Jonathan Ray - Thats the Spirit!: 100 of the worlds greatest spirits and liqueurs to drink with style

TO LIZ, STILL GOING STRONG AT 92,

THANKS IM SURE TO HER LOVE OF

FINE IRISH WHISKEY. AND TO JEAN,

DITTO AT 82, THANKS TO HER LOVE OF

FINE SINGLE MALT SCOTCH.

HE HAD DISCOVERED THE PRIME GRAND SECRET OF ETERNAL YOUTH TO KEEP THE DECANTER CIRCULATING AND NEVER TO GO TO BED BEFORE FOUR IN THE MORNING.

P.G. WODEHOUSE, FULL MOON

CONTENTS

We spirits lovers have never had it so good. We are in the midst of an apparently unstoppable gin revolution (in case you hadnt noticed) and on the cusp of what I predict to be a similarly irresistible rum revival. Sales of fine whisky, cognac, tequila and vodka are also soaring, craft distilleries are popping up all over the place and our collective thirst for classic and quirky cocktails shows no sign at all of abating.

Ive lost count of the number of spirits-related press releases I get each day alerting me to a new brand, a new bar, a new cocktail, a new mixer or a fashionable new master or mistress of mixology keen to be quoted.

And its all so markedly different from when I embarked on my spirits journey as a teenager way back in the seventies. My parents and their friends drank bucket-loads of hard liquor for sure and certainly far more than they did wine. Indeed, dear Uncle John, for example, didnt even drink wine. Whenever I dropped by I was offered whisky and soda or gin and tonic and that was it. If I wanted wine or even beer, I had to bring my own. Well, either that or sneak a swig or so of his cooking sherry.

The trouble was that the spirits back then really werent that interesting. The whisky would have been Bells or Teachers; the gin would have been Gordons or Booths; and the mixers would have been Schweppes or Canada Dry. There might also have been a dusty bottle of Green Chartreuse or cherry brandy at the back of the cupboard the tops crusty with age and impossible to open and that was pretty much it.

At school, my mates and I would smuggle in quarter bottles of Gordons and Smirnoff and think we were frightfully cool knocking them back behind the bike sheds, trying desperately hard not to be sick. In the holidays wed drink Tequila Sunrises and Harvey Wallbangers but only to show off to the girls and to get drunk. I dont think any of us actually enjoyed them.

It wasnt until I started work at the wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd after university that I really got a taste for spirits. Berrys had an enviable range and we were encouraged to taste whatever we fancied so that we had at least some vague idea of what we were talking about to customers.

Frapin Cognac, I remember, was an early favourite as was The Kings Ginger Liqueur (both are in this book). From these I graduated to kummel the taste for which has never left me to single malt whisky and to fine Caribbean rum. I loved how they all spoke so clearly of where they came from.

The spirits, liqueurs and digestifs you will find in these pages my 100 absolute favourites are the fruits of thirty years browsing and sluicing, initially at Berrys and subsequently as a constantly thirsty journalist. Many of the bottles, such as Bndictine, say, Cointreau, Courvoisier and Grand Marnier, will be familiar to you; many, such as the orange-flavoured liqueur from Martinique, the summer spirit from an island off Sweden, the single malt whisky from Switzerland and the exquisite almond-flavoured grappa ideal for augmenting your morning espresso, probably wont be.

Ive not been paid, bullied or cajoled into including any of them. The selection is mine and mine alone. Ive tasted them all and drink many of them rather too regularly. I hope you seek out and try as many as you can and that you come to love them as I do. Thats the spirit!

Jonathan Ray
Brighton 2018

where you will find them all grouped into whiskies, vodkas, gins, cognacs, etc.

I have included brands that range from the outrageously good value to the outrageously decadent because there really is a spirit for every occasion in life.

Ten or so years ago, in an effort to understand the subject a bit better, I arranged to taste a dozen different vodkas in the company of two industry experts Ian Wisniewski and Tom Innes. We tasted the vodkas (including Smirnoff Black, Grey Goose, Russian Standard, Wyborowa, Belvedere and so on) blind i.e. with the bottles covered, so we had no means of identifying them and we tasted them in four ways: neat (at room temperature); neat (from the freezer); in a Dry Martini; and mixed with tonic. We scored each sample out of ten and then added our marks together to find the winner.

You must have been able to hear the sound of jaws crashing to the ground all of 20 miles away for the vodka that came top after seven hours hard tasting was you wont believe it Glens. You know, Glens the supermarket vodka made not from rye or wheat nor even potato or barley but from sugar beet. Yes, that vodka! We were astounded. Its fair to say that the category has moved on and such a result would not be possible today. In those days vodka seemed no more than an alcohol delivery system, sold on the back of crafty marketing.

Today, there are some beautifully crafted examples around and none more so than this, a single-estate vodka from Sweden, distilled using a century-old hand-operated copper column still. This is proper sipping vodka: soft, smooth, creamy and despite its high strength gentle too. No need to slosh it into a cocktail, although if you do it will only enhance the concoction. Absolut suggest drinking it with one large ice cube to keep it cold but without diluting it too much.

I remember Ian Wisniewski telling me at our tasting that vodkas much more than something to get you plastered. Compared to aged spirits such as cognacs or malts, the details are much smaller, but they are there to be discovered. And this is just the vodka with which to discover them.

42.3% vol; www.absolutelyx.com

My late father was very fond of his drink. Thats not to say I ever saw him drunk I didnt but I hardly ever saw him without a drink in his hand either.

When I was in my teens we lived in what I took to be bucolic bliss in Kent until one day Pa declared he could stand the bloody country no longer and he, my mother and I promptly upped sticks to London and the set of rooms he owned in Albany, Piccadilly. The first thing my father did was to buy several fridges for the study, the sitting room, the dining room and the bedroom and pack them full of bottles. He couldnt bear to be more than a yard away from refreshment. He would try anything out of academic interest but had his favourite tipples, namely Guinness, pink gin (not too bothered about the brand so long as it was served in a decent measure), Bollinger and Delamain Pale & Dry Cognac.

Often friends would bring him a bottle of something quirky to try and there was nothing quirkier than the Indian whisky he kept on the sitting-room fridge for years. It purported to come from the Royal Jodhpur Distillery and the label declared that it had been Distilled and Bottled at Buckingham Palace under the Personal Supervision of His Majesty King George VI. It was vile and heaven knows where it was really made.