I started off with a Scott's Martini - Monkey Shoulder, Fraise de Bois strawberry liqueur and fresh pineapple shaken with lime and sugar - and it was like drinking a happy tune. The whisky sour was creamy and aromatic and none of the whisky taste was obliterated - it just sat at the back of the glass like a breath of fresh air in a heathery glen What a discovery. If you're really interested in drinks then it's about innovation. Girls come up to me now and they may not know what they want, so I suggest a whisky cocktail. At first, they think, no way - whisky is not for me - but after they try this one they tend to drink it all night."Love on the rocks. "It's the best one by far," he says, "because it mixes so well. I used to use things like Glenmorangie for classic drinks like a Manhattan, but now it's only Monkey Shoulder.
It's a blend of three great malts and is just smooth beyond belief. Chris Michael, the head bartender at Doon, has been adapting every whisky cocktail to use that brand. The people in the Albannach were talking and flirting under a chandelier made of antlers, which is fine, so long as you're holding a drink that doesn't taste of petrol. Many of the people near me were new whisky connoisseurs - they thought white spirits were trashy, and were extra enthused about some of the new malt blends designed for mixing in cocktails. The trouble with old whiskies is that, though yummy by themselves, they are spoiled the minute you do anything to them. Even ice presents a threat to their purity.Anyway, the verdicts are in, and the best of the new mixable, drinkable, loveable blended malts is called Monkey Shoulder. Whisky is a drink for people who want to taste something real and earthy at the back of their drink: Speyside water, for instance, or the goodness of peat.
Firstly, they all look better after the fourth drink (but that's a whisky tradition). Second, there's always something to be said for men who don't drink lager. So far as I could observe, nobody burst into tears and nobody swung a punch: it was a case of new-generation whisky-bibbers, aged from 20 to 45, warming their cheeks with triple malt mixtures garnished with burnt orange peel and peeled cherries.In the interests of research, I happen to have drunk quite a lot of the newer whiskies in places that care about them - Zinc in Glasgow, Oloroso in Edinburgh, The Woods in Bristol, Trailer Happiness and the Lonsdale in Notting Hill - and there are several things to note about the people who go there. The greatest development in the best new bars is the steady introduction of whisky cocktails, and the rate of uptake is fast turning whisky against its old reputation as the potion of choice for the hard-drinking and the occasionally angry.Last Wednesday evening the atmosphere was swinging by eight o'clock at the Doon bar, part of the Albannach Scottish restaurant on London's Trafalgar Square, and close to half the people in there were drinking whisky concoctions prepared by the chief bartender.