STIR is a ground-breaking cocktail and cuisine concept for the Explorer's Bothy Bar which serves up a unique menu of stunningly innovative small-bite plates alongside meticulously curated cocktails by Head Bartender, Miran Chauhan.
This collaboration aims to completely redefine the concept of whisky and food pairing and on this episode Rosalind samples the menu. She discovers flavours unlike anything she has encountered before in terms of originality, ingenuity and flavour.
You'll hear excerpts from a launch event which took place earlier this summer, as well as interviews with James and Miran.
Miran has worked with James and Maria in this collaboration pairing whisky from the four corners beautifully with delicate and evocative dishes. Rosalind talks to him about where he gets his inspiration from when designing new cocktails and drinks menus and how he works with the team to deliver such singular pairings.
Owners of the renowned global experience restaurant, Raby Hunt, Maria and James have created something very special for STIR. James tells Rosalind all about this exciting new partnership and how, he has in fact, worked in the same building before in a very different capacity long before his cheffing days.
You can find out more about STIR and book a table here.
https://www.johnniewalker.com/en-gb/visit-us-princes-street/explorers-bothy-bar/
This collaboration aims to completely redefine the concept of whisky and food pairing and on this episode Rosalind samples the menu. She discovers flavours unlike anything she has encountered before in terms of originality, ingenuity and flavour.
You'll hear excerpts from a launch event which took place earlier this summer, as well as interviews with James and Miran.
Miran has worked with James and Maria in this collaboration pairing whisky from the four corners beautifully with delicate and evocative dishes. Rosalind talks to him about where he gets his inspiration from when designing new cocktails and drinks menus and how he works with the team to deliver such singular pairings.
Owners of the renowned global experience restaurant, Raby Hunt, Maria and James have created something very special for STIR. James tells Rosalind all about this exciting new partnership and how, he has in fact, worked in the same building before in a very different capacity long before his cheffing days.
You can find out more about STIR and book a table here.
https://www.johnniewalker.com/en-gb/visit-us-princes-street/explorers-bothy-bar/
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:06 Welcome to another podcast passionate about the Scottish food and drink scene.
00:09 I'm your host Rosinderskin and I'm very excited to bring you this bonus episode with our partners
00:14 Johnny Walker Princess Street to celebrate the launch of an exclusive new collaboration
00:19 with the two-Michelin-starred team of James and Maria Close.
00:23 Stir is a groundbreaking cocktail and cuisine concept for the Explorers Bothy Bar, which
00:28 serves up a unique menu of stunningly innovative small-bite plates alongside meticulously created
00:34 cocktails from Johnny Walker Princess Street head bartender Mirren Chowen.
00:42 This collaboration aims to completely redefine the concept of whisky and food pairing and
00:46 having sampled the menu myself I can say for certain I've not encountered anything like
00:51 this before in terms of originality, ingenuity and flavour.
00:57 You'll hear excerpts from a launch event I went along to earlier this summer as well
01:00 as interviews with James and Mirren.
01:03 Mirren has worked with James and Maria in this collaboration pairing whisky from the
01:06 four corners of Scotland as well as other seasonal ingredients beautifully with delicate
01:10 and evocative dishes.
01:12 I talked to him about where he gets his inspiration from when designing new cocktails and drinks
01:16 menus and how he works with the team to deliver such singular pairings.
01:23 It all started in the 70s when someone stepped out in Stockholm Greenhouse Festival and showed
01:29 everyone what a suitcase would look like with wheels on it and they were laughed at in the
01:34 room.
01:35 What we do is do a similar thing.
01:36 We take different pieces of innovation or equipment from other industries and use it
01:40 for our own.
01:45 Owners of the renowned global experience restaurant Raby Hunt, Maria and James have created something
01:49 very special for Sturr.
01:51 James tells me all about this exciting new partnership but that it wasn't his first
01:56 time working in the building, having spent a year in the menswear section of Fraser's
02:00 when he first moved away from plans to become a pro golfer.
02:04 James is certainly a person who has interesting stories to tell and you can immediately see
02:08 his passion for chefing and getting it right for the customer.
02:14 Normally you would go to a bar and you might have chicken wings and hot sauce with the
02:17 cocktail which is great but here we're trying to do something a little bit different where
02:22 it's a little bit more kitschy talking, gets the excitement going.
02:29 First up Mirren told us all about the innovation at play behind the bars and Johnny Walker
02:32 Prince's Street.
02:33 I'm Mirren, I'm the head bartender for this entire building which is quite nice.
02:39 We've got two bars, this space and an event space.
02:42 My background is in design and foraging.
02:44 Welcome to Johnny Walker Prince's Street.
02:45 Like I say we have two bars.
02:46 The first one is the 1820 rooftop bar, known for its rooftop.
02:50 It's a stunning space, it's an old bank and then department store and what Diageo has
02:56 done with massive amounts of investment has turned it into a beautiful rooftop bar.
03:01 What we do is we've taken a different kind of approach to a high volume bar rather than
03:06 just doing loads of what we know as mixologies.
03:10 We've taken the idea of innovating, social innovation, so we've taken people from different
03:14 kind of backgrounds and really diverse characters and personalities and we thought let's create
03:20 a really awesome team based on personality because we have the product, we have the view,
03:25 we have the rooftop but that little cherry on the icing on the cake for us is the reason
03:29 why people are going to come back actually is the people and the service.
03:33 When we come on to other types of innovation, the first one I want to show you, I want to
03:37 bring you all around here, is something called recombinant innovation where we take information
03:42 and energies and equipment from other industries and use it for our own.
03:47 It all started in the 70s when someone stepped out in Stockholm Greenhouse Festival and showed
03:52 everyone what a suitcase would look like with wheels on it and they were laughed out of
03:56 the room.
03:57 What we do is do a similar thing, we take different pieces of innovation or equipment
04:02 from other industries and use it for our own.
04:04 This piece of machinery is called a rotary evaporator, it's quite well known in the bar
04:08 industry already and it's usually used in the medicine industry, the pharmaceutical
04:12 industry where they analyse microbiotics, elemental properties in said liquids to create
04:17 medicines because they're taking out chemicals and any kind of rubbish from said base material
04:24 or raw material and they filter it usually with high proof alcohol or sometimes no alcohol
04:28 at all and you end up with residue that they analyse.
04:31 The best thing is, in this reflux chamber over here, is usually a collection of liquid
04:36 and it's usually clarified liquid because it's gone through a vacuum and a condenser.
04:40 But what it does, it leaves you with what the pharmaceutical industry would normally
04:44 throw away but if it's high strength alcohol it contains all the flavour that you've been
04:48 analysing.
04:49 So what you can do for us, you can mimic flavours that are usually in the wine world but are
04:56 really difficult to find in raw material.
04:58 So you create the taste of flint or matchstick or car fumes or petroleum and you can put
05:05 that into drinks.
05:07 And as mad as that sounds, upstairs we look at the wine industry as a good platform of
05:12 analysing flavour.
05:13 So we're not just going peaches and raspberries and strawberries and cream, we're doing,
05:16 oh can we get that flint edge from that Hawke's Bay Sauvignon Blanc into another drink?
05:22 Can we get that volcanic ash from a Sicilian Etna Rosa into, I don't know, a Kia cocktail?
05:29 And going from there, playing with flavour.
05:31 And again it's not to be flush, it's just adding another little edge to something quite
05:35 simple to give people a different idea of what flavour can be.
05:39 So normally you put liquid into this chamber, say for example you had a whole bottle of
05:43 Johnny Walker 12 year old black label and you put it into there.
05:47 It sets, you set the RPM and it can go up to about 3000 RPM so it's rotating really
05:51 quickly, increases the surface area of the liquid, you place it into this water bath,
05:56 set the temperature and believe it or not the closest bit of equipment to this is a
06:02 barbecue.
06:03 In a barbecue you have flames, wood, coal and they're kind of really hard to adjust.
06:09 You have to keep playing with it, right?
06:11 Those of you who have already had barbecues in the summer, you know you have to keep playing
06:14 with it to get a nice char, to get the cooking element that you really want.
06:18 Ultimately it's the same thing if you've got herbs and spices like rosemary or tarragon,
06:24 just through practice and time you'll know that it takes a really low setting of RPM
06:31 plus heat to extract flavours that you couldn't normally get by cooking them.
06:35 Say to create a sugar syrup or a liqueur, you just couldn't do it.
06:39 So this piece of machinery allows you to really go and deep dive into any one ingredient,
06:45 which is amazing.
06:46 Lorenzo's going to hand out a little taster of something, it's something that we've
06:50 used for the menu you're going to taste later on, it's called a Hedro Aquavit and
06:53 what we've done is taken the idea of an Aquavit, say it's an infusion of a liqueur with
06:58 lots of seeds and herbs and spices, it will normally come out like this kind of colour,
07:03 you're welcome to smell it later on if you wish.
07:05 Putting it through this machine and putting it through a condenser allows you to clarify
07:08 it into something like this.
07:10 Do taste it, it sets around 43% ABV.
07:13 The first one is a really deciduous brown kind of colour, it's a little bit murky and
07:18 the second liquid when we've clarified it is just like water, but it's an imitation
07:24 of flavour clarified and you find that if you take the colour out of something you find
07:28 an expression of it that's not normally understood.
07:31 If people do want to play around with this machine, what we've done as a little laugh
07:35 is put a whole bottle of Johnny Walker through there and what you end up with is clear Johnny
07:40 Walker liquid that tastes like Johnny Walker 12 year old, but all the wood contact remains
07:45 in the chamber and you end up with brown murky liquid like this, which is basically all of
07:50 your oak contact, so you can actually reverse age things, which is quite funky.
07:56 Next little bit of equipment, we're going to talk about recumbent innovation, is an
07:58 ultrasonic bath.
08:00 This is used in the jewellery industry, those of you who've cleaned watches or earrings
08:03 or rings, this is what they use.
08:05 It sets it at temperature and we're going to send high frequency sound waves through
08:08 liquid.
08:09 Those of you who are interested in champagne or bourbon as well when they turn all the
08:13 barrels, you need that sonic agitation.
08:17 What I'm going to do is turn this on, it's quite high pitched so you might not hear it,
08:20 but if you want to, you're welcome to put your finger in.
08:22 It's going to feel like you're going to electric it yourself, but don't worry.
08:27 The idea is when you take two particles, say it's a vermouth and a whiskey, you put them
08:30 into a back bag, you take the oxygen out.
08:32 Instead of making a cocktail where the liquids are kind of touching together, you go, "That's
08:36 really nice."
08:37 We're looking for organic matter and what you do when you send high frequency sound
08:41 waves through liquid, agitate them so much that all your particles clasp together and
08:46 you're going to end up with a liquid that's more organic.
08:48 Again it's another form of aging without using a cask.
08:51 So what you end up with is we make classic cocktails like the Affinity upstairs in the
08:54 1820 bar.
08:55 You drink it and it tastes more like a dessert wine because of the connection.
08:58 So I'm going to turn this on, you're welcome to a few of you just to put your finger in
09:02 and then we'll move over to there quickly.
09:05 Any volunteers?
09:06 Yeah, it feels a bit bubbly, like it's crazy, but yeah if you push your finger down a bit
09:13 it does feel like you're getting a shock.
09:16 Okay, we'll turn that back later on if you want to see it.
09:20 Okay, so when you put a wine that's kind of low minerality, low colour content, done with
09:25 a listan blanco, so palomino grape, we put in three types of seaweed.
09:28 So again, for one of the many drinks you're going to have upstairs, we'll let you know
09:31 what that is.
09:32 We put that through an ultrasonic bath and you end up with a liquid that's that colour.
09:35 That's 20 minutes in the ultrasonic bath of unnatural aging.
09:38 Another thing we're going to showcase tonight is something that's quite close to my heart.
09:43 It's the art of foraging.
09:44 I know it's quite trendy at the moment, but when I left the Bombay Vaughan in 2018, I
09:49 left not for another bar.
09:50 Luckily I had a few offers, but the point was I wanted to learn something completely
09:54 different.
09:55 Again, that's why I believe we're all here together at Johnny Walker.
10:00 So this is something called Mugwort, freshly foraged this morning, but it's something deep
10:06 rooted in Scottish culture and tradition that we've kind of forgotten about.
10:11 So it goes beyond whiskey.
10:13 Foraging isn't just about picking ingredients for the sake of it to look cool on a menu.
10:19 It's the prevalence of what is local.
10:22 So we've taken what actually is local with global roots in Johnny Walker as well.
10:27 Something I always say, the most Scottish thing about Scottish whiskey is the people
10:29 behind it, because you're taking castes from France, America, Germany, Spain.
10:34 You're taking barley from here, but also Eastern Europe as well, Northern Europe, influences
10:39 from around the world, secondary cast finishing.
10:41 So the best thing about Scottish whiskey for me is the people and the brains behind it.
10:46 And what we're going to do upstairs with Stirrer is show you global outreach of Johnny Walker,
10:51 but also throw in little bits of locality.
10:56 And this to me is one of the best things Scotland produces.
10:59 It's actually a form of artemisia, so wormwood.
11:02 So this is what would make beer before hops were brought over from Eastern Europe.
11:08 So we're going to be using this in abundance upstairs.
11:11 Little things like seaweeds.
11:12 We're going to be using driftwood.
11:14 So we're going to explain everything upstairs later on, but you're welcome to ask questions
11:17 about all of this stuff.
11:18 But we're going to use, literally use the land rather than just picking berries.
11:23 We're going to be looking at what actually gives flavour its flavour.
11:29 And it can be literally the rocks, the soil and the sea.
11:32 That was a quick snippet of what we do.
11:34 This room is multifunctional.
11:35 We use this as a learning for life space, as the name suggests.
11:38 A lot of the bartenders here came here with little or no experience, and now they're using
11:42 rotary evaporators, centrifuges on a daily basis.
11:45 And it's all about providing a platform of education.
11:48 Hospitality, I really believe, is stepping into a new generation.
11:52 That's why we're doing things like STIR upstairs.
11:55 Pushing the boundaries of what we can do.
11:56 Embrace that innovation, embrace some change.
11:58 We've done it here at Johnny Walker.
12:00 We can make a real stamp on the industry doing what we're doing.
12:03 Thank you very much for your time.
12:04 Thank you.
12:05 Thank you.
12:06 Thank you.
12:06 Thank you.
12:07 We have moved on towards the beautiful Explorers Bothy Bar, where the walls are adorned with
12:18 paintings of the Four Corners and cream leather seating.
12:22 Beautiful architectural design and a breathtaking view awaited us.
12:25 Ian Smith opened the evening.
12:27 We joined him mid-introduction.
12:28 We're so lucky we've got access to these incredible whiskeys.
12:35 And this amazing team that we've got get to play around with them and serve them to our
12:39 customers.
12:40 These whiskeys come from literally all over Scotland, the Four Corners of Scotland.
12:45 If you could imagine for a moment, you could take wing through our amazing picture window
12:52 there.
12:53 Soar over the rooftops of Edinburgh.
12:56 You just have to turn right and you'd be across into East Lothian and Glenkinchy Distillery
13:01 and the beautiful farmlands of East Lothian.
13:04 If you went west over Glasgow towards the beautiful islands on the west coast to Islay,
13:10 the magical whiskey island, and you could visit Cullela.
13:14 And then if you head north from there up over the lovely rolling hills of Speyside, fly
13:19 over Cardew and its beautiful orchards that surround it.
13:22 And then up to the rugged coasts of Caithness and Sutherland, we've got Climleash Distillery.
13:28 So that's literally the Four Corners of Scotland, all amazing parts of Johnny Walker and our
13:33 amazing single malt brands.
13:34 And in fact, they're embodied to some extent here in this bar as well with these amazing
13:39 paintings we have, which are by a Scottish landscape artist called Scott Naismith, who
13:45 painted these for us.
13:47 The originals hang in the distilleries in the Four Corners, but we have these murals
13:51 as well here.
13:54 And what we're doing with the star concept is kind of like for food and drink, you know,
14:01 what Scott Naismith has done with these paintings, creating these impressions, these creative
14:06 impressions of what the places are like where these whiskeys are made.
14:10 But as well as the places, people is the other thing.
14:13 Mirren talked about it, you know, people are what makes Scotch whiskey great and they make
14:18 great Scotch whiskey.
14:19 That includes our team here.
14:24 Mirren introduced us to the first pairing of the evening.
14:26 You'll hear a selection of these throughout the podcast.
14:29 Needless to say, it was pretty special, both in the presentation and the taste.
14:34 So this is Glenkinchi, so you've got a little tartlet, a savoury tartlet, smoked eel cream,
14:40 beef tartare, horseradish snow.
14:42 The drink is a rapeseed-washed Glenkinchi distilled edition, a little bit of flowering
14:46 currant and the hydrovanga that you'll taste downstairs.
14:50 There's no colouring, it's all finger food, it's all based on texture, so just go for
14:55 it.
14:56 So it looks, now looking at it from the side I can see it's a tartlet, but before it just
15:02 looked like a mound of beef tartare that's covered in what you might think is cheese,
15:07 but we've just been told is horseradish, with like fronds of something on top.
15:13 I don't know, looks a bit like seaweed, it's not seaweed.
15:17 So yeah, and the drink is in a black ceramic glass so you can't see the colour at all,
15:23 but he has said it's clear, so here we go.
15:26 So it's lovely and smoky, the tartlet's nice and crisp, but the main flavour that's coming
15:32 through is a smokiness, but obviously the beef's quite cold and fresh, so it's like
15:37 a real mix of a smokiness but from a cold dish.
15:44 The drink is really interesting, so it's almost like herbaceous or vegetable-like, it's nice,
15:50 but you can tell it's got the agravite from down the stairs, you can really taste that
15:56 coming through, but again, nice and chilled.
15:59 So it's a nice pairing, there's a smokiness from the beef that complements the sweetness
16:03 and herbal notes from the drink.
16:05 So I'm just going to go and enjoy the rest of this now.
16:08 [Music]
16:20 Okay, so next up we have Kleinlich, it's all about the coastline.
16:24 So this is an Aguachile oyster, so habanero, avocado, and a Linners Farm oyster.
16:29 It is cut in half, so go back for two scoops, and you've got coconut and lime leaf foam.
16:34 With your drink we've gone super tropical, so we've got a mango curd, Kleinlich 14 year
16:38 old, and a coastline Amaro.
16:40 The Amaro we've actually used driftwood from the sea to re-distill, and then added some
16:44 oyster leaf and other herbs and spices from the sea.
16:47 Okay, so it's an oyster shell with what looks like a lot of foam on top, and a very, very
16:53 vibrant drink with the glass.
16:56 It's got a kind of rim of what kind of looks like sand, so it all kind of ties in together
17:00 in terms of looks.
17:01 I'm going to try the drink first.
17:04 That's lovely.
17:05 Really tropical, really mangoey, the stuff around the rim kind of adds a bit of saltiness.
17:11 Yes, very nice, really fresh.
17:13 So now for the oyster, which we've got a little spoon for.
17:17 It's really interesting.
17:21 So you've got obviously the oyster taste, so there's crunchy bits of, I think maybe
17:26 apple?
17:27 So yeah, there's a green sauce under the foam, which is really kind of salty, quite
17:33 fresh.
17:34 Very interesting, very good.
17:36 There's a lot, kind of different things happen whenever you take a mouthful of it, so not
17:40 what you'd expect from just an oyster.
17:43 So yeah, lovely.
17:45 Certainly does remind you of the coast.
17:52 More tasting shortly, but first here's my chat with chef James Close that took place
17:57 later in the evening about his background and how this unique collaboration has come
18:01 together.
18:02 We're now out on the balcony at Johnny Walker and Prince's Street.
18:09 It's a lovely evening.
18:11 And yeah, we've had an amazing meal with the cocktail pairing or the drinks pairing,
18:15 and I'm now joined by James, the chef who created it all.
18:18 So how are you?
18:19 Yeah, I think it's gone well.
18:21 It's the first, you know, main service where we're doing it for the press, so it's
18:25 always a little bit of nerves.
18:27 We're very early days.
18:28 I think it's gone really well.
18:30 In any new venture, the first few days are always the ones where we iron out the issues
18:35 and we're going to push on to make something absolutely amazing eventually.
18:39 You know, give us another couple of services and we'll be fine.
18:42 But tonight was pretty, pretty outstanding because we did the service where everybody
18:46 ate together.
18:47 So it was good.
18:48 I think, you know, overall, the feedback was amazing and that's all we want.
18:52 So we're here and we found out earlier that you used to work in the building.
18:55 So how does it feel to be back and what was Fraser's?
18:58 Yeah, so yeah, take me back about, it'll be about nearly 20 years.
19:02 I was working in bins in Darlington and I was on the menswear department.
19:09 And one day they came up to me and said, would you like a transfer to Edinburgh?
19:13 I thought, that's it, I'm going to play for the big team, the football, you know,
19:16 I think so I transferred.
19:18 So I came and worked in Edinburgh.
19:20 I worked, I lived at the grass market and I worked on the menswear and it was probably
19:25 the best year of my life because I would just come, I'd given up the golf and it was time
19:32 to just go out with the weekend and Edinburgh was amazing.
19:36 So yeah.
19:37 Because you did want to be a pro golfer.
19:39 Yeah, so yeah, before as a shareholder, I dreamed of being a pro golfer.
19:43 Unfortunately, that dream didn't quite work out and I had to.
19:47 Hello and welcome to Scram, the podcast passionate about the Scottish food and drink scene.
19:56 I'm your host, Ros and Erskine, and I'm very excited to bring you this bonus episode with
20:01 our partners, Johnny Walker, Princess Street, to celebrate the launch of an exclusive new
20:05 collaboration with the two Michelin starred team of James and Maria Close.
20:10 Stir is a groundbreaking cocktail and cuisine concept for the Explorers Bothy Bar, which
20:15 serves up a unique menu of stunningly innovative small bite plates alongside meticulously created
20:21 cocktails from Johnny Walker, Princess Street head bartender, Mirren Chowen.
20:25 This collaboration aims to completely redefine the concept of whisky and food pairing.
20:33 And having sampled the menu myself, I can say for certain I've not encountered anything
20:37 like this before in terms of originality, ingenuity and flavour.
20:41 You'll hear excerpts from a launch event I went along to earlier this summer, as well
20:47 as interviews with James and Mirren.
20:49 Mirren has worked with James and Maria in this collaboration, pairing whisky from the
20:53 four corners of Scotland, as well as other seasonal ingredients, beautifully with delicate
20:57 and evocative dishes.
20:59 I talked to him about where he gets his inspiration from when designing new cocktails and drinks
21:03 menus, and how he works with the team to deliver such singular pairings.
21:08 It all started in the 70s when someone stepped out in Stockholm Greenhouse Festival and showed
21:16 everyone what a suitcase would look like with wheels on it, and they were laughed at in
21:20 the room.
21:21 What we do is do a similar thing.
21:23 We take different pieces of innovation or equipment from other industries and use it
21:27 for our own.
21:32 Owners of the renowned global experience restaurant, Raby Hunt, Maria and James have created something
21:36 very special for Sturr.
21:38 James tells me all about this exciting new partnership, but that it wasn't his first
21:43 time working in the building, having spent a year in the menswear section of Fraser's
21:47 when he first moved away from plans to become a pro golfer.
21:51 James is certainly a person who has interesting stories to tell and you can immediately see
21:55 his passion for chefing and getting it right for the customer.
22:01 Normally you would go to a bar and you might have chicken wings and hot sauce with your
22:05 cocktail, which is great, but here we're trying to do something a little bit different, where
22:10 it's a little bit more catchy talking, gets the excitement going.
22:15 First up, Mirren told us all about the innovation at play behind the bars and Johnny Walker
22:20 Prince's sheet.
22:21 I'm Mirren, I'm the head bartender for this entire building, which is quite nice.
22:26 We've got two bars, this space and an event space.
22:29 My background is in design and foraging.
22:31 Welcome to Johnny Walker Prince's Street.
22:32 Like I said, we have two bars.
22:33 The first one is the 1820 rooftop bar, known for its rooftop.
22:37 It's a stunning space.
22:40 It's an old bank and then department store and what Diageo has done with massive amounts
22:44 of investment has turned it into a beautiful rooftop bar.
22:48 What we do is we've taken a different kind of approach to a high volume bar, rather than
22:53 just doing loads of what we know is like mixologies.
22:57 We've taken the idea of social innovation, so we've taken people from different kinds
23:01 of backgrounds and really diverse characters and personalities and we thought, let's create
23:07 a really awesome team based on personality because we have the product, we have the view,
23:12 we have the rooftop, but that little cherry on the icing on the cake for us is the reason
23:17 why people are going to come back actually is the people and the service.
23:20 When we come on to other types of innovation, the first one I want to show you, I want to
23:24 bring you all around here, is something called recumbent innovation, where we take information
23:29 and energies and equipment from other industries and use it for our own.
23:34 It all started in the 70s when someone stepped out in Stockholm Greenhouse Festival and showed
23:39 everyone what a suitcase would look like with wheels on it and they were laughed at in the room.
23:44 What we do is do a similar thing.
23:46 We take different pieces of innovation or equipment from other industries and use it
23:50 for our own.
23:51 This piece of machinery is called a rotary evaporator.
23:54 It's quite well known in the bar industry already and it's usually used in the medicine
23:58 industry, the pharmaceutical industry, where they analyse microbiotics, elemental properties
24:03 in said liquids to create medicines because they're taking out chemicals and any kind
24:08 of rubbish from said base material or raw material and they filter it usually with high
24:13 proof alcohol or sometimes no alcohol at all and you end up with residue that they analyse.
24:18 The best thing is, in this reflux chamber over here, is usually a collection of liquid
24:23 and it's usually clarified liquid because it's gone through a vacuum and a condenser.
24:27 But what it does, it leaves you with what the pharmaceutical industry would normally
24:31 throw away, but if it's high strength alcohol, it contains all the flavour that you've been analysing.
24:36 So what you can do for us, you can mimic flavours that are usually in the wine world but are
24:43 very difficult to find in raw material.
24:46 So you create the taste of flint or matchstick or car fumes or petroleum and you can put
24:52 that into drinks.
24:54 And as mad as that sounds, upstairs we look at the wine industry as a good platform of
24:59 analysing flavour.
25:00 So we're not just going peaches and raspberries and strawberries and cream, we're doing,
25:04 can we get that flint edge from that Hawke's Bay Sauvignon Blanc into another drink?
25:09 Can we get that volcanic ash from a Sicilian Etna Rosa into, I don't know, a Kia cocktail?
25:16 And going from there, playing with flavour.
25:18 And again, it's not to be flash, it's just adding another little edge to something quite
25:22 simple to give people a different idea of what flavour can be.
25:26 So, normally you put liquid into this chamber.
25:29 Say for example you had a whole bottle of Johnny Walker 12 year old black label and
25:32 you put it into there.
25:34 You set the RPM and it can go up to about 3000 RPM so it's rotating really quickly.
25:39 It increases the surface area of the liquid.
25:41 You place it into this water bath, set the temperature and believe it or not, the closest
25:47 bit of equipment to this is a barbecue.
25:51 In a barbecue you have flames, wood, coal and they're kind of really hard to adjust.
25:57 You have to keep playing with it, right?
25:59 Those of you who have already had barbecues in the summer, you know you have to keep playing
26:01 with it to get a nice char, to get the cooking element that you really want.
26:05 Ultimately it's the same thing if you've got herbs and spices like rosemary or tarragon.
26:11 Just through practice and time you'll know that it takes a really low setting of RPM
26:18 plus heat to extract flavours that you couldn't normally get by cooking them.
26:22 Say to create a sugar syrup or a liqueur, you just couldn't do it.
26:26 So this piece of machinery allows you to really go and deep dive into any one ingredient,
26:32 which is amazing.
26:33 Lorenzo is going to hand out a little taster of something.
26:36 It's something that we've used for the menu you're going to taste later on.
26:39 It's called a heteroacrovate and what we've done is taken the idea of an acrovate,
26:44 say it's an infusion of a liqueur with lots of seeds and herbs and spices,
26:47 it will normally come out like this kind of colour.
26:50 You're welcome to smell it later on if you wish.
26:52 Putting it through this machine and putting it through a condenser,
26:54 it allows you to clarify it into something like this.
26:57 Do taste it, it's set to around 43% ABV.
27:00 The first one is a really deciduous brown kind of colour, it's a little bit murky.
27:05 The second liquid when we've clarified it is just like water,
27:09 but it's an imitation of flavour clarified and you find that if you take the colour out of something,
27:14 you find an expression of it that's not normally understood.
27:18 If people do want to play around with this machine,
27:20 what we've done as a little laugh is put a whole bottle of Johnny Walker through there
27:24 and what you end up with is clear Johnny Walker liquid that tastes like Johnny Walker 12 year old,
27:30 but all the wood contact remains in the chamber and you end up with brown murky liquid like this,
27:36 which is basically all of your oak contact.
27:38 So you can actually reverse age things, which is quite funky.
27:42 Next little bit of equipment, we're talking about recumbent innovation, is an ultrasonic bath.
27:47 Now this is used in the jewellery industry, those of you who've cleaned watches or earrings or rings,
27:51 this is what they use.
27:52 Set it at temperature and we're going to send high frequency sound waves through liquid.
27:57 Those of you who are interested in champagne or bourbon as well, when they turn all the barrels,
28:01 you need that sonic agitation.
28:04 What I'm going to do is turn this on, it's quite high pitched so you might not hear it,
28:07 but if you want to, you're welcome to put your finger in.
28:11 It's going to feel like you're going to electric it yourself, but don't worry.
28:14 The idea is when you take two particles, say it's a vermouth and a whiskey,
28:17 you put them into a back bag, you take the oxygen out.
28:20 Instead of making a cocktail where the liquids are kind of touching together,
28:23 you go, "That's really nice."
28:25 We're looking for organic matter and what you do when you send high frequency sound waves through liquid,
28:29 agitate them so much that all your particles clasp together
28:33 and you're going to end up with a liquid that's more organic.
28:36 Again, it's another form of ageing without using a cask.
28:39 So what you end up with is we make classic cocktails like the Affinity upstairs in the 1820 bar.
28:43 You drink it and it tastes more like a dessert wine because of the connection.
28:46 So I'm going to turn this on, you're welcome to put your finger in,
28:49 and then we'll move over to there quickly.
28:52 Any volunteers?
28:55 Yeah, it feels a bit bubbly, like it's crazy,
28:59 but if you push your finger down a bit it does feel like you're getting a shock.
29:02 But not a pleasant one.
29:04 We'll turn it back later on if you want to see it.
29:07 So when you've got a wine that's low minerality, low colour content,
29:11 done with a listin blanco, so palomino grape,
29:14 we put in three types of seaweed, so again for one of the many drinks you're going to have upstairs,
29:17 we'll let you know what that is.
29:19 We put that through an ultrasonic bath and you end up with a liquid that's that colour.
29:22 That's 20 minutes in the ultrasonic bath of unnatural ageing.
29:26 Another thing we're going to showcase tonight is something that's quite close to my heart.
29:30 It's the art of foraging.
29:32 I know it's quite trendy at the moment, but when I left the Bombay Bomb in 2018,
29:35 I left not for another bar.
29:38 I was lucky I had a few offers, but the point was I wanted to learn something completely different.
29:43 Again, that's why we're all here together at Johnny Walker.
29:47 So this is something called Mugwort.
29:50 Freshly foraged this morning, but it's something deep rooted in Scottish culture and tradition
29:56 that we've kind of forgotten about.
29:58 So it goes beyond whisky.
30:00 Foraging isn't just about picking ingredients for the sake of it to look cool on a menu.
30:05 It's the prevalence of what is local.
30:09 So we've taken what actually is local with global roots in Johnny Walker as well.
30:14 Something I always say, the most Scottish thing about Scottish whisky is the people behind it.
30:18 Because you're taking castes from France, America, Germany, Spain.
30:22 You're taking barley from here, but also Eastern Europe as well, Northern Europe.
30:26 Influences from around the world, secondary cast finishing.
30:29 So the best thing about Scottish whisky for me is the people and the brains behind it.
30:33 What we're going to do upstairs with Sturr is show you global outreach of Johnny Walker
30:39 and also throw in little bits of locality.
30:43 And this to me is one of the best things Scotland produces.
30:47 It's actually a form of artemisia, so wormwood.
30:50 This is what would make beer before hops were brought over from Eastern Europe.
30:55 So we're going to be using this in abundance upstairs.
30:58 Little things like seaweed, we're going to be using driftwood.
31:01 So we're going to explain everything upstairs later on.
31:03 You're welcome to ask questions about all of this stuff.
31:05 But we're going to literally use the land rather than just picking berries.
31:10 We're going to be looking at what actually gives flavour its flavour.
31:15 And it can be literally the rocks, the soil and the sea.
31:19 That was a quick snippet of what we do.
31:21 This room is multifunctional. We use this as a learning for life space, as the name suggests.
31:25 A lot of the bartenders here came here with little or no experience.
31:28 And now they're using rotary evaporators, centrifuges on a daily basis.
31:31 And it's all about providing a platform of education.
31:35 Hospitality, I really believe, is stepping into a new generation.
31:39 That's why we're doing things like STIR upstairs.
31:41 Pushing the boundaries of what we can do, embrace that innovation, embrace some change.
31:45 We've done it here at Johnny Walker.
31:47 We can make a real stamp on the industry doing what we're doing.
31:50 Thank you very much for your time.
31:52 Thank you.
31:54 We have moved on towards the beautiful Explorers Bothy Bar,
32:04 where the walls are adorned with paintings of the Four Corners and cream leather seating.
32:08 Beautiful architectural design and a breathtaking view awaited us.
32:12 Ian Smith opened the evening. We joined him mid-introduction.
32:19 We're so lucky we've got access to these incredible whiskies
32:22 and this amazing team that we've got get to play around with them and serve them to our customers.
32:27 These whiskies come from literally all over Scotland, the Four Corners of Scotland.
32:32 If you could imagine for a moment, you could take wing through our amazing picture window there.
32:40 Soar over the rooftops of Edinburgh.
32:43 You just have to turn right and you'd be across into East Lothian
32:47 and Glenkinchy Distillery in the beautiful farmlands of East Lothian.
32:51 If you went west over Glasgow towards the beautiful islands on the west coast to Islay,
32:57 the magical whisky island, and you could visit Cullela.
33:01 And then if you head north from there up over the lovely rolling hills of Speyside,
33:06 fly over Cardew and its beautiful orchards that surround it.
33:10 And then up to the rugged coasts of Caithness and Sutherland,
33:13 we've got Clineleash Distillery.
33:15 So that's literally the Four Corners of Scotland,
33:18 all amazing parts of Johnny Walker and our amazing single malt brands.
33:22 And in fact, they're embodied to some extent here in this bar as well with these amazing paintings we have,
33:27 which are by a Scottish landscape artist called Scott Naismith, who painted these for us.
33:34 The originals hang in the distilleries in the Four Corners, but we have these murals as well here.
33:41 And what we're doing with the star concept is kind of like for food and drink,
33:47 you know, what Scott Naismith has done with these paintings,
33:50 creating these impressions, these creative impressions of what the places are like where these whiskies are made.
33:57 But as well as the places, people is the other thing.
34:00 Meryn talked about it, you know, people are what make Scotch whisky great,
34:04 and they make great Scotch whisky. That includes our team here.
34:09 Meryn introduced us to the first pairing of the evening.
34:12 You'll hear a selection of these throughout the podcast.
34:15 Needless to say, it was pretty special, both in the presentation and the taste.
34:20 So this is Glenkinchi, so you've got a little tartlet, a savoury tartlet, smoked eel cream, beef tartare, horseradish snow.
34:27 The drink is a rapeseed-washed Glenkinchi distilled edition, a little bit of flowering currant,
34:33 and the Hydroacryl that you'll taste downstairs.
34:36 There's no colouring, it's all finger food, it's all based on texture, so just go for it.
34:40 Okay, so it looks, now looking at it from the side I can see it's a tartlet,
34:46 but before it just looked like a mound of beef tartare that's covered in what you might think is cheese,
34:52 but we've just been told is horseradish, with like kind of fronds of something on top.
34:58 I don't know, it looks a bit like seaweed, it's not seaweed.
35:02 So yeah, and the drink is in a black ceramic glass so you can't see the colour at all,
35:08 but he has said it's clear, so here we go.
35:11 So it's lovely and smoky, the tartlet's nice and crisp,
35:15 but the main flavour that's coming through is a smokiness,
35:18 but obviously the weed's quite cold and fresh, so it's like a real mix of smokiness but from a cold dish.
35:26 The drink is really interesting, so it's almost like herbaceous or vegetable-like, it's nice,
35:32 but you can tell it's got the agravity from down the stairs, you can really taste that coming through.
35:39 Again, nice and chilled, so it's a nice pairing, there's a smokiness from the beef that compliments the sweetness
35:46 and herbal notes from the drink.
35:48 So I'm just going to go and enjoy the rest of this now.
35:52 OK, so next up we have Kleinlich, this is all about the coastline.
35:56 So this is an aguachile oyster, so habanero, avocado, and a Linners Farm oyster.
36:01 It is cut in half, so go back for two scoops, and you've got coconut and lime leaf foam,
36:06 and then you've got a little bit of a lime leaf foam,
36:09 and then you've got a little bit of a lime leaf foam,
36:12 and then you've got a little bit of a lime leaf foam,
36:15 and then you've got a little bit of a lime leaf foam,
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