Tuesday was BarChick’s first and by no means last BarJacking at Duck Soup in Soho, and it was MASSIVE! Of course we brought in our own and most favourite bartenders in the form of Nathan from the Savoy and Simone from the Langham, who were mixing some banging (and original, naturally) drinks all night. But that’s not all that was happening on Tuesday, as BarChick stumbled out onto the streets of Soho with Ajax from the Hawksmoor in tow, it was pied piper Chris from bartender’s favourite Compass Box Whisky who lead the way… to Westminster Bridge. The reason? At twelve o’ clock that night a major whisky law was changing, Chris, John Glaser and the Compass Box Team would no longer be able to call their whisky a vatted malt, and we were off to pay homage to a 100 year old tradition. You can read more about the change in the law here – BarChick is done with history lessons for the time being.
Seeing as the new law came into play at midnight, it made perfect sense to cork their last bottle in front of a big clock… Big Ben, obviously. So as a group of half-cut whisky lovers stood around, Chris was busy bottling the last of the vatted malt whisky before the bell tolled. Of course, in a bit of a Blue Peter moment there was a fair number of ‘here’s one we made earlier’ bottles of vatted malt to go around as well… and it was GORGEOUS!
BarChick wasn’t really sure if bottling whisky (or drinking a fair amount of it), is legal on Westminster Bridge, but then again what better place is there to stick a middle finger to the law-makers than in front of parliament? It seemed to make sense at the time… more sense than when BarChick finally came round in the staff quarters of a nearby hotel. But that’s another story…
