Okay, so the balmy evenings of early summer are taking their time in coming. As I write this, the sky is black with clouds, it’s tipping down with rain, and I’m thinking about flicking the central heating on. But hey, let’s not be too gloomy. Soon enough we’ll all be sitting outside with glass in hand, marvelling at the fact that it’s still light at 10pm and none of us has a coat on.
Practically every one of the distilleries that has popped up across Northern Ireland in the last few years offers a tour for visitors to see at first hand how spirits are made. Some, however, have taken things one step further. They actually show visitors how to make their own.
Practically every one of the distilleries that has popped up across Northern Ireland in the last few years offers a tour for visitors to see at first hand how spirits are made. Some, however, have taken things one step further. They actually show visitors how to make their own.
For something that is by its very nature always wet, it’s remarkable how often a drink is described as being dry. You can have a dry Martini, a dry white wine, a dry ginger ale, even a dry beer. But what does it actually mean when a drink is said to be dry?
There’s nothing like the taste of a favourite chocolate bar to bring a wistful smile to your Valentine’s face. But let’s be honest, a bar of good old Cadbury Dairy Milk, no matter how giant, doesn’t really cut it as a grand romantic gesture. And, as for the old Valentine’s Day staple of presenting your loved one with an expensive box of Swiss chocolates, well, that surely seems a bit Stone Age for a 21st century date night.
Sitting at the dining table in his north Belfast home, Frank McKee flicks through the pages of a faded ledger. “No computers in those days,” he says, pointing to the neatly handwritten names of Scotch whiskies among the columns of figures. Bowmore… Balvenie… Glenfarclas… Glenlivet… it’s like a roll-call of Scotland’s most famous distilleries. Then he stops at an entry at the bottom of a page. The date is September 1964, the place is a bonded warehouse in Belfast, and it’s the beginning of a story about a unique whisky that can command prices today as high as £50,000.
When wine in cans started appearing in shops here around 50 years ago, it was pretty dreadful stuff. The wine used was of the lowest quality, and it got even worse in the can, changing colour, reacting with the metal, and in some of the foulest cases, taking on the smell of rotten eggs. If anyone bought canned wine, they rarely drank it. Instead, they tipped it into sauces and stews. Not that it was any good for cooking. Even in the 1970s.
The popping of Champagne corks is as much a part of the soundtrack for New Year’s Eve as the bongs of Big Ben or renditions of Auld Lang Syne flatter than leftover bubbly. No midnight celebration is complete, it seems, without a glass of fizz in hand. But does it always need to be Champagne? The answer, simply, is no. There’s a whole world of quality sparkling wines out there to help you transit from one year to the next – and a lot of them are just as French as Champagne.