Sometimes you find yourself in possession of a really filthy bottle of Champagne and it is always a conundrum as to whether you can face drinking it. The key, of course, is to make cocktails with it and tonight’s extremely decadent fizz-based cocktail is the Olympique.

It is very simple, just pour a shot of yellow Chartreuse into a glass and top up with four shots of some woeful Champagne that you have probably been given by someone who doesn’t know any better. The cocktail should be a beautiful golden colour thanks to the Chartreuse.

I have very happy memories of this drink (and, if I am honest, this cocktail has also deleted some memories). When I finished my final undergraduate exams I was met outside the exam hall by a lovely girl who was to become my ‘taller lying down than standing up*’ girlfriend. She presented me with a bottle of minor Champagne but refused to join me in drinking it with my wine friends in the post exam piss-up they had arranged. As luck would have it, one of my wonderful friends had brought a bottle of yellow Chartreuse along to the event and we mixed Olympiques. A very dissolute cocktail, and quite delicious too.

Of course, if you want to be really flash you can mix your Olympiques with the truly excellent VEP yellow Chartreuse. This is Chartreuse which has been aged for an unspecified number of years in large casks before bottling. It is smoother and more mellow than the standard stuff. A great drink but sadly quite pricy.

Green Chartreuse is a more alcoholic, fiery drink. When you feel the burn as you swallow you know it is doing you good. It is not really suitable for this cocktail, it is powerful and heady, and lacks the smoothness that the yellow version brings to Olympiques. Green has its place: for example, when you need to be invigorated to deal with lesser people it can really perk one up; a veritable command to go out and dominate inferior forms of life. Once again there is a VEP version of Green which is slightly less fiery and more refined. Great treat to have a bottle of this in one’s home, ready to charge one up should a lack-of-booze-style emergency occur.

Before I finish with Chartreuse (I still have some of my Olympique to finish) I should recommend Elixir Vegetal de Chartreuse. This is only sold in small (100ml) bottles, and described as a pick-me-up that will leave you feeling on top of the world. As well it might, having an impressive booze-quotient of 71%abv. This actually makes it bloody hard work to drink the stuff, but you can mix some with hot water for a warming winter drink, or put a few drops on a sugar cube just to enjoy its herbal flavours. You can also spray a mouthful between your pursed lips when holding a flame close your mouth and watch the impressive ‘fire-breathing’ effect. I am yet to try a few drops of Elixir Vegetal in fizz, it might well work a handy sub-interest Champagne-improver.

*If you are confused by the description of this lovely girl being taller lying down than standing up I shall simplify it: She was extremely well titted-out.

Whisky has never really done it for me. Many years ago I spent much money trying the best single malts I could find and, whilst I appreciated their complexity and characterful nature, I just didn’t like them very much.

Enter Dan and Non-Stinky Jeff. Already Dan and NSJ have converted me to liking iced tea, the bad fellows, and what was about to happen has been even more of a revelatory event.

Toward the end of one of our customarily light evenings NSJ and Dan say they’d like a whisky, and an old blended whisky at that. I immediately leap on this and suggest blended whiskies are boring and don’t have the true character of a single malt. “Perhaps,” they reply, “But try this.”

I hold a small whisky tasting glass with the enthusiasm of a piece of road-kill, then I smell it, and smell it again. I’m aghast! It is smooth and refined with complex, heady aromas which just want to charm you. A blended whisky smelling nice, bugger me backwards with a barge pole. Then I have a tiny sip and let the flavours explode on the tip of my palate. Smoky, peaty but subtly smoky and smoothly peaty. It tastes highly polished and refined. Damned good, for a spirit. Am I starting to like whisky?

Dan and NSJ go to the whisky cupboard and get a few more bottles out, serving precious drops of their quality nectar and we try more blends and some quite serious cask-strength single malts. The blends, including a quite revelatory snort of Johnnie Walker Blue, are all smooth, refined, serious drinks which are not short of class and, dare I say it, enjoyment value. I’m scandalised.

The single malts from a variety of locations had some of the smoothness of the blends, but were largely about rugged individuality. That is how I like my tasting notes so I found myself thinking these single malts really spoke to me as a fellow characterful entity.

So the upshot is I have found that I bloody like whisky! After all these years of sneering and not enjoying the stuff, suddenly it speaks to me and so I look forward to when I next sit down for with a glass for further enlightenment.

This presents me with a bit of a dilemma. In two months I have been converted to liking things that once I would never have let past my lips. I’m worried, what has happened to me? This calls for another fantastic Elitist Review poll!

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Readers of my RSS feed will have to come to the site itself to vote.

This is the rum we scored from marvellous, marvellous Cadenhead’s in Edinburgh. It is frighteningly alcoholic for something that has been distilled in a pot still then aged in cask for 14 years. The key with these super-fiery spirits is to either dilute them a bit (if you are a bit girly, that is) or just take the tiniest of tiny tastes so the flavours explode on the tip of your tongue. That is what I’ll be doing, and as such I’ve poured myself a really small sample.

Pot Still Demerara Rum, Uitvlugt Distillery, Aged 14 Years, Cadenhead’s Single Cask Bottling,70.7%
As my ISO glass sits on the desk next to my keyboard I can smell a powerfully alcoholic, sweet richness pervading the room. It is not just booze-tastic, though, there are complex, aged aromas too. Smells fantastic. Also smells like it is going to hurt. OK, a tiny taste only burns slightly, but fills my mouth with multifaceted, interesting, heady flavours. This is quite impressive; fiery, but delicious. Shall I see what it is like with a dash of water? Yeah, why not? Intriguing, that has made it smell very woody, but I feel the intensity is not quite so arresting. That has given the palate less of a burn, but again the intensity doesn’t seem to be there. It seems more like standard rum than the wild rollercoaster ride of an experience it was undiluted. This is not the kind of thing you can just sit down and drink a few glasses of, unless you’ve coated your mouth with wax, but a little sip at the end of an evening would perk one up and delight with its complexity.

We were in Edinburgh at the weekend, and so we thought it a good idea to buy the neighbours a gift for cat-sitting. They love whisky and I am well-aware that you don’t get much better whisky than the single-cask, cask-strength whiskies you can buy from Cadenhead.

They have an enormous range on offer, including many from distilleries that are now closed. Because they are cask-strength (undiluted, unlike most whiskies you will buy) they range between 50-60+%. They are also not chill-filtered, so contain minuscule amounts of fusil oils which go cloudy should you add water. Finally, they are not coloured with caramel, the colour you see is the colour they come out of the cask. I will get the neighbours to post a guest tasting note here when they pop it.

Sadly, even though I have spent vast quantities of cash trying to appreciate whisky, I cannot stand the stuff. So we got ourselves some of the other things Cadenhead do incredibly well: single-cask rum. Our choice was a 14 year old Demerara rum which clocked in at 70.6%, wehay!

You can find Cadenhead online here.

My dear partner has ordered some useful drinks:

VEP Chartreuse I have mentioned recently. Those crazy monks also make fruit liqueurs (shown in the foreground) which are useful for making Kir, but can also be used to improve crap red wine. The gin is something we tried at the London Wine and Spirits Trade Fair, an annual lark in the docklands. It is quite a special gin made from herbs gathered in the Shetland Islands. It is also 60%, wehay!

I find whisky to be slightly hard work, perhaps largely because I like cask-strength stuff and that hurts. Visiting the neighbours I quickly moved from a bottle of Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris to this, which is only marginally more alcoholic. The trick to tasting whiksy is to take the tiniest taste and let the flavours explode on the tip of your tongue.

Talisker 10 year old
A very peaty nose, smells like fresh Highland water. It is really quite complex with lots of different aromas there. The palate is rich and flavoursome, peaty with caramel and smoke characters. This is a powerful, complex and interesting whisky, I really quite like it.