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The week in pictures

By Edith Hancock

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but there was this big thing in Notting Hill over the bank holiday weekend.

(Photo: Bacardi)

Rum is always a big deal at Notting Hill Carnival, so it’s only natural that Bacardi would sponsor the festival’s Powis Square Stage, where Major Lazer headlined along with Mr Eazi, Giggs and Stefflon Don.

Artists were hosted by the drinks brand in the the Tabernacle — the VIP area for the weekend — and enjoyed a range of artist-inspired cocktails made with, you guessed it, Bacardi.

We need to talk about Brewdog.

This week Brewdog launched its own Netflix-style streaming network, along with a “joke” website called beer.porn, intended as a send-up of sites like PornHub. It contained witty films about brunettes who love “massive cock-tails” (get it!?), as well as a reference to “Jungle Fevre” and cross-dressing, which flies in the face of the beer and pub industry’s current problems with representation of women, BMEs and the LGBT community.

Cue the fallout on social media.

Also in the business of infuriating the general masses, JD Wetherspoon is banning dogs across all its venues, and will enforce the policy from 10 September.

Wetherspoon has in fact had a dog ban in place since 1979, however over the years, it has allowed “a few exceptions”.

However, over the past week, signs bearing an updated policy have been put up in pubs stating that dogs were not allowed in pubs “including all outside areas”.

“After much consultation, we will now be strictly enforcing this policy everywhere. In order to give those affected time to adjust we have set a deadline of Monday, September 10,” it added.

It’s enough to make you want to hit the whiskey, right?

Speaking of which….

Heavy metal band Metallica have released details of their new whiskey, revealing that they played bespoke playlists of their music to the barrels while it aged as part of a patent pending process.

Called Blackened, after the song of the same name on their 1988 album Justice for All, the band used a unique, patent-pending “sonic enhancement” process known as ‘Black Noise’ to “shape” the whiskey’s flavour, which involved using custom playlists of Metallica’s music – a different one for each batch – during the distilling process.

They’ve dubbed it: “the next evolution of whiskey”.

From hardcore to pop, London’s Hotel Café Royal is opening a bar dedicated to David Bowie, paying homage to his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, who he bid a fond farewell to at the hotel in 1973.

In 1973 David Bowie famously retired Ziggy with a star studded bash at the hotel, dubbed ‘The Last Supper’. Guests included the biggest rock stars of the time, including Mick Jagger, Lou Reed and many others.

The new bar, Ziggy’s, will serve cocktails inspired by his life and the 1972 album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.

These include “Darkness and Disgrace”, inspired by a line in the track Lady Stardust, and based on a Rum Flip and Espresso Martini, made from a blend of dark rum, tawny Port, coffee liqueur, sugar syrup and egg yolk.

This isn’t the first time Bowie has inspired London’s drinks makers. Scarfe’s Bar in the Rosewood Hotel launched a new cocktail menu earlier this year, featuring its own take on the gimlet, served in a glass decorated with Ziggy’s signature lightning bolt.

Also in Celebrity Tie-ins, an Ibiza-based restaurant backed by professional footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, tennis star Rafael Nadal and singer Enrique Iglesias, is set to open a second site in London next month.

The 100-cover venue in London will be hospitality group Zela’s first foray beyond the Mediterranean isle of Ibiza, where its flagship restaurant opened in May 2017 in the high-end Marina Botafoch neighbourhood, writes Eater.

There was a face-palm moment for staff at a wine shop in China on Monday, as they mistakenly sold a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild grand vin as its much cheaper second wine — ‘Carruades de Lafite’ — to a customer.

The latter costs €130, while the grand vin should have come in at about €420. Oops.

Back in London, chef James Cochran has just launched a new solo venture in Islington — 1251, which celebrates the best of Caribbean cooking and British ingredients. Cochran told us he’s extremely excited to bring dishes like buttermilk fried rabbit and jerked monkfish to north London, and is even planning to put an English sparkling wine on the menu.

The Great British Menu star is in the middle of a rights dispute with his former employer, Raymuela, who seemingly trademarked his name and started selling his signature recipes as part of the brand. The practice is also widespread in the fashion industry, wrote Eater last week.

Cochran couldn’t tell us more about the dispute at the launch of 1251 on Thursday night, but he hasn’t let it phase him. The former Ledbury charge was buzzing with ideas on how he’s going to “make a brand” of his own. There’s more venues on the cards, collaborations, and even his own apparel range.

Quick, no one tell Zara…

Yann Bouvignes takes the lead role at Scarfe’s Bar (Photo: Scarfe’s)

This week in Movers and Cocktail Shakers (sorry), Scarfe’s has found its new head mixologist after weeks of hunting down a replacement for its former legendary charge, Greg Almeida.

The man for the job is Yann Bouvignies. He spent his first few years in hospitality working at the then newly-opened Hotel Le Kaïla in Meribel. He later moved on to La Résidence de la Pinède Hotel in St Tropez.

He moved to London in 2014 to join the team at Purl, before going on to work under master mixologist Agostino Perrone at the Connaught at the start of 2016. He joined Scarfe’s at the end of the year, and honed his talent for molecular mixology under Almeida’s tutelate.

Beyond the wall, Scotland’s first potato vodka producer — Ogilvy — is investing £150,000 to build a distillery visitor centre on its Angus farm.

The new projects are currently on track to open for their first tours in October.

As part of the funding package, Ogilvy has committed to investing £4,000 a year until 2028 into three local community groups: Charleston Playgroup, Glamis Primary School Committee and the Royal Highland Educational Trust.

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