Love Your Local: Northern Ireland drinks geek reveals his experiences that are raising spirits
Food and drink obsessed Phil Ervine, co-founder of The Spirit Circle, reveals his passion for spirits, Belfast and his proudest achievements since creating the city’s most unique drinks experience in 2022
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00My name is Phil and I'm one of the founders of the Spirit Circle here in Belfast. I used to work in
00:04the drinks and marketing industry so I wanted to create an experience that showcased our spirits
00:09in a really unique way and that is where the entire idea came from. So we've been going up
00:14two years, two months and we run two different experiences here. We have one which is called
00:20Belfast by the Glass and one is called Sensorium. So Belfast by the Glass, think of it as an
00:24alternative history of Belfast through drinks. We take you on a journey by projecting onto the
00:28walls of this beautiful 1897 building and we tell the story of Belfast from 1122 through to 2024.
00:34For me this is a celebration of Belfast and we do that through giving you delicious drinks. We have
00:39six different spirits and drinks along the way and each of them is part of the story that we're
00:43trying to tell about in that chapter. With Sensorium then, we call it our interactive sensory cocktail
00:48experience. Essentially the whole point of it is to discover the drinker's subconscious desires.
00:52So we do that through a series of sensory experiments. We challenge your sense of taste,
00:56your sense of touch, your sense of hearing, your sense of sound. So at the end you're served your
01:01perfect drink and there's 972 different possible drinks combinations. My proudest achievement so
01:06far in the Spirit Circles journey would be first off bringing it to other countries. We brought
01:11it to Dubai, we brought it to New York, we brought it to Boston, Canada, Madrid, Milan and it's been
01:17incredible bringing something that we created here in Belfast and showcasing off Belfast in a really
01:21fun way. A genuine pride I get in putting Belfast on the map and just doing our little bit for this
01:28class city.