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The week in pictures

A host of famous faces were out in New York this week for the opening of Feroce and The Fleur Room at luxury hotel Moxy in SoHo.

Luther star Idris Elba, supermodel Jasmine Tookes and US TV host Ryan Seacrest were all in attendance, enjoying pizzas fresh from the bar’s oven and dancing late into the evening under a giant vintage disco ball.

The bar’s launch also saw guests visit The Mondo Suite on the hotel’s 32nd floor to snap a photo on a bed made of flowers while live rabbit roamed the suite.

New Orleans festival Tales of the Cocktail travelled to Puerto Rico this week for its Tales on Tour 2019 event.

The latest event from the cocktail extravaganza included talks and seminars that tackled sustainability, media training for bartenders, and post-shift recovery techniques.

Attendees also enjoyed parties and tasting sessions hosted by William Grant & Sons, Bacardi and Don Q Rum.

Famed New York bar The Dead Rabbit launched the first in its new series of cocktail menus this week.

The Darkland menu contains 30 new cocktails and sees The Rabbit character from the bar’s past menus travel to a dystopian universe.

Each cocktail was created by The Dead Rabbit’s beverage director, Jillian Vose, together with The Parlor’s bartending team. Cocktails on the new menu include Free of Charge, made with cachaça, Cuban rum blend, banana, mixed spice, ube, pineapple and coconut cream; and the On Off Switch, made with Japanese whisky, barley shochu, Jamaican overproof rum, orange liqueur, guava, yuzu, lime, ginger and habanero shrub.

Francois Badel and Aldrick John Baptiste have been crowned the winners of this year’s Chairman’s Reserve Mai Tai Challenge.

Badel, of Le Montfort in Rennes, France, and Baptiste of The Coco Palm Resort, Saint Lucia, wowed the judges with their Freaky Tiki Elixir cocktail.

During the competition, each international bartender was paired up with a local Saint Lucian bartender to collaborate and display their tropical cocktail skills. They worked with local ingredients to formulate a tropical cocktail that exhibited the character of Chairman’s Reserve rum.

Stevie Wynne, head bartender at Dublin bar 9Below, has been crowned the Irish winner of the Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition.

Wynne impressed the judges with his cocktail, called Chapter 4, which combined Bacardi Cuatro rum with apricot liqueur, peppermint sugar, lemon, condensed milk and saline solution.

The Irish bartender, who will now compete at the global final in Amsterdam in May, described his cocktail as a “distinctive pairing of flavours and textures I’ve gathered from my own memories and experiences”.

London absinthe bar Croque Monsieur launched its new cocktail menu this week, with a focus on making absinthe more approachable.

The menu is divided into three distinct parts: Beginner, Intermediate and Advance. The menu includes fruit-led creations such as the Sneaky Vimto and reworked classics like the Chocolate Old Fashioned.

Alongside the launch of its new menu, the bar also hosted a series of events with leading industry figures to educate guests on the history of absinthe.

During annual film, media and music festival South by South West (SXSW), Tequila Comisario hosted three star-studded events.

The brand was on hand at the premiere of Ms White Light, which stars Roberta Colindrez, and comedy horror film Tone Deaf.

The brand also hosted a cocktail party to celebrate the other films screened at the festival, which was attended by Pitch Perfect actor Anna Kendrick (pictured) and Orange is the new Black star Danielle Brooks.

SB headed to Berry Bros & Rudd on Thursday night to sample its new limited edition whisky collection – The Perspective Series.

Guests were treated to a dram of the 21-year-old, 25-year-old, 35-year-old and 40-year-old blends that comprise the range, accompanied by a selection of belly laugh-inducing anecdotes from master blender Doug McIvor.

Photographer Lindsay Robertson was also on hand to talk the crowd through the images he captured to emulate each whisky’s character.

Drinks industry charity The Benevolent hosted its annual charity ball at London’s Natural History Museum this week.

During the event, which took place in the museum’s Hintze Hall beneath the skeleton of a blue whale, The Benevolent chairman Michael Saunder addressed the room with a speech about the charity’s work and attendees danced into the early hours in the grand venue.
A host of fundraising events took place throughout the event and the charity raised £50,000 (US$66,000) to fund its work to support members of the drinks industry.

SB joined pioneering London distiller Sipsmith to celebrate its 10th anniversary this week. Industry supporters gathered at the brand’s Chiswick home for an evening of drinking, dining and general merriment.

Sipsmith’s founders – Sam Galsworthy, Fairfax Hall and Jared Brown – recounted the brand’s humble but ambitious beginnings, which played an integral role in the London gin boom and the craft distilling scene more generally. In the picture above, Sam holds Sipsmith’s hard-fought-for licence.

Many congratulations to the Sipsmith team on all they have achieved in the last decade, and a very happy birthday!

Surrey-based Silent Pool Gin this week unveiled the design for its anti-stress garden, which will feature at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

Created in collaboration with acclaimed garden designer David Neale, the area will utilise plants to create a space that “absorbs the pressures of everyday city life”.

The garden will be packed-full of roses, powerful antioxidants; elderflowers, which are used for swollen sinuses; juniper, a known digestive aid; chamomile, a sleep-booster; and iris, a known moisture-booster – many of which are also among the 24 botanicals used in Silent Pool Gin.

Earlier this week, SB headed to luxury London hotel The Savoy for an exclusive preview of a new series of whiskies released by Bacardi-owned blended Scotch brand Dewar’s.

Dewar’s new Double Double series, which features three whiskies aged for 21, 27 and 32 years, includes expressions that have undergone a four-stage maturation process.

Alongside a chance to sample the whiskies, SB spoke with the Dewar’s team, including Dewar’s master blender Stephanie Macleod, about the innovations involved in producing the spirits.

Irish whiskey producer Waterford Distillery this week distilled 10,000 bulk litres of spirit using heritage hunter grains, which have not been available for 40 years.

50 barrels’ worth of spirit were distilled at Waterford as part of the producer’s experimentation with newly accessible heritage grains.

Head brewer Neil Conway said: “Contrary to what much of the industry is telling drinkers, flavour starts with the grain and the terroir in which it’s grown. Hunter is an old favourite, a very successful variety, so much so that it dominated for 20 years.”

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