Coming your way, this summer: the Cocktail Bootcamp, an on-the-road and super practical cocktail masterclass – that seriously overused phrase, especially in the business of drinks promotion, marketing and all round quackery, is actually, in the wizard-like hands of Monkey Shoulder’s global ambassoder and renowned cocktail maestro, Dean Callan, exactly what it says on the tin: a really useful lesson in the art of cocktail making. What follows is a little pre-show snifter, exercised in the suitably bizarre ambience of Artillery Lane’s The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town. This is not a joke.

Accessed by way of a passphrase (‘I’ve come about the Mayor’ – it’s no secret), a giant Madmenish fridge door and a neon pointer that simply says Thrills, The Mayor, a proper little cocktail bar, its fridge and early twentieth century customised wierdery the retro icing on an otherwise down to earth cake, was briefly, last Thursday, and for the express purpose of our pleasure and learning, transformed into a Very Tasty Alcoholic Drinks classroom: that is, a bench, a table, a shaker, a bottle of whisky, some premade lemon and pineapple mixers, a strainer, a pitcher of ice, bowls of fruit, Angostura Bitters, a swizzle, a mercifully short slideshow and a whole bunch of other things subsequently memory-shredded by the lesson’s practical.

Right, down to brass tacks. Ostensibly (and really) about shedding the elitist humbug that masquerades as the cutting edge of today’s cocktail industry, Cocktail Bootcamp is also a giant nod in the direction of Triple Malt Monkey Shoulder, which is fine, not only because its banker, William Grant & Sons, possesses more than enough of a wallet to follow a major idea through, but also because, as Callen implies, it is a whisky well suited to sharing glass space. Neutral, he calls it, but in a good, subtle kind of a way, the combined strengths of spice, vanilla and soap making for a triple that is strong and quiet and kind – not the sort to bully a mixer.

Which is not to say, of course, that everything went super swimmingly – not at least when the (re)making of a perfectly modelled cocktail is placed in the hands of a student who, perhaps in more straightforward times, might have been earmarked as the one who never shuts the fuck up – behind closed (staffroom) doors, that is. Anyroad, while I did indeed make a simply dreadful Old Fashioned, and finished off by turning the summery pineapple sweet Monkey Swizzle into a toothless and sour old dog, I most humbly submit that, when Callen tasted my Jam Sour, he said, Boom!, which means, I think, really bloody brilliant.

So, to finish. Tips: One, load up with ice. To the top and over. Why? Science things about melting and diluting. Just do it. Two, if you’re holding a cocktail party, and you want the drinks to taste as good at the end (and in the middle) as they did at the beginning, prepare your mixers beforehand – when sober. Three, attend one of Callen’s classes: these ones (some of them) are free and worth any problem you can think of.

Cocktail Bootcamps: Manchester – Apotheca Bar, 16 and 17 June; Edinburgh – Bon Vivant Bar, 17 and 18 July; and London (London Cocktail Week) – Venue TBC, 9 – 11 October. Sign up by emailing [email protected]

Recipes

Monkey Shoulder Old Fashioned

Monkey Shoulder Jam Sour

Monkey Swizzle