London’s new Ginstitute: Quench your thirst for knowledge
By Amy Laughinghouse, published on 21 December 2011
I’ve never particularly aspired to the echelons of higher learning. Although half my friends hold a doctorate in something-or-other (non-technical term), I was happy enough to walk away from university with a bachelor’s degree. Besides, let’s face it. Who is going to seek the services of a Dr. Laughinghouse, anyway—unless, perhaps, they’re having a problem with their funny bone.
But when I heard about the November opening of the Ginstitute on London’s Portobello Road, I felt I had finally found my calling. The very thought of revising made me as giddily light-headed as the verboten third martini.
The Ginstitute is based, fittingly, atop the Portobello Star pub, which has been serving drinks, on and off, since as early as 1740. A three-hour course includes a welcome cocktail, a tour of the gin museum, accompanied by a history of this juniper-based drink, and an opportunity to blend a bottle to your own taste. At the end of the class, students walk (or rather, weave) away with their bespoke spirit, as well as a bottle of Portobello Road Gin No. 171, a new London dry gin created by the same “headmasters” who run the school.
Arriving at the pub for my lesson, I push through wooden doors emblazoned with a gold star and am immediately handed not the usual class syllabus, but a gin and tonic. As I belly up to the bar with my fellow students, our “professor” arrives, summoned by the tinkling of ice cubes.
Burly and bearded, dressed in a black suit with a red pocket kerchief and a crisp white shirt unbuttoned to display an acreage of woolly chest, Jake Burger is no tweedy teacher. Harper’s, the wine and spirits trade publication, dubbed him “Spirits Personality of the Year 2011,” and he certainly looks as though he would be more at home behind a bar—or indeed, in a top hat, twirling a cane—than scraping chalk across a blackboard.
Burger originally took up a martini shaker in 1992 at Ike’s Bistro, the first cocktail bar in Leeds. He’s worked at the Portobello Star since 2008, when it opened as its current incarnation, and it was here that the idea of the Ginstitute was born. “We (he and Ged Feltham, the owner of the Portobello Star) were looking for something to do with the space upstairs, and we wanted to reflect the style of area, which is famous for the Portobello Road antiques market,” Burger explains. “So we thought a museum would go down well.” The notion of adding a distillery and gin-blending classes snowballed from there.
The museum—which draws heavily upon Burger’s own personal collection–is enshrined in a tiny green-tiled room on the first floor, with a cluster of red-velvet barstools and a dark oak bar wedged into a corner. (On Friday and Saturday nights, the museum functions as a cocktail bar, with the bartender spinning the wax in between slinging drinks for punters).
The prize exhibit is a “gin stove,” the only one in the world, as far as Burger knows, which he plans to refit to dispense hot toddies and the like by Christmas. Above it, a glass wall-mounted case houses a collection of dusty bottles–mostly gin, and many surprisingly full, their labels yellowed with age. Another nineteen dozen bottles of pre-Prohibition-era spirits, salvaged from a cellar in Connecticut, were due to arrive the next day.
Burger calls our attention to a second edition copy of Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual (a bible amongst mixmasters, first published in 1900), which is opened to a martini recipe. “He was arguably the first, possibly the second, to publish a recipe for the martini,” Burger says, a note of reverence creeping into this voice. In addition to “gum syrup” and half a wine-glass of vermouth, the recipe calls for “2 or 3 dashes of bitters (Boker’s genuine only).”
But Boker’s went out of business in 1917, and very few bottles remain. “This is the only open bottle in the world,” Burger maintains, “so this is the only bar where you can have the drink as it was originally invented.” For the right price (£100 for an “original” martini with Boker’s), you can actually taste history. (It’s a rare museum where an exhibit may actually be consumed).
Among other artifacts, I spot a bottle of Coates & Co’s Plymouth Gin, circa 1930, from the Black Friars Distillery, with a ruddy-cheeked monk holding a glass aloft. “The saying goes, when his feet were dry, that’s when it was time to reorder,” Burger chuckles. In mice type, just below the monk’s sandaled tootsies, a banner reads “Prize Medal Health Exhibition 1884.”
Although the etchings of Hogarth depicted in vivid detail the debauchery associated with poverty-stricken gin-drinkers in 18th century England, “It was a necessary evil,” Burger explains. “The life of these people was so terrible and there was such awful sanitation that they used gin to deaden the intolerability of their existence and to cleanse the water of cholera to make for a healthier lifestyle.” (A jigger of gin a day to keep the doctor away? Someone alert Britain’s National Health Service).
With that, Burger leads the way to the second floor Still Room, where the walls are lined with glass containers filled with eighteen different flavoured distillates. Ranging from fruity to spicy, these can be combined to create a signature gin. They are made right here on the premises in a 20-liter copper still—which we can view via a porthole-style window–dubbed “Copernicus.” “It’s a cute little thing,” Burger says, with the indulgent smile of a proud father.
As we gather around a square wooden table, Burger gives us each a beaker filled with 280 milliliters of juniper distillate. (As defined by law, he says, juniper is meant to be the dominant flavour in any gin). What we do with the other 420 milliliters of our bottle is up to us.
“What kind of gin do you want to make?” Burgers asks, inviting us to sample as many botanicals as our livers can handle. “Crisp, lively and citrusy? Or one with floral notes? Or a big-hitting, peppery, spicy gin?”
I opt to evoke the spirit of Christmas, er, spirit, with hints of nutmeg, cinnamon, cassia bark (“Chinese cinnamon,” Burger says, “with a nice warm finish”), and angelica, which my prof describes as “chocolaty, sweet, woody, earthy. It acts as a marrying agent and arbiter of peace, helping to bring all the flavours together.” (For the record, he had me at “chocolaty.”)
Sipping a bit of my blend in a glass, Burger nods approvingly. “It’s got a nice long finish,” he says—which I take as a passing grade.
But I’m afraid I must beg to differ. Having sampled my Laughinghouse Jolly Holiday Gin for myself, I’m afraid it won’t take long to finish it at all. (Sorry, Santa, but it looks like you’re getting milk with your biscuits this year).
The Ginstitute at the Portobello Star, 171 Portobello Road, London, W11 2DY, Tel: +44 20 7229 8016
Three-hour class: £100 per person, maximum 7 people per class. The museum is also open free of charge Tuesday-Saturday, 14:00-18:00, and on Friday and Saturday (when it functions as a bar), 21:00-0:30.
London’s new Ginstitute: Quench your thirst for knowledge
Holding class in a pub is a guaranteed means of getting students to rock up – especially when the subject is gin, Amy Laughinghouse discovers.
