For a humble whisky blogger used to Charlie MacLean’s moustache being the hottest celebrity on the events circuit, a bash such as last night’s Grey Goose martini extravaganza at Devil’s Advocate in Edinburgh could be a bit of a shock. Accustomed to sitting firmly in the middle of the world coolness scale, not quite your local chav bicycle thieves but not fashion whores either, we are comfortable in most situations we come across north of Hadrian’s Wall. Not this time though and we blame the Grey Goose people. The invite obviously should have given us heads up about the expected concentration of beautiful people with manes of thick shiny hair (could grow one myself, just don’t choose to!), body mass indexes below twenty and immaculate manners. No warning.
Except, apparently, for the discreet logo at the bottom of the invite, the one with a bird.
But premium vodka is not just about the brilliantly-white-teeth-lifestyle appeal, is it? It’s about cocktails and therefore it’s fair to say they care about flavour. Chris and I, although not experts by any stretch of imagination, tasted them all last night – five times, just to be sure – and even had a bespoke martini consultation. Flavour addicts always find a common ground when talking about things they like so when it came to describing our preferred flavour profiles, weird and wonderful things were said and even weirder and more wonderful things followed in the form of the dirtiest, meanest little martinis a whisky fan could hope for. Really tasty and unusual stuff knocked up on the go never to be repeated but also not to be forgotten in a hurry. If you’re up for some of that sort of action, the good people at Grey Goose got you covered.
You may have noticed a strange-looking vintage French bakery camionnette delivery van if you happened to be outside Harvey Nichols on Multrees Walk in Edinburgh recently. It’s called Grey Goose Boulangerie François (which doesn’t actually mean anything in French, it’s just gibberish designed to intimidate whisky drinkers) and they call it the world’s most intimate martini cocktail bar. It’s only in town until Wednesday and you can book a 20 minute session there with an expert mixologist which should help you identify your perfect martini profile and, obviously, result in the said cocktail ending up in your tummy. Slots are limited and they’re filling fast so please book now. Chris and I had fun doing it.
What’s worth mentioning again is the cocktails we were served last night, not the bespoke ones but the regular ones lovely people with big LA-esque smiles on their faces were handing out. The menu consisted of five drinks following the basic flavours – sweet, sour, bitter, umami and salty. We were both pretty impressed by all of them but the bitter one – La Miel Amer (which in French means, somewhat poetically: You can’t buy any lovely honey today because it’s Sunday and, in any case, both honey makers and honey shop owners are on strike). We’ve been told it consists of orange vodka, grapefruit juice, bittered blossom honey and tears of virgin unicorns. Pretty tasty. In the picture Chris brings me my order. He’s let himself go a bit, hasn’t he.
Oh, and just a quick note to one Rose Leslie, an actress apparently best known for her role in some show called the Game of Thornes (is it even on Dave?). Dear Miss Leslie, you have to stop stalking us. We agreed to have a photo taken with you but that’s it. Please stop calling and don’t think I can’t see you sitting in your car outside my house right now. You’re a reasonably attractive young woman and there are plenty more fish in the sea. Fish that play in your fishy league, I might add. Good bye.
