Drinking Gin at The Barber Shop

When someone says, “I don’t want to come across as a wanker from Melbourne because I actually come from a small town of 300 in country WA” you just know they’re gonna come across as a “wanker from Melbourne”. He failed to redeem himself as he proceeded to make generalisations about people from Sydney “wearing white shoes” and the like.

A short message for people from Melbourne: “the Melbourne/Sydney thing is something which only exists in the consciousness of people from Melbourne. Here in Sydney, we think both cities are great. It’s not an issue. And, for the record, I come from country NSW. Despite the faux pas, I thought he was an interesting bloke.

Jeremy Spencer from West Winds was one of the speakers at The Gin Revival, a talk held at the fantastic hipster bar, The Barber Shop. Located on Sydney’s York Street, there’s a barber shop out the front, and out the back, there’s a cocktail bar.

Though I wasn’t previously aware of recent developments in the production of Australian made gin, when I heard about the talk earlier in the day on the radio, I thought to myself… “Saturday afternoon… a bit of chit chat… some Gin… and a funky hipster bar… that sounds like me. Or at least some kind of version of me.”

Jeremy spoke about how he and his colleagues had come from a history of working in bars. “Really good brands are built in bars”, he said, arguing you should make the drink first, and then involve the marketing people, rather than the other way around. He also spoke with passion about trying out new ingredients, such as tomato and sea parsley, to add a savoury element to the flavour of gin. Another of the speakers, Stuart Gregor from Four Pillars Gin made the acute observation, “The world doesn’t need another London Dry Gin. And if it does, it should come from London”.

Interestingly, the crowd was told, sales of gin have grown about 20% in the last couple of years.

“Gin is the next whiskey”, commented Jeremy, in terms of how people will start to relate the flavours with certain geographies.

I do love a good G&T, and so it was a really great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.