink it from.

This leads us to Champagne flutes; there

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are many slight variations, but flutes and tulipshaped glasses are the ideal receptacles. The flat coupe allows the sparkle to dissipate very quickly, rendering your precious Champagne flat and lifeless. The much narrower flute traps much more of the bubble in the wine, releasing it far slower, ensuring the Champagne retains its fizz for longer. Too narrow and the aroma of the Champagne, often a highlight, has nowhere to go, which is why tulip-shaped glass has advantages. You can even go with a standard white wine glass, if absolutely necessary.

What is key is that the opening is not quite as wide as the bowl of the glass as this assists in concentrating the aromas of the wine.

We are seeing considerable debate amongst authorities as to the best glass.

Famous glassmaker, Georg Riedel, has been quoted in ‘Drinks Business’ as noting that the “Champenois are starting to serve their sparklers in white wine glasses as the larger surface areas give more aromas, complexity and a creamier texture. Flutes are too narrow and don’t allow the aroma and richness of the Champagne to shine as there isn’t enough air space”. This view is reflected in the glasses the producer offers for Champagne and other sparkling wines. The head of the House of Taittinger, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, has expressed a slightly different view, seeing the move to wine glasses from traditional flutes as a conflict with marketers.

One interesting thing to consider, which the boffins amongst us assure me is correct, is that if the glass sides of a Champagne flute are perfect, without the slightest imperfection, you will end up with no bubbles, no matter how fresh the Champagne. The carbon dioxide needs something on which to form – hence, when you look at a glass of Champagne, the lines of bubbles forming the bead all seem to come from the exact same spots on the side of the glass. Those spots indicate tiny imperfections.

True? Yes, according to the boffins. There are stories that certain high quality stemware makers will have a tiny scratch etched into the bottom of their Champagne glasses to ensure that there will be fizz!

All that said, if your Champagne is flat, it is not necessarily the fault of a ‘perfect glass’. More likely, the glass has not been properly cleaned. It

Champenois are starting to serve their sparklers in white wine glasses as the larger surface areas give more aromas, complexity and a creamier texture

is always wise to avoid cleaning your top flutes and tulip-shaped glasses in the dishwasher or, if you must, ensure that they are then thoroughly rinsed in hot water. Any trace of dishwashing liquid, even so much as the merest film, can flatten a glass of fizz instantaneously. So hand washing, hot water, thoroughly rinsed and then left out to air dry is the best way. Polishing the glasses over a source of steam, with a cotton cloth, is another way of ensuring your glasses will be in prime condition. Be careful of glasses that have been stored away in a box for too long as they can develop an unpleasant mustiness.

If you intend to use glasses which have been in long-term storage in a box, again, rinse thoroughly in hot water.

When pouring, hold the bottle by the base, not the neck. Pour gently. Some authorities insist the glass should be upright but a slightly angled glass will ensure that there is less agitation of the liquids and the bubbles are retained for longer to pour. And if the Champagne is foaming up, don’t be afraid to pour in several steps. In fact, that is recommended. Ideally, the glass should be no more than one-third to a half full.

Remember that is easy for a glass to warm up if served too cold (even a quick cupping of the bowl in the hands will assist): much more difficult for the reverse, to chill a warm glass, once it has been served.

All that remains is for you to toast and enjoy!

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° PROFILE °

Laurent-Perrier F

ounded in 1812, by André Michel Perlot, the house of Maurent-Perrier is today one of the leading family-owned brands in champagne. The success of the house can be attributed to the way the family honours the traditional values that have been passed down through the generations.

The House gained the name Laurent-Perrier after Mathilde Emilie Perrier, the widow of Eugène Laurent, decided to expand the business and combine the two family names.

Her daughter, Eugénie Hortense Laurent inherited the House in 1925, before selling it to Marie-Louise Lanson de Nonancourt in 1939, who ran the business alongside her son Bernard.

Bernard de Nonancourt dedicated his life to Laurent-Perrier, and it was his passion and energy that transformed a small Champagne House into the global brand that exists today.

When only Bernard returned from the French Resistance, having gone with his elder brother Maurice, his mother insisted he undergo an apprenticeship to fully understand every element of the business, before becoming

Chairman and Chief Executive of the House in 1948.

It was Bernard’s knowledge of all aspects of the family business that allowed him to create the signature Laurent-Perrier style and create a renowned brand with a range of unique Champagnes.

Although attached to the traditional ways of Champagne, Bernard also worked with new approaches at both technical and blending level, creating a portfolio of wines that to this day are celebrated for their style and consistency of quality - cuvée after cuvée.

Keen to embrace modern techniques, LaurentPerrier was one of the few Champagne houses in the 1950s to adopt the use of stainless steel tanks, which preserve the freshness of the wine and the complexity of aromas through

the use of controlled initial low temperature fermentation. The tanks were instrumental in the blossoming of the house style. LaurentPerrier’s cuvees all have their own history and personality, and together form a unique range of Champagnes that carry the hallmark of freshness, purity and elegance.

Up until his death in 2010, Bernard made his vibrant stamp on the House of LaurentPerrier; one that will remain forever. Today, the winemaking team is headed by Michel Fauconnet, Laurent-Perrier’s third Cellar Master, who guarantees the house style.

Bernard de Nonancourt’s legacy continues with renewed energy and creativity, overseen by his two daughters, Alexandra Pereyre de Nonancourt and Stéphanie Meneux de Nonancourt.

Luncheon in the vineyards at Laurent-Perrier

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TASTING NOTES

LAURENT-PERRIER BRUT

LAURENT-PERRIER ULTRA BRUT

LAURENT-PERRIER CUVÉE ROSÉ

MILLÉSIMÉ 2006

LAURENT-PERRIER GRAND SIÈCLE

Appearance: Pale gold, with a steady flow of fine and persistent bubbles

Appearance: Very pale and crystal-bright in colour

Appearance: Elegant, with colour changing naturally from a pretty raspberry hint to salmon pink

Appearance: A light yellow with delicate beading

Appearance: A fine bead, with delicate aromas. A bright yellow colour and an extremely refined texture

Aroma: Delicate yet complex, fresh and wellbalanced with hints of citrus and fresh fruits Flavour: Well defined, subtly rounded with expressive flavours. The fruit progressively emerges to reveal a finely balanced Champagne, displaying great length on the finish

Aroma: Intense and complex on the nose, with a wide range of aromas including citrus and white fruit and flowers, such as honeysuckle Flavour: Airy and delicate, yet surprisingly long. Floral and fruit flavours combine with mineral notes to give a wine that is pure without being austere. The finish is long and leaves the palate clean

Aroma: Precise and very crisp, it displays a range of small red fruits: strawberries, redcurrants, raspberries and black cherries Flavour: Intensely fruity.

Clean, well defined and slightly sharp, the wine then opens up to provide an impression of plunging into a basket of freshly picked red berries: strawberries, Morello cherries, blackcurrants and raspberries. The wine is round and supple on the finish

Aroma: A delicate, subtle nose with aromas of fresh pineapple, dried apricots and almonds Flavour: A very pleasant, rounded attack, followed by a marked sense of balance with a lively finish offering hints of white peach and mirabelle

Aroma: An intense, complex nose of lightly candied citrus. This is followed by notes of brioche, grilled almonds, and subtle hints of honey and gingerbread, shot through with white flowers Flavour: A silky palate and a sensation of plenitude, it shows fine minerality and a remarkable impression of freshness. A final note surprises with its lingering aroma

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° DRINK °

Taste of

S

ake is not just for pairing with sushi and karaoke room love ballades anymore. A global renewed interest in this rice based libation has kicked-off with The United States, The United Kingdom and France leading the way. African+Eastern has adjusted their focus to ensure that Dubai is at the cutting edge of this trend, and have brought it to the on-trade in the first event of its kind in The Middle East, Taste of Japan.

Chris Olivier, Beverage Manager of Grosvenor House, is behind some of the top sake sales outlets in Dubai, Buddha Bar, Zengo and Siddharta Lounge. He believes that this event serves great purpose in the region.

“Sake worldwide has had exponential growth in the last few years, led by a focus on the quality and diversity of the styles. It has almost become a hipster fad to be a person who drinks sake now. In Dubai, at the moment, we’re on the cusp of that view point.”

With that, Taste of Japan’s timing could not have been better. It took place August 17th to August 18th and shed light on not only the Japanese sake range available, but also on how well it can work in cocktails, and its versatility to pairing with food beyond Japanese cuisine.

The Taste of Japan consisted of four activities over two days. The first was an Asian mixology masterclass led by World Class 2014 winner, and beverage manager at BOCA, Jan Liska, alongside Tim Greening, formally of Grosvenor House. Thirty-eight influencers from the beverage trade watched Jan and Tim demonstrate how traditional Japanese beverages, Sake, Umeshu and Shochu, work as great bases for elegant cocktails. Jan had this to say, “I found it very easy, and actually enjoyable using these ingredients. They are not very high in alcohol so you can make feminine style cocktails and aperitif style cocktails very easily.”

Jan and Tim focused their efforts on six cocktails which were passed around for everyone to sample. Of the products they were working with Jan’s preference was for the sake “Because it’s quite unique in the flavour profile. It’s very delicate so you don’t need much to enhance the natural flavours” Flavours that work really well are stone and citrus fruit flavours, and a touch of savouriness (umami). He also said that you can work with ingredients that range “from sweet, to sweet and sour, to savoury; anything from the bar or kitchen. We fashioned one drink with raw salmon once”. At this mixology event he played to Godo Umeshu’s plummy qualities with Kappa pisco, apricot brandy and sour citrus juices; and to compliment Black Warrior Barley Shochu’s floral characters he accented with lemongrass and ginger.

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Admittedly, offering sake and sake based cocktails in non-Asian restaurants is not yet wide-spread in The Middle East when compared to international beverage trends; however the trend is spreading fast, and more and more customers travelling around the world and coming to UAE, are expecting to have a nice choice of sake and Asian cocktails in the restaurants of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Despite some apprehension to integrate the sake cocktails with certain bar and restaurant concepts, some outlets have fully committed to doing sake and doing it well. For example, sister hotels, The Grosvenor House and Le Royal Méridien Beach Resort have not only embraced the sake trend, but each property has a WSET certified sake specialist, a junior sake sommelier development program, has revamped sake menus for customer ease of use, has arrange on regular basis for Japanese sake brewers to meet their team, and they even have a bartender who hosts an Instagram dedicated to sharing picture of the sake he drinks, @sakeguy87.

Indeed, integrating Asian cocktails is a great place to start introducing this, sometimes misinterpreted brew to both staff and customers. But so much more can be said for these products and Taste of Japan still had three more events designed to raise awareness.

Taste of Japan’s second event was a five-course dinner held at La Serre Bistro & Boulangerie in The Vida Hotel Downtown. Twelve of Dubai’s leading beverage professionals were presented traditional French cuisine

with each course paired to a different sake. This provided not only an opportunity for sommeliers to experience firsthand how this drop works with international cuisine, but as it was the first event of its kind in the UAE, it opened a conversation about how to approach pairing sake beyond its niche affiliation with only Japanese cuisine.

The dinner started with a welcome drink of Gekkeikan Sparkling Sake from Kyoto Prefecture. The first course was Soul of the Sensei Junmai Daiginjo from Shizuoka Prefecture paired with marinated and grilled sea bream. Next, Origin of Purity Junmai Ginjo Genshu from Shimane Prefecture was paired with pan roasted monkfish, then 50-hour cooked beef cheek was paired with Kiku Masamune Taru (cedar aged) Sake from Hyogo Prefecture. The culmination was Kirin Jijoshu Genshu Vintage aged Sake and chocolate & caramel tart with espresso ice cream.

In an interview Sandy El Hayek, General Manager of La Serre and sommelier, she provided additional insights to how the event was conceived by the team at La Serre, and how it was perceived by the guests in attendance.

In the lead up to the dinner event Viktoryia Toma, Sake Specialist at African+Eastern, did an introductory tasting with Sandy and Executive Chef Izu Ani; then the culinary team was given a number of sakes to taste and draw inspiration from to create the dishes. “In our kitchen our focus is all about the origin of the ingredients; simplicity and the purest flavours. I

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° DRINK °

felt we had a lot of potential to work on, and we had a lot of ingredients.”

“I remember when [the chefs] started they over added some spices, or went a little bit too sweet. We had to go back and rethink the menu again.

It was really fun, and it was a very exciting experience for us. We were really happy to be one of the first restaurants to experiment with this.”

When questioned why a French bistro would take on an experimental event that promotes a non-French beverage, Sandy had this to say, “I still believe that it’s our job to be curious and to introduce new things to our palates; to be open minded and welcome new knowledge. And I think that when this was first introduced, especially when it was introduced by a very talented person like Viktoryia, I wanted to try it on.” “The chefs, the sommeliers and I looked at this challenge as a privilege for us to play around with, to try it and introduce it.”

Sandy, admitted that this was one of her first professional experiences with sake, and one she was glad to have. “When I had my first tasting I was very inspired by how simple, clear and pure it is”.

“I think the industry experts were excited to see how we managed to pair it” was Sandy’s response when asked how she felt about presenting this new idea to the region’s most discerning palettes. “I got some good feedback on some of the dishes and some criticism on others. The whole purpose of the event is to play around with the matching and be judged.”

“It kicked off some very encouraging discussions during the night; to start to discuss how it could be better and how it could have been done; a little bit less acidity, a little more spiciness, etc.” “It’s an amazing feeling to sit around a table with a lot of people from the industry.” “That’s what we do: we try, we judge, we criticise each other, and we develop some new ideas for matching. It was a great, great night.”

The decision was unanimous, the pairing of the night was the seared langoustine consommé with spring onion and butter matched with the

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Moon on the Water Junmai Ginjo by Imada Shuzo of Hiroshima Prefecture.

“This Sake was definitely my favourite of all of them. It was super elegant, very gentle; it was easy but complex and had a nice dry finish. It was excellent with the consommé which was tasteful but still mild; and then you had the sweetness from the langoustine that went very well with the light sake. The premium quality proved that the sake had some structure to compliment the entire dish; with some spiciness at the end.”

In reflection on the event, Sandy had this to say about sake and French food pairing, “Unlike other drinks, it’s really gentle but it still has very nice acidity. It’s something that invites you to play around, but at the same time it’s obviously very challenging because you have to be careful not to overpower the elegance. I think that being a French Mediterranean restaurant we do have a lot of similarities, and lots of ingredients in our kitchen that can be matched with it. It’s a part of our job to explore new cultures; as much as we always dig deeper into wines, sake deserves a chance in all cuisines to be tried.”

A formal Sake Masterclass was led by African + Eastern’s sake specialist Viktoryia Toma at PATH Bar School.

Thirty-seven beverage professionals attended, all hungry to expand their specialisations and increase their relevance to The Middle East’s growing sake culture.

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This classroom style event was geared to clearing the air: How exactly is sake made? How do you know if you should serve it warm or cold? What’s the difference between an entry level one and top of the line one? What are the rules for pairing it with food, and what is happening internationally with this beverage?

Common confusions were tackled first. Sake is neither a wine or a vodka, and it production process actually has more in common with beer.

Sake is a beverage category all of its own, made from rice, sake yeast, koji fungus and water.

Viktoryia went into detail about the sake production method, outlining how each process contributes to the final product. For those hungry for more, African+Eastern’s PATH Bar School is one of the few institutions globally accredited to deliver WSET Level 3 Sake Certification.

Next up were tips on writing a professional standard sake menu, and a lesson on how to serve it and pair it to food. Like wine, the most delicate and freshest sakes are best served cold, and pair beautifully with lighter cuisine like fish, seafood, salad and sushi. The fuller, more robust sakes are best served warm and pair with strongly flavoured dishes like roasted and grilled meat and fish.

That said, one aspect of sake and food pairing that is world’s apart from drawing parallels to wine is how sake’s quality grade can be applied to the pairing. The highest quality sakes, like Daiginjo are floral and have a medium to light body, thus they pair best with lighter fare. Junmai and Honjozo have full and earthy flavours that make them ideal for pairing with intensely flavoured dishes.

After a thoroughly informative session the attendees were ready to trial their new knowledge; and with that they were welcomed to the final event of Taste of Japan, the comparative sake tasting.

The grand finale of Taste of Japan was a comparative tasting of fifty different sakes. PATH Bar School was decked out with sake barrels hanging from the ceiling, and six different tasting stations. Ninety-five, sommeliers, bartenders, and beverage managers explored the stations, and familiarised themselves with 25 brands from over 30 prefectures.

Products on offer included aromatic, elegant Daiginjo and Ginjo sakes, flavourful Junmai and Honjozo sakes, numerous sake specialties and a selection of Umeshus (Japanese Plum Liquor).

An Asian product tasting this big was a first for The UAE. African+Eastern have been intensely focused on this section of their portfolio for the past two years to stay in line with international beverage trends, and Taste of Japan was an opportunity to truly compare styles, prefectures, grades and allow the trade to enjoy an open discussion on the beverages.

Perhaps Chris Olivier from Grosvenor House said it best when he concluded that “It’s a stigma we need to break and get people to understand that sake is not that difficult. It takes a little bit of effort at the beginning, but once you get the basic building blocks in place then it’s actually fairly easy. Knowledge is a wonderful thing. We don’t know much about sake so we don’t talk about it; but now that we have this knowledge we’ll talk about it more, and educate people, and show them what sake is all about.”

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ORNELLAIA BIANCO 2013 A Stunning New White Wine H

arvested from north-facing vineyards in Bellaria, Ornellaia Bianco is an exemplary result of the Estate’s dedication to demonstrating the exceptional qualities of its terroir in producing wine. A late growth during the 2013 winter season, followed by a perfect summer season, allowed the maturation stage to begin after the hottest time of the year. Mid-August saw a significant decrease in temperature due to storms, bringing cool weather that provided good maturity and acidity. Seven harvests followed, spanning a period from 23 August to 4 September.

Fermentation, all non-malolactic, occurred during the next 24 hours after harvest in barriques at temperatures below 22°C. After ageing for 12 months on the lees, with periodic batonnage, it was moved into steel vats for another three months. Light clarification and blending of the various batches followed, then a final six months of ageing in the bottle.

“We celebrate the end of every harvest at Ornellaia with a special lunch - it is always a very cheerful occasion! In 2006 we took some of the Sauvignon Blanc vines that had resisted attempts to regraft them five years before, and created a white wine as a surprise for that day. Even though the wine had only finished fermenting a few days before, its character and quality were truly impressive. The wine showed incredible promise and what began then as a bit of postharvest fun quickly became a vision for a new white wine, i.e.

Ornellaia’s ‘alter ego’.

The principal vineyards for Ornellaia Bianco are Fontina and Cancello Basso – both situated on the foothills behind Bolgheri. Both of these vineyard parcels were studied in depth because of their subsoils and their exposition. Fontina was regrafted while Cancello Basso transformed from being an olive grove to a “white” vineyard. In each case, as soon as the vines established themselves they began producing the

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quality and character we expected.

The maiden vintage of Ornellaia Bianco 2013 will launch before Christmas in the UAE. Due to small production only 48 bottles were made for the UAE (some countries did not receive allocation), and are being offered on the first release to individual Ornellaia customers.

The Ornellaia Bianco is bright yellow in appearance with just a hint of green. It offers an aroma of rich and fruity notes with sliced melon, papaya, mineral, stone and apple over complex, toasty wooden notes. Full-bodied and mature, the palate is broad and exceptionally well balanced with sweet fruit flavours and juicy acidity. Finishing long and subtle, this wine will age wonderfully. A mix of 70 per cent Sauvignon Blanc and 30 per cent Viognier over a touch of Sauvignon Gris, it has been fermented and aged in old French oak barrels for 12 months, with an additional six months ageing in the bottle.

Drink or hold.

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After seven harvests and after a great deal of work in both the vineyards and the winery, we are proud to present this wine to the world. Ornellaia Bianco has a very distinct style that is certainly without any equivalent in Italy – but also difficult to place anywhere else. All we can say is that it is ours.

AXEL HEINZ Estate Director

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HAKKASAN Sommelier Dinner H

akkasan’s success story started with one restaurant in London 14 years ago, and the famed franchise now has 11 restaurants on five continents. While they are globally praised for their modern Cantonese cuisine and designer interior, there is much more required to maintain a consistently great dining experiences for their customers. At Hakkasan the wine list development is treated as seriously as menu development, and the sommelier’s role of offering a perfect wine pairing starts long before the customer even makes the reservation.

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Before a wine can be listed, Hakkasan’s sommelier team will put it to the test. The wine selection process is ‘’a sacred thing in the Hakkasan group’’ according to Olivier Gasselin, Hakkasan Head of Wine for The Middle East and Asia. Because Hakkasan has a sharing concept the wines need to work with a wide selection of dishes “The idea is not to find a good pairing.

The idea is to find something that works with all the food, or to find faults and reject wines.

Usually at these tastings, of five or six wines one or two will work, or will be okay, with most of the dishes.” Hakkasan isn’t under any

pressure to add wines to their list so if the wine doesn’t work extraordinarily well with a wide variety of their dishes they simply won’t list it.

According to Olivier “Even for a new vintage we’ll try the wine again. In the New World [vintage] may not make a huge difference, but in Burgundy for instance we need to try every vintage as they will be quite different.”

On June 8th, 2015 a select group of senior sommeliers from Dubai were invited to Olivier’s table to participate in the wine selection process; a ritual normally practiced privately at Hakkasan properties world over. “It is very rare that an outsider does this” according to Olivier.

“My point of view is a little bit different because I used to work in other places. It’s important to develop the staff internally, but also to develop relationships with other people from the trade.”

Joining Olivier were Luca Gagliardi, General

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Manager at Rogue Trader, Azedine Dhaheri, F&B Manager at The Waldorf Astoria Dubai Palm Jumeirah, Lindsay Trivers, Wine Consultant & Educator at The Tasting Class, Dimitar Dimitrov, Head Sommelier & Beverage Manager at The Burl Al Arab and Jean-Philippe Le Rouzic, Wine Sales Manager at African+Eastern.

Throughout the tasting Olivier explained to his wine savvy guests that in Cantonese cuisine there are four key flavours profiles that they need to ensure a wine can work with: mild, savoury, sweet and spicy. He gave insight as to wines that typically pair well with their cuisine, and also mentioned some red flags to watch out for. “A wines that is quite tannic will struggle with most of our dishes. A wine that is too oaky,

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or has had quite a lot of oak aging will not work that well. Aromatic wines, on the other hand, work quite well. Riesling tends to work very well. Sauvignon Blanc tends to work very well.

Chardonnay, and some red wines, like Pinot Noir also work well.”

That said, Hakkasan’s wine team knows the perils of overgeneralising wine and food pairing with their menu’s wide flavour profile and their wine selection method is reflective of this.

A grid is systematically completed by each sommelier, and requires that every wine is tried individually with dishes from each of the four flavour categories.

As the group worked through the wine selection and generous spread of eight dishes,

Olivier delved deeper into perils to avoid when picking the best wines to suit Cantonese cuisine. “In mild dishes, like steamed dim sum, the wine might overwhelm the dish entirely so you need to be a bit cautious”.

Next they tried roast chicken with satay sauce and a clay pot of tofu, aubergine and shiitake mushrooms. These dishes represent the savoury category which “can be challenging because they can develops bitterness in the wine.”

“For sweet dishes we usually taste Chilean sea bass with Chinese honey. This is a dish which tends to be quite difficult to match; or sweet and sour chicken is a kind of silent killer for the wines, as about 80% of wines don’t

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work with this dish. [Sweet dishes] can make a metallic taste and bitterness, and enhance the wrong character of wines sometimes; like if you have tannins it makes the tannins more prominent.”

In the last category they tried spicy prawn and stir fried duck breast. “We don’t have too many spicy dishes but we do have a few; and spicy dishes will tend to clash with high tannin wines or wines that are matured in oak for a large part.

New French oak can be good, but sometimes it can bring difficulties, particularly American oak.”

As the team of guest sommeliers worked their way through the tasting exercise they discovered that generally the wine is not the issue. The wines they tasted where all of highquality, were very reputable and were in good drinking condition. The difficulty was simply to find a wine that works across all the key flavour characters of Cantonese cuisine. So, what did the table of sommelier’s find out when pairing each wine to the full spectrum of flavours?

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As for the Penfold’s Bin 51 Riesling, 2011, Jean-Philippe Le Rouzic, Wine Sales Manager at African+Eastern, has this to say. “Rieslings generally work quite well Asian cuisines across the board. And Eden Valley in Australia, where this wine if from, consistently makes quality examples of it. The delicate aromas were very nice with the mild fare and the razor sharp acid helped it stand up to the fuller savoury dishes as well”.

It was agreed that the Yalumba Viognier 2010 was fantastic. Lindsay Trivers of The Tasting Class said “It was weighty enough to stand up to bold sauces, and the savoury dishes complimented the wine’s full fruit characters off very nicely”.

“Rioja usually works quite well with our food” according to Olivier, and the Bodega Roda Sela 2009, was no exception.

Olivier has this to say about Vilafonté Series C 2010, “I really like the wine. I think it’s one of the great wines of South Africa. We list it, so we’ve already approved it”.

Luca Gagliardi, GM of Rogue Trader summed up his thoughts on Ca’del Bosco Franciacorta 2009, “It was unanimously our favourite wine pairing of the evening. Sparkling wine works well with Asian food and the Franciacorta we tasted was great”.

Following the tasting we probed Olivier further to see if there were any surprises from the tasting, “Sometimes you can be surprised by the way the wine works with food. Sometimes you really want a wine to work and it will not work. Sometimes you’re not convinced by a wine on its own but with food it’s a completely different experience. So this is what we face. I think the Vilafonté Series C was one we thought was least likely to work, but it actually worked quite well.”

Following the tasting, Luca Gagliardi, who has more than 20 years’ experience as a sommelier, shared his thoughts on Hakkasan’s wine selection process and summarised the exercise’s teachings perfectly, “To be honest, I’ve never seen something like this. It is amazing that every wine tasted needs to go in accordance with their full menu. If a wine doesn’t go with the food then it will not be incorporated in the wine list. It’s not only a matter of wine pairing, it’s a matter of giving a choice to the client. Hakkasan lists wines that exclusively go with all the dishes, which is something amazing.”

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