Martin Fone's Blog, page 100

Gin Awards 2022 (2)

The Alternative Version Award

Tappers Brightside Coastal London Dry Gin

Innovation in the ginaissance tends to focus around ever more outlandish botanicals or distilling methods, but Tappers have taken a leaf out of the music business where it is commonplace to put out a different remixed version of the same song.

Tappers started out with Darkside, distilled using the cold compound method, in which the selected botanicals are steeped in a neutral spirit, in this instance from grain, to infuse the flavours without distillation. The botanicals are then filtered out leaving a resultant spirit that is packed with flavour and retaining the colouring from the botanicals.

Launched in 2020 Brightside uses the same botanicals and neutral spirit as Darkside but they are distilled by a process of boiling and condensation in a small copper still.

The result is a gin without any trace of colouring from the botanicals and is crisp and sharp, perhaps the more clinical CD to the earthier, more “natural” vinyl sound of Darkside.

Tappers are the first distillers to have done this and it is an intriguing development which might catch on. I found it in my local Waitrose and it is now a regular on my gin shelf.

Gin Awards 2022

It is around this time that the editor, scratching their head to fill the space, suggests that it would be a good idea to pick out some of the highlights of the year. Well, here goes. Over the next three posts I will pick out the pick of the crop in my exploration of the gin scene in 2022.

The Gin is Juniper Award

Never Never Triple Juniper Gin

There is more than a whiff of Master Chef in this beaut from South Australia and the deservedly globally acclaimed Never Never Distilling Company. Gin is a spirit where juniper should first and foremost, with other botanicals playing to its strengths not overpowering, something that many distillers seem to lose sight of. Not Never Never.

Rather like triple-cooked chips, they use three different processes for adding the juniper. First, it is macerated in the spirit for 24 hours before it is filtered out, then fresh juniper is added to the macerated spirit and distilled, and then the vapour basket contains yet more juniper.

It is not just a pure hit of juniper but something more complex and subtle, using coriander, angelica, orris root, pepper berry, and cinnamon to good effect. Citrus elements are provided by orange and pomelo, which are detectable to the nose, giving the intense hit of juniper even greater depth. This is gin heaven.

Makar Original Dry Gin

Closer to home, this is the Glasgow Distillery’s paean to juniper. Produced since 2014, it uses seven other botanicals – lemon peel, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cassia bark, rosemary, angelica root, and liquorice – each carefully selected to complement, support, and enhance the juniper. Old school the botanicals may be, but they make a wonderfully complex gin which sees the juniper assert its dominance after allowing the lighter elements to tickle the palate.

Makar is Gaelic for poet and this gin is a distinctive ode to the botanical that is the cornerstone of gin.

Found In A Cracker (5)

What do people heating their homes and wrapping paper have in common this Christmas?

They both are getting ripped off.

How can you keep your home warm this Christmas?

Tinsulation.

What is the best Christmas present ever?

A broken drum. You can’t beat it.

Found In A Cracker (4)

Why are the Government having problems with their own version of the Christmas Nativity?

They can’t find three wise men.

What crisps did Phil and Holly serve at their Christmas party?

Skips.

Found In A Cracker (3)

Why does Kate Bush need to turn off the heating?

She’s running up that bill

Why didn’t Will Smith and Chris Rock have turkey this Christmas?

Because they’ve got beef.

Found In A Cracker (2)

Why has Santa been banned from sooty chimneys?

Carbon footprints

What is the difference between Rishi Sunak and a shepherd?

One U-turns and the other turns ewes.

What is an ig?

An igloo without a toilet.

Merry Christmas.

Found In A Cracker (1)

What type of peas ruin Christmas dinner?

MPs

How does King Charles III sign his Christmas cards?

The artist formerly known as Prince

Have a good Christmas.

Art Critic Of The Week (7)

Police forced their way into the Laz Emporium in London’s Soho last month after receiving reports of an unconscious woman slumped over a table in the locked-up gallery. At the time they arrived, an employee had locked up the gallery and gone off to make a cup of tea. When she returned, she found the door off its hinges and two baffled coppers.

What the police had found was a life-like sculpture entitled Kristina. Commissioned by Steve Lazarides, the gallery’s owner and one time agent of Banksy. It depicts Lazarides’ sister slumped over with her face in a bowl of soup. It is said to be worth around £18,000.

Satisfied there was nothing amiss, the police went on their way.

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Fatality In Fleet Street

A review of Fatality in Fleet Street by Christopher St John Sprigg

I am developing a soft spot for Christopher Sprigg, the nom de plume of Christopher Caudwell who was tragically killed, like so many British volunteers who fought the Fascists in Iberia, during the Spanish Civil War. His martyrdom to the Socialist cause was detective crime fiction’s loss as his novels are a fine mix of humour and intriguing, twisty plot. Originally published in 1933 and reissued by Moonstone Press, Fatality in Fleet Street was his second crime novel and features his amateur sleuth and journalist, Charles Venables.

There is an element of prescience and modernity about the plotline. Set in 1938 Russia is developing into a superpower and a threat to the established order, according to the Weltanschauung of newspaper magnate, Lord Carpenter. He is intent on using an alleged incident of which he has got wind ahead of his rivals to whip up nationalist fervour and force the government’s hand to declare war on the Russians. The power of the press to shape the political agenda is a modern theme and while the Russians, rather than the enemy, were to play an important role in overcoming the forces of Fascism in the following decade, they are today’s bogeymen and catastrophic global conflict was to envelope the world in less than a decade after Sprigg’s book was published.

Not everybody on Carpenter’s staff is at one with their boss’s policy and when, in a meeting when he outlines his latest coup and plans to plunge the country into war, he brandishes a dagger to indicate that was the only way he would be stopped, it comes as no surprise that within hours he is found having been stabbed in the chest. The question is who did it and, if it was not for policy differences, why?

There were a number of visitors to Carpenter’s private apartment where his body was found including, it emerges, the Prime Minister who was making a desperate attempt to dissuade the newspaperman from pursuing his disastrous course of action, his estranged wife, Venables himself whose prints are on the dagger, his private secretary, Jerningham, who cashes in some bonds that were lying on the desk, and a couple of members of staff, including the editor and Bysshe the brother of Miranda Jameson, with whom Venables has fallen in love.

This romantic liaison might be seen to colour Venables’ judgment as the police, in the form of Inspector Manciple, are convinced that Bysshe is the culprit, his eccentric behaviour after the discovery of the body not helping his cause. Indeed, Jameson stands trial for murder and his prospects of acquittal seem remote until a surprising twist at the end.

Trials can be tedious affairs but not in Spriggs’ hands. He injects a degree of humour and levity into his account of proceedings, satirising the tensions between the barristers, judiciary, and jury to great effect. The plot is unusual in that there is no obvious culprit, although there is a reasonable explanation proffered at the end, and the investigations of the police are hampered by what might be termed an establishment cover-up.

In a world where knowledge, or at least a version of it, is available almost instantaneously through a diligent search of the internet, it is salutary to be reminded of a time when information was only to be found through the medium of a well-constructed filing system. In an environment when sources have to be checked and backstories verified, the librarian is a powerful figure to be crossed at your peril.

Although a Marxist the Russian cell operating in London, which tries to claim credit for Carpenter’s death, does not escape Spriggs’ withering satire, the chapter describing their actions both farcical and cutting. It is great fun and while it might not reach the heights of the best of detective fiction, is well worth a read.

A Second Helping Of Brussels Sprouts

In 1931, as he described in his paper, The Relationship between Chemical Constitution and Taste (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1932)), Arthur Fox, a scientist at Jackson Laboratories in Wilmington, was preparing a quantity of phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) when some dust escaped into the air. His colleague, Dr Noller, complained about its foul smell but Fox could not smell anything. The duo even tasted the crystals of PTC, Noller complaining of their extreme bitterness while to Fox they were tasteless.

Possessing a curious mind, Fox set out to discover why he and Noller differed so dramatically in their response to PTC. He tested what he described as “a large number” of people, discovering that the wildly differing reactions were common regardless of age, sex, and ethnicity, with most people falling into one of two categories: those who were able to taste the compound even at very low concentrations, whom he called “tasters”, and those who could not except in very high concentrations, “non tasters” or “taste blind”.

Intrigued by Fox’s findings, Albert Blakeslee extended the testing to examine the minimum concentration at which PTC can be detected, finding that people’s degree of sensitivity can vary by five orders of magnitude. Blakeslee and Fox also discovered that they could predict very accurately how sensitive an individual would be to PTC by analysing how other members of their family reacted to it. In other words, PTC sensitivity could well be hereditary.

As there was little or no understanding of our genetic make-up at the time, curiously, the potential hereditary link with PTC sensitivity was used to test paternity instead. The assumption was that if father and child had different reactions to PTC, they were unlikely to be related. Of course, it is not as simple as that as the sense of taste is subjective and can be weakened by other factors such as smoking, age, and diet, leading some to speculate just how many parents and children were wrongly matched because of their sensitivity to PTC.

By the 1970s, though, scientists had advanced sufficiently in their understanding of human genetics to have identified a specific taste gene, TAS2R38, of which we have two copies. Those who inherit the gene containing two copies of the variant, AVI, are not sensitive to the bitter tastes of certain chemicals, people with one copy of AVI and another, PAV perceive some bitterness in them, while those with two copies of PAV, sometimes known as “super-tasters”, find them exceptionally bitter.

Recent research has shown that those with the PAV form of the gene were two and a half times more likely to eschew vegetables than those without, reporting that they found broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbages were especially and unpleasantly bitter. They were also prone to react negatively to dark chocolate, coffee, and even beer, although indifferent to salt, fat, or sugar.

Brussels sprouts do not contain PTC, but, like broccoli and cabbage, have compounds called glucosinolates which have a similar mix of nitrogen, sulphur, and carbon as that found in PTC. They form part of the plant’s defence mechanism to ward of pests and diseases, just as geneticists believe that the presence of PAV in the taste gene was vital in human evolution, allowing us to more easily detect foodstuffs that were harmful. Around 30% of us still have at least one copy of the PAV variant in our TAS2R38 gene.

Instead of an expression of fussiness, turning one’s nose up at the prospect of the sweet, nutty flavour of a well-cooked sprout might well be a pre-programmed genetic response. No such considerations worried Linus Urbanec. On November 26, 2008, the Swede broke the world record for eating the most sprouts in a minute, an incredible 31.

Thanks to my AVI variants, I am looking forward to my helping of Brussels sprouts on Christmas Day.