Whisky and food - Fashion passion
The Edrington Group - owner of the Famous Grouse and the Macallan - is out to get drinkers to look at whisky in a new light. Nigel Huddleston reports.
A glass of red wine with a nice steak is pretty normal. Even a pint of traditional real ale with a meal has become fashionable in recent times. But whisky probably wouldn't cross most people's minds when deciding what to drink with their dinner. One scotch whisky firm is setting out to change people's perceptions of whisky by giving consumers the chance to take part in special whisky and food matching events. The Edrington Group owns leading brands such as Famous Grouse, Highland Park and Macallan, and is hosting a clutch of dinners at its £2.5m Famous Grouse Experience - the visitor and hospitality facility opened last year at its Glenturret distillery.
The programme goes under the name of Fasan Ur, gallic for new fashion, and is being rolled out to parties of consumers after a period in gestation in the company's internal hospitality circles. Groups of up to 20 people can now book a Fasan Ur dinner, comprising a bespoke menu devised by in-house executive chef Steve Craik. The cost is between £100 and £120 per person, depending on the number of courses and the whiskies chosen, and includes up to eight whisky samples per person. Derek Brown, brands heritage director for Edrington, devises the drinks menu for the meal first, based around the particular wants or needs of the group.
Craik then creates a menu around the whisky line-up. Brown says: "The drinks are chosen according to what we think might be appropriate for that group. The menu changes every time, although there is obviously a pattern of what food goes with what whisky." Edrington is now hawking the programme through a London travel firm, trying to tempt overseas visitors to make the trip to take the Fasan Ur experience, and the distiller has already gone half way around the world to hold its first travelling dinner in the Far East. "Early feedback suggests that the concept has huge potential overseas," says Brown.
Craik travelled out to oversee the menu on that occasion, but this will be unrealistic to keep going in the long run and local chefs will be used instead, but with Edrington overseeing menu content. Brown says: "It's built around a tapas style, which means we can serve anything from five to eight courses, depending on the requirements of the particular group. Wherever we do it in the world we'll use well-sourced locally-produced ingredients. So if the dinner's in Taipei we'll be using food that's sourced there."
Edrington is aware that drinking whisky throughout a meal may not be everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, but it has got one or two tips on how to make things more appealing to confirmed non-whisky drinkers. Brown says: "A lot of people taste whisky with their nose and it's the smell they find off-putting, but we can get round that by putting a bit of orange peel around the rim of the glass to take the smell away." Another trick has been to put the Famous Grouse in a frozen shot glass and serve it with a starter.The freezing again removes what some people see as undesir- able aromas. Says Brown: "When whisky is served frozen it is normally drunk with a sweet, but we've found it also works with a starter. It creates a sensory explosion on the palate at the start of a meal."
Macallan 18-year-old is frequently served with red meat at the dinners, but reduced down with water from its normal strength to 13% or 14% abv.This not only removes the drink's more challenging edges, but makes it easier to handle in strength terms if you're drinking whisky throughout a meal. "There's still enough flavour and mouthfeel in the whisky for it to hold its own character when it is reduced down," says Brown. "It works well with red meat and, served in a wine glass, it takes on the personality of a glass of claret. "If you don't like the smell of whisky we can find a way around that and serve it in a way that takes it away. If we find we have got a complete non-whisky drinker we can always find a drink that they actually like."
Presentation is also a key part of the Fasan Ur dining experience, says Brown. Tables are laid simply with white tablecloths, but table decorations made from whisky-cask staves are used to give it some whisky heritage. And glassware is important, with a specially- commissioned set of glasses from Caithness. "One of the key factors has been the glassware," says Brown."We've got glasses based around traditional shapes such as the highball or the shot, or the whisky tumbler but all within a distinct family." While a company like Edrington has the resources to do things on a grand scale, there's nothing to stop pubs from generating interest in whisky by doing a scaled-down version.
Everard's pub the Bull's Head in Clipston, Leicestershire, is doing just that and this week it plans to hold a week-long whisky festival to celebrate being crowned whisky pub of the year in the Good Pub Guide. The pub actually stocks around 560 whiskies. On the Friday night it is offering a set menu of whisky-themed dishes for £14.95. One of Edrington's brands featured on the menu is a main-course option of pork medallions with a pear and apricot jus and hint of Macallan, but there will also be plenty of rival products on show too. The vast variety of styles of whisky on the market certainly gives Scotch a versatility to stretch across a menu. Other Bull's Head notables included a starter of smoked trout drizzled with Talisker and chive dressing, and a dessert of fresh raspberry shortbread with a Balvenie cream.
Tenant Stephen Gotch says that whisky is used in a variety of dishes on the specials board, but this is the first time they have offered a whole menu based around whisky. Other dishes include dill-marinated salmon steak pan fried in Cragganmore and bread and butter pudding with a Glenfarchas & butterscotch sauce. Stephen says: "If it goes well it is certainly something we would think of doing again. You have got to be looking at absolutely everything to push and it offers customers something different." The pub lists all of its whiskies in alphabetical order on a special whisky menu and also recommends 12 on its wine list which it recommends for at the end of a meal.
What both the Bull's Head and the Edrington project are doing is attempting to reappraise the way whisky is approached, both by the trade and consumers. Brown says: "Fasan Ur is becoming a tool for our brands and each of those brands has a different way of using that tool. But the whole point of doing this is to look at putting whisky in a different context rather just using it for mixing or cocktails."
