In which our correspondents, Larry and Larman, find that progress can still be served over ice…
There are certain words that act as lodestars for men of taste. Mahogany. Leather. Whisky. And, in Larman’s case, exclusive. So, when I told him that The Ned was opening its fabled Library Bar to the public — for the first time, mind — in celebration of Old Fashioned Month, his eyebrow performed a neat pirouette of interest.
“Open to the public?” he said, with the faintest suspicion of scandal, “How terribly democratic. Shall we?”
And so, one fog-smudged November evening, we descended into the grand marble belly of The Ned — that Art Deco dream of old banking wealth, where every surface gleams as though perpetually expecting the arrival of Cary Grant. The Library Bar, normally the preserve of members and their better-dressed companions, is an ode to clubland elegance: velvet armchairs and Italian marble, low lamplight designed to flatter both complexion and confession.
This month, though, it plays host to The Old Fashioned Edit — a collaboration between Woodford Reserve and The Ned’s Head of Bars, George Simmons. Together they’ve created a quartet of era-inspired takes on the venerable cocktail, tracing its evolution from 1810s refinement to 2020s sophistication.
“I shall take the earlier centuries,” Larman announced, hanging his coat as though he were entering a gentlemen’s library rather than a bar. “History, after all, is my métier.” “Then I’ll have the modern ones,” I replied. “Someone has to represent progress.”
We began with Versailles and Sunday Morning Call. Larman’s Versailles arrived glowing amber in a regal martini coupe, garnished with a pickled grape like a relic from some forgotten picnic. A blend of Woodford Reserve, Calvados and Pineau des Charentes, it tasted, he said, “like the sort of thing Byron might have ordered before leaving a dinner party early.”
Meanwhile, I found myself in more modern territory. The Sunday Morning Call, a 1990s-inspired concoction with cocoa, coffee and amaretto, invoking a hangover before I’d taken a sip. “It tastes like my gap year in liquid form,” I noted. It was nostalgia in a glass, a throwback to experimenting with espresso martinis. “You spent your gap year in Guildford,” said Larman. “Exactly,” I replied,“lots of coffee and questionable decisions.”
Around us, the Library Bar hummed. At one table, a pair of suited City types leaned conspiratorially over their drinks; at another, a couple in matching sweaters murmured appreciatively about the lighting. The air carried that low, woody perfume that only bourbon and ambition can produce.
Larman’s second, the Empresses of Seventh Avenue, was a different creature entirely; a smoky 1940s number evoking post-war Manhattan — all corn, demerara and confidence. “Ah,” he announced with a sip, “now this is a cocktail with its trousers properly pressed.”
With it came my New Fashioned, an iteration for the 21st century. Cherry, date, cardamom and orange oils giving it a worldly, border-hopping confidence, but beautifully blended, seamlessly blending influences. “This,” I said, “is the sort of drink that’s picked up a few stamps on its passport and learned how to order dinner in four languages.” Larman looked pained. “You’re forcing the metaphors now, Larry, let’s just enjoy the drink, shall we?”
As we compared notes — Larman declaring for the Empresses (“if for the name alone”), me for the New Fashioned — it was clear that the Old Fashioned isn’t a drink so much as a dialogue between eras. Tradition talking to innovation, over ice.
Elizabeth McCall, Woodford Reserve’s Master Distiller, calls the Old Fashioned a ‘cultural icon’, and she’s not wrong. It’s the little black dress of mixology — eternally appropriate, flattering to all, impossible to improve upon, and yet always reinvented.
We left The Ned feeling just the right side of rakish, the City lights glinting off wet cobblestones, each of us quietly plotting a return before the month is out. Because, as Larman put it, buttoning his coat with a scholar’s gravity: “Some institutions, like the Old Fashioned itself, old chap, are best revisited often. For research purposes, naturally.”
The Old Fashioned Edit runs until 23rd November at The Ned’s Library Bar. Cocktails are £16 each and available from 5pm. For once, you don’t need to be a member to drink like one.
Photography by Harvey Williams-Fairley
