This is not surprising, especially when you consider their versatility and what they are used for. For example, what is the main ingredient of your favourite cocktail? Your answer would most likely be a spirit or liqueur, which well, is a type of spirit!

It does not automatically mean other alcoholic beverages aren’t as useful. Vermouth has been used by mixologists for years, and recently, more wineries are encouraging and promoting wine cocktails as a better alcoholic option for those who cannot stomach high levels of alcohol. Beer cocktails are also a thing, as a quick Google search will reveal.

However, spirits appear to offer a more diverse range of cocktail options. This may be attributed to the fact that they have been used for so long in this area that a robust range of recipes and experimentation abound. It also helps that at its core, a spirit – be it a gin or rum or whisky – is an uncomplicated alcoholic beverage, making it perfect for whatever concoction you’re looking to put together. Lastly, compared to wines, they are more affordable, which means more people can have access to them.

Including here in Africa, where it is isn’t only used for cocktails, but for ceremonies and religious events. Spirits have been produced for more than a hundred years now across several countries in Africa, yet surprisingly, they are not as popular as others from beyond the continent.

If you love mixing up a good cocktail or would rather take a bottle of gin or vodka or rum above other types of alcoholic drinks, here are some premium, made-in-Africa brands to immediately try out, that is, if you haven’t already!

Pedro’s Ogogoro, Nigeria

Pedro’s Ogogoro is arguably one of the more popular spirits out of Africa, so there is a pretty high chance that you’ve tasted it or heard about it. Per Lola Pedro, one of its co-founders, Ogogoro is “a palm spirit from palm wine” not a gin, nor a rum, nor vodka.

During Nigeria’s colonial era, Ogogoro was associated with illicit and badly-produced alcohol. These days, it is used to refer to any cheap, badly-produced alcohol with a high ABV sold by roadsides all over Nigeria at least. In reality, neither one of these is what Ogogoro is.

Pedro’s is not only on a mission to change this narrative but is also eager to make this locally-produced alcoholic beverage a worldwide phenomenon.

Aphro Palm Spirit, Ghana

Like Pedro’s, Aphro is an alcoholic spirit made from the sap of palm trees. In fact, it is the same as Nigeria’s Ogogoro, only that in Ghana, it is known as Akpeteshie.

Just like its Nigerian brother, Akpeteshie was turned into a villainous, poisonous drink during the colonial era to push the sale of imported spirits.

Aphro is also trying to correct this misnomer, and if you’re looking to try something different yet familiar, then look no further than the Aphro Palm Spirit which comes in two flavours: the Nubi which is a mix of flamed pineapple, tropical passion fruit and a little West African honey, and, the Moor which mixes local ginger, spices and Hwentia pepper to make a spicy, robust delightful beverage.

Vusa Vodka, South Africa

Vusa Vodka is the brainchild of Chris Frederick and Damola Timeyin, the duo behind Spearhead Spirits which also produces Bayab Gin.

Unlike Pedro and Aphro, Spearhead Spirits is not so much about promoting original locally-developed alcoholic beverages as it is focused on proving that the continent is just as capable of making internationally acclaimed drinks as its counterparts.

Vusa Vodka is made from sugarcane grown in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, and distilled in small batches in copper pot stills. It is then filtered through the shells of the baobab fruit before bottling to give it a clean, crisp finish.

Waragi Wildcrane, Uganda

The name ‘Waragi’ has some interesting history. According to sources, its original name wasn’t Waragi; although what that was is not immediately clear. The recipe for the alcoholic drink was passed on from generation to generation and, all over Uganda, it was the favoured drink for both the rich and poor.

When the colonisers came, they noticed that Ugandans would immediately bring out this spirit during periods of victory and celebration. And so they nicknamed it ‘war gin’. As with most things, war gin was soon localised to ‘Waragi’, which has now become the official name of the ancient local Ugandan drink made from a mix of any of the following: bananas, millet, cassava or sugarcane.

Unlike Nigeria’s Ogogoro, Waragi is widely produced and consumed in Uganda, and several distilleries making premium, standard Waragi exist. One such is the Kakira distillery whose Wildcrane Premium Gin uses the Waragi recipe in its formulation. What is this recipe exactly? We don’t know, but, judging by the fact that its other spirits have won international awards, it may be safe to say that this is possibly the Waragi you should add to your spirits portfolio.

Tambour Sodabi, Benin Republic

Sodabi is to Benin, as Akpeteshie is to Ghana, and Koutoukou is to Côte d’Ivoire. But unlike the others, the Beninese can actually trace the history of their Sodabi to its humble beginnings.

Per Tambour, it all started when Bonou Kiti Sodabi, a Beninese soldier, went to Europe to fight in WW1. There, he saw how the distillation process worked, and upon his return to his country, teamed up with his brother, Gbehlaton, to produce Sodabi using the popular palm wine as their main material after an initial failed experiment with bananas.

By 1920, Sodabi had become widespread and its popularity only continued to grow, leading the colonialists to ban its production and sale in 1931. The Sodabi brothers were even arrested, but this did nothing. As in other countries and civilisations of the world, prohibition only led to secret manufacture and sales.

In 1975, fifteen years after its independence, Benin officially lifted the prohibition against Sodabi. Today, Tambour Sodabi is perhaps the best-known palm spirit from the country, having won international awards twice now. You can choose between its two distinct flavours: the spiced Sodabi and its recently launched brother, White Sodabi.

The post Here are Some of Africa’s Finest Spirits You Should Know. Plus, Their Storied Histories! first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

The post Here are Some of Africa’s Finest Spirits You Should Know. Plus, Their Storied Histories! appeared first on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

“It’s an exploration of what luxury is: it’s not about bling, although the cocktails may include some incredibly rare and frankly outrageously delicious liquids. It’s more about the human side, about spending time with people. If you’ve had a well-lived life – and everyone has a story – how do you encapsulate that? Beyond the rare liquids, it’s about reflecting stories in a set of flavours.”

The couture cocktail service – which starts at £10,000 (US$13,100), and can go up to £100,000 (US$131,045) for the top-tier service called The Monarch – includes a one-on-one meeting with Chetiyawardana in which he inspires you to muse on your favourite moments, flavour preferences and aspects of your life story. He then hosts a tasting of liquids he has selected specially for you. Based on your reactions, he will create a unique cocktail, bottle it and label it by hand.

The liquids he has access to – in his own collection and through his personal relationships with small houses around the world – are exceptional: from bottles of chartreuse made from herbs that are now extinct, to cognac produced by women in the 1920s when the men were at war.

“There’s an ethereal nature to these cognacs, a distinct style,” explains Chetiyawardana. “Women had always been looking after things behind the scenes and then with the men away they were allowed to shine.”

Unlike in a wine tasting, for example, in which the range of flavours is relatively limited, he might throw in old sherries with “incredible weight and savoury flavours”, whisky blended with ambergris, cherry brandies with dry nutty tones or voluptuous fruits, or herbal liqueurs that “you can’t quite put your finger on – like walking through a forest and into an Indian spice market” at the same time.

“It’s a celebration of some of the wonderful things humankind has made, chosen to express the story that someone wants to tell about their own life,” says Chetiyawardana.

Source: SCMP

The post Capture the Essence of Your Spirit with Custom-Made Cocktails first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

The post Capture the Essence of Your Spirit with Custom-Made Cocktails appeared first on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

Your bartender may tell you what bourbon he used, but where did the distillery get its corn? Did the farmer pay his workers fairly? Did he use pesticides? Where did the orange come from for that zesty strip of peel? How long did it sit in a warehouse before it finally made its way here, to your favourite bar?

Questions like these forced Ryan Chetiyawardana, aka Mr Lyan, to find an answer. Chetiyawardana is a regular winner of global bartending awards and the creative light behind this year’s World’s Best Bar, Dandelyan, and groundbreaking sustainability restaurant, CUB, both in London. So he turned to cryptocurrency, or more precisely, the technology that underpins it, blockchain.

“We are the last link in a long chain of events that is hidden from our eyes. We hold ourselves accountable for our actions. But what of the others in this chain? There’s no point in having an amazing drink if the farmer at the start is being exploited,” he states in an open letter to the bar industry. “We wanted to see if there was a way of highlighting good practice and illustrating the need for it to exist all along the supply chain. And this is where the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies – blockchain – became interesting to us.”

Cryptocurrency inspires extreme opinions. While some herald it as a universal panacea to the tyranny of corporate control, others dismiss it as a dangerous frivolity doomed to implode. But while the debate continues, the digital ledger known as the blockchain, through which most cryptocurrencies function, may well be where the truly valuable potential of the technology lies.

Blockchain is a decentralised, distributed and public digital ledger, which means that it is not controlled by one entity, such as a bank, but is rather upheld by a wide network. Once a transaction is recorded on the blockchain, it cannot be changed. The blockchain was originally designed to be public, so anyone could join and participate in the network, although blockchains can now be private.

The blockchain can bring to light the hidden costs behind your cocktail by recording every “transaction” involved in the chain: the corn farmer could record when he sows the seed, what he fertilises with and when, when he harvests, and when the corn is sent to the distillery. The distillery would then note when the corn arrives, and record each step in the fermentation and distilling process, including minutia such as the mineral content of the water used. And so on.

These recorded transactions also help when things go wrong: while tracing an ingredient that has made customers ill back to a supplier with paper records can take a week, on the blockchain it can be a matter of seconds before the contaminated product is identified and discontinued.

Innovative small brands are particularly embracing the distributed ledger. Irish craft beer brand Downstream is probably the world’s first blockchain beer. After it was revealed in 2016 that Heineken Ireland beer was being mislabelled and sold as local craft brews, Shane McCarthy of export distributor Ireland Craft Beer knew he had to do something.

He partnered with Arc-net, a Belfast-headquartered technology company that develops online platforms to manage food safety and authenticity, to launch Downstream beer. Each can of Downstream has a QR code printed on the side that can be scanned with a mobile phone. The code links you to the Downstream website, which shows you every step the beer has gone through.

“The blockchain offers an immutable record of events,” says McCarthy.

“We are beer nerds at heart and the ingredients in our cans are very high quality. We want to protect that by ensuring authenticity throughout the brewing, packaging and shipping process.”

Arc-net has also worked with Irish whiskey distillery Blackwater to track their production process, as well as Ardnamurchan, which bills itself as Scotland’s greenest distillery, to record details of a limited-edition release of spirit. They are also working on a project to track the rearing and transport of pork from Europe to China.

“From the birth of an animal, including its parentage, through its life, and shipping it to China, we record all events and can identify the product throughout. When it gets to China, buyers can scan the bar code, and can be sure it’s the same product that left the UK,” says Drew Lyall, general manager of Arc-net Scotland.

But while a distillery, brewery or pig farm would already have a system to manage its own internal records which could be repurposed for the blockchain, what makes Chetiyawardana’s Blocktail project so complex is the scale: the numerous ingredients in a cocktail involve multiple players who would all need to work together and agree to be completely transparent.

Getting brands on board has not been easy. While their fresh produce comes from their supplier, Natoora, who “personally know each farmer whose produce they sell”, the Mr Lyan team are still looking for a spirit producer that is “brave enough to bare all”, as Mark Low of Mr Lyan Studio, the company’s bar consulting arm, puts it.

“Often the biggest challenge is explaining why blockchain is needed in the first place, what it brings to the party,” says Robin Honhold, Chetiyawardana’s business partner. “The second biggest challenge is engaging suppliers in becoming a part of our blockchain; there is very little perceived incentive outside of a philanthropic gesture that challenges our norms.”

Nevertheless, they are only one or two ingredients away from having a fully realised chain.

“With the right partners it wouldn’t take much effort to reassure larger players that this is a truly viable formula,” says Honhold.

Blockchain technology has its downsides…

While blockchain’s potential to track provenance and boost food safety is appealing, critics have been quick to point out the technology’s pitfalls.

A quality often touted as proof of blockchain’s superiority is its immutability – once a transaction is recorded, it cannot be altered. But, in situations in which it is a company recording their own processes, there is no guarantee that the original information recorded is correct.

This takes trust, but it is still less trust required than when a brand makes claims of its environmental and social credentials with no public record of its behaviour.

Powering the blockchain is also a cause of concern. Last year, a specialist in bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency which runs on blockchain technology, estimated that the cryptocurrency gobbles 22 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year – almost the same as Ireland, and four times as much as Google. But more worrying is that this massive energy consumption is mostly fuelled by coal-fired power plants in China, where coal-based electricity is available at very low rates.

While private blockchains, such as the hyper-ledgers used by Arc-net, require a lot less energy, similar to cloud computing, a solution for the environmental costs of data storage is yet to be found.

“It would be great to see some innovation in this space,” says McCarthy. “Perhaps the waste products of brewing could be turned into a renewable energy source.”

Source: Luxury Launches

The post Blocktails are the New Cocktails: Blockchain Technology Is Pushing Boundaries first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

The post Blocktails are the New Cocktails: Blockchain Technology Is Pushing Boundaries appeared first on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

Choices, Choices
First up, location. With so many beaches, resorts and residentials around the world, you’re going to need to pick according to your needs. If scuba diving and vibrant coral reefs are the ideal, then get yourself on a long haul flight abroad. One great way to make sure there’s a spot on the plain white sand for you is to go outside of the summer holidays. That way there’ll be fewer families on the roam. If this isn’t possible for you, no problem – just make sure you book in advance.

All-inclusive vs. Self-cater
Once you’ve got your heart (and or suitcase) set on a particular destination, it’s time to think about the practical side of things. The more you’ve got planned before you leave, the less stress will be waiting for you when you arrive. Do you speak the language? Do you have friends or relatives nearby in case of an emergency? Make sure you’ve got travel insurance booked in, the flights sorted and the food planned. That way, the ocean and the drinks can be your only concern.

The alternative is a self-serve situation, one that involves either a lot of home cooking or a lot of eating out. That’s not necessarily a negative, but for those with specific dietary requirements, eating out all the time can certainly make life a little difficult. These days, though, takeout companies all over the world offering vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options and if you leave just one pair of shoes behind you’ll have space for protein-rich nuts and seeds.

Beach Safety
Greece, the Caribbean, the South of France or Portugal. Wherever you are, in whatever ocean, on whatever coast, safety comes first. A beach holiday might be about relaxation, but it’s hard to make the most of paradise if you end up hurt. Wear sunscreen every day, no exceptions. There are mineral brands that can help to prevent breakouts if that’s any concern, as well as specific creams for even the most sensitive of skins.

Make sure you stay hydrated too (not just with cocktails), that you research the local wildlife and that you pay attention to any lifeguards that might be in the area. Once all that’s said and down, feel free to relax. That’s what a beach holiday is all about, after all!

Source: Luxury Launches

The post How to Make the Most of a Beach Vacation first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

The post How to Make the Most of a Beach Vacation appeared first on Aspire Luxury Magazine.