Cerise Bar, Forbury Hotel Reading
Venue: Cerise Bar, The Forbury Hotel, Reading UK Recipe: Tanqueray 10, stirred, olives, Noilly Prat. Price: £13 WBM Score: 62/100
Back at The Forbury in Reading. Business trip rather than leisure but at least we can look forward to a decent bar and an excellent staff.
We started the challenge as always with a request for the barman’s interpretation of the WBM Standard (that’s T10, up, extra dry, olives). It fell to the delightful Kelly to put something together. She chose to coat the ice with a little Noilly Prat Vermouth as she stirred down. Adds an interesting hint of whatever secret ingredient is in there. Noilly Prat won’t tell you so not sure we should!
Overall then a very pleasant Martini if perhaps a little weaker than our benchmark. This seems to be a recurring theme across many of the venues we have visited; so far all we can figure is that they are perhaps mixing just a little too long, thus allowing too much ice to melt into the finished cocktail.
As our regular readers will know, our benchmark Gin Martini is delivered by our well-mannered barman at Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food at LHR T5. The special mix, of which we are the sole recipients, remains hard to beat.
Based on our very scientific scoring system, which as you will know was developed by a team of Ph.Ds in our secret Martini Testing Lab, the Forbury standard gets a 62.
Recipe: Warner Edwards, stirred, orange twist and oil, Noilly Prat. Price: £15 WBM Score: 82/100
We moved onto our barman’s choice, was duly accepted by Glen, another of the excellent staff at The Forbury. He chose to go with a gin that is new to us, namely Warner Edwards’ Harrington Dry Gin. Read more at their website…
To complement the range of botanicals and spices that are carefully blended into this surprisingly tasty and unusual gin, Glen carefully mixed a very specific amount of Noilly and then pressed the oil out of an orange twist. The gin has a subtle but clearly identifiable hint of cardamom – no, this isn’t your run of the mill gin!
An unusual martini, well mixed and eminently drinkable, scores a well-deserved 82.
