Bartenders are increasingly turning to the timeless traditions of barrel aging to give new complexity to their classic cocktails, discovers Nick Walton.
At The Regent Singapore’s Manhattan Bar, which recently topped Asia’s 50 Best Bars list and made 3rd globally, guests can step into the future and back in time simultaneously.
Based on the 19th century golden age of cocktail making, an era that’s inspiring and guiding a host of imaginative bartenders across the region, the Manhattan Bar not only brings back old school traditions. including a bespoke Manhattan trolley, but is also home to a cutting-edge one-of-a-kind
Ingredients Room – home to the likes of wildcherry bark, shisandra berries, and dandelion root – and the world’s first in-hotel Rickhouse, where some of history’s most celebrated elixirs are mellowed in
hand-picked casks.
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The Rickhouse boasts more than 100 charred American white oak barrels from a small cooperage in Minnesota. Each is used to finish whiskies and other spirits, and to age bitters and ‘single-cask’ concoctions for a new From the Rickhouse menu. It’s history repeating itself for the benefit of tomorrow’s drinkers.
Barrel ageing is essentially a continuation of the ageing process that many premium spirits have already gone through; in a complex dance between the barrel surface and alcohol, which is absorbed by and expelled from the wood while the barrel “breathes,” the cocktail extracts tannins, colour, and flavour while losing its edges, mellowing, and hopefully improving.
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Of course, like many mixology trends, this is not a modern technique. When Romans and Greeks started buying wine in 300BC, they quickly realised that wooden casks were much better at preserving and ageing
wine than clay pots and animal skins, and barrels became the preferred storage method for wine and even later, spirits.
Centuries after, before America’s flirtation with prohibition, cocktails were made in large batches and stored in barrels before being bottled, a popular trend in the saloons of the late 1800s and early 1900s (and one that’s coming back at bars like London’s White Lyan). These were the first barrel-aged cocktails.
The modern use of barrels in cocktail aging has been credited to London bartender Tony Conigliaro and Portland mixologist Jeffrey Morgenthaler, who started barrel aging Manhattans in 2009, but the trend has reached bars across the globe, including Asia’s drinking capitals.
The Lobby Lounge at the InterContinental Hong Kong has a menu of barrel-aged cocktails; while Singapore’s Longtail Asian Brasserie & Bar barrel-ages selected tipples; Bangkok’s Vesper matches barrel-aged Tanqueray gin cocktails with a chef’s tasting menu; and Shanghai’s Jade on 36 bar has its American oak barrels custom made.
Maybe it’s time you made room on the homebar for your own oak tribute?
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