The Spirits: booze your way around London's boroughs

Richard Godwin's cocktail adventures take him to the "32 Londoners" event at the London Eye tonight
Richard Godwin26 June 2015

A few years ago, the American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens announced he would make a concept album for each of the 50 states in the Union. He ticked off Michigan and Illinois before falling silent and finally making excuses about the other 48. Some fans of psycho-geographical folk-rock have never got over their disappointment.

So I congratulate Duncan McRae of Hendrick’s for accomplishing the London bartending equivalent of this epic task.

He has assigned a cocktail to each of London’s 32 administrative boroughs — trying to capture something of their character through the medium of gin, our city’s municipal spirit.

They will be served tonight at “32 Londoners”, an event at the London Eye which will see all 32 pods of the pleasure wheel given over to lectures on great Londoners (Chaucer, Bazalgette, etc) by slightly less great Londoners (Livingstone, Elms, etc).

I confess I misread the line-up at first and delighted at the prospect of hearing the consumptive Romantic John Keats assessing the legacy of Sir Andrew Motion high over the Thames — until I realised it was the other way, prosaically, around.

Still, it should be fun — and if you’re lucky, you’ll get Kate Kray (ex-wife of Ronnie) talking about her gangster papa, or Claire Tomalin on Samuel Pepys.

All of these great London figures have contributed something to our image of London as both Babel and Babylon, urban paradise and Great Stink, home of all human life and plenty of animal spirits.

Still, it takes a special type of mind to draw out the peculiar souls of Havering or Harrow, or to contrast the zeitgeists of Bexley and Bromley. How many of us even notice as we pass from Haringey to Hackney?

In gin terms, Greenwich, in honour of its maritime traditions, gets the Gimlet, which was invented by British naval officers.

Kingston upon Thames, site of the Sopwith Factory and birthplace of the Hurricane fighter, is graced with an Aviation. There are even bespoke concoctions for the crimeless suburbs of Sutton (a Sutton Sour) and the lawns of Merton (a Wimbledon-inspired strawberries and cream cocktail called Anyone For Tennis).

I was intrigued to see what McRae had made of Enfield, the birthplace of Bruce Forsyth, Amy Winehouse and me. It derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon word for lamb, apparently — and is thus awarded a sort of gin fizz scented with rosemary and mint, traditional accompaniments to the meat. A tribute to the essayist Charles Lamb, who used to live near Edmonton Green station, too?

Still, somehow this just doesn’t quite bring my childhood rushing back. To my memory, the borough smells not of lamb but of Esso garages and Benson & Hedges, Emporio Armani aftershave and magnolia trees, antiseptic and Calippo lollies. Then again, I suppose we make these little corners of London as much as they make us.

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