It’s a tough life I lead. Sometimes I have to take on chores like I did this last week, and fly off to London to attend a symposium on gin. To top it all off, it was also required that I spend several days before the symposium going to a variety of restaurants and bars and sample a wide variety of food and drink. If that wasn’t enough, most of the other folks attending the event were all friends of mine, and so I had to share the time with them as well.
The overall focus of this event was "The Global Gin Symposium 2006", which was put on by Beefeater Gin, in association with the Worldwide Cocktail Club. This was a day long set of presentations that covered a wide variety of gin related topics. 
It was held at the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road. This wonderful and well-appointed single screen cinema, was the perfect venue for this event. The only problem, was that the seats were far too comfortable, and after being up until far to late the previous night, many of us had problems keeping our attention on the topic at hand.
In attendence, were about 80 bartenders from the London and surrounding area. Beefeater also flew in a variety of speakers and guests (such as myself) from around the world to participate in this event.
Things started off with a history of gin presented by Professor Geoff Palmer and author Geraldine Coates, followed by a comparison of gin styles with Desmond Payne (Master Distiller for Beefeater Gin), Larry Ebersold (Master Distiller for Seagrams in the US), Piet van Leijenhorst and Philip Duff (both from Bols). Then after a wonderful lunch at Bumpkin Country Brasserie, we returned to the Cinema where Audrey Saunders presented on Matching Gin Styles to Cocktails, then Anistatia Miller, Jared Brown, and Angus Winchester provided an examination of a variety of "Lost" gin cocktails which bore rediscovery.
But that was just the activites of one day. There were other days (and evenings) to fill up, and fill up we did. On my first day there, a few of us made a point to quickly pop down to a (very) local pub and have a quick pint. Followed by heading off to another pub for lunch, where I made sure to have a traditional Steak & Kidney pie. It was then back to the K-West hotel for a couple of quick cocktails before venturing out for dinner at the Anglesea Arms. Many may scoff at the thought of "British Cuisine", and may even roll their eyes in abandon at the thought of "Pub" food. However, there is a focus these days on what they call "Gastropubs", which are slightly upscale pubs, which are specializing in providing great food that definately breaks the mold of what you might think of as traditional pub-grub. On this trip we visited a fairly wide variety of pubs, bars, and restaurants, and had wonderful meals at them all.
From the Anglesea Arms, we next went to Montgomery Place, which is a cocktail lounge in Notting Hill, a wonderful and compact little bar which served a variety of classic cocktails. We then headed down to Lonsdale, where we finished out the evening (and the first half of the next morning) running through a great selection of drinks that they had to offer as well.
The following day, we started out with a visit to Prince Alfred, one of London’s many "Gin Palaces". These were primarily a response to the Beer Houses that started taking over following the 1820 "Beerhouse Act". A Beerhouse didn’t have to abide by any licensing control, while spirit retailers did. So the first Gin Palaces started showing up around 1830 as a way to provide a semi-oppulent environment for gin drinkers. Prince Alfred was built in 1863, and still retains much of it’s original spendor. The inner area is split into several different rooms, each with a private outside entrance. Within, each of the rooms has access to the central "bar", with small access doors leading from one room to the next. I would love some time to take a tour of some of the various Gin Palaces still standing in London, such would surely be a memerable experience.
After our lunch at the Prince Alfred, we then headed out to the Beefeater distillery for a private tour. Beefeater is the only commercial gin still being manufactured within London, the others having left for larger, and cheaper, factories; many of them moving all the way to Scottland.
Nick Blacknell presided over the first half of the tour, and then we met up with Desmond Payne (their master distiller) who walked us through the process of how they produced their gin, from sourcing of the raw ingredients, all the way through distillation. The facility at Beefeater is larger then the distillery at Plymouth gin (where I toured a little over a year ago), but it still seems very small when compared with some of the larger breweries and distilleries we have here in American. One aspect of this is that gin producers don’t (and legally can’t) distill the neutral grain spirit (NGS) that they use to make their gin with, they have to purchas their NGS from others. So that greatly reduces the size needed for their facility. 
Beefeater combines their raw ingredients with NGS and macerates this for 24 hours before they run it through a distillation to produce their gin. This is a rather long steeping time, and Desmond explained that they feel it allows more of the crisp flavors of the botanicals they use to become solid flavors in their product.
After the wonderful Beefeater Tour, we headed over to Bedford & Strand, a new wine bar that Nick Blacknell had opened up, where we had more cocktails, as well as a wonderful dinner. Since it still wasn’t quite time to call it a night, a number of us quickly headed off to Milk & Honey where we hung out until the wee hours of the morning.
Bright and early Tuesday morning was the Gin Symposium that I have already described, and following that we headed back to the Lonsdale for a variety of cocktails and appetizers. We then all jumped aboard two chartered "double-decker" busses and were driven the "long way" around town, with a little London bar history along the way (unfortunately incomprehensible through the busses speaker system) before arriving at our next destination, "Volstead" on Swallow Street near Piccadilly.
After an hour or so of cocktails and conversation at Volstead, it was back onto the bus for another spin through town before arriving at "Hawksmoor" on Commercial Street. Here we had a wonderful "Sandwich Buffet" set up, with thick sliced breads and a great array of various meats and cheeses to use. The featured drink here was a classiclly made "Punch", served of course in elegant glass punchbowls.
It was naturally a very late evening once again, with the next day all of us flying out to our various respective cities. I was fortunate in that my flight wasn’t until 3pm, and so was able to sleep in almost until noon before having to set off to the airport. Others unfortunately were not quite as lucky.
More pictures from this trip can be found here.
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