Statement of Witness: Deliver us from (G)innocence

 The Tasting Session's Flickr Photostream / Jacqueline Chang Photography

SHOREDITCH POLICE DEPARTMENT: TRANSCRIPT OF STATEMENT

Statement of: Gin Lane Ladies

Age: Erm, twenty-something (honest)

Date: 11/05/2010

Location: Shoreditch Town Hall

Lady 1: Look, all I remember is this. I took the 78 bus to Shoreditch Town Hall, where I met one of my trusted Gin Lane companions and entered.  No, not via the main entrance, it was the basement.

Lady 2: We were in this room and the clocks and the pictures on the walls were all sideways, and there were eggs filled with asparagus and duck on sticks and Cazadores Tequila everywhere.

L1: And even a chocolate with a shot of tequila embedded in it.

L2: Yeah that was amazing… but then it got weirder. A funny hairy chap appeared, maybe he was a centaur... Anyway he was holding two apples and babbling about an angry queen. He convinced us to follow him through a cabinet in the wall into a wintery wonderland where we drank the finest Appleton Estate Rum and ate teenie tiny rum-spiked ice creams. Then the hairy fellow led us further into the darkness where we were met Snow White…

L1: Well technically Mr. Snow White. He showed us how not to make apple pies but how to eat the most perfect whiskey chocolates and gave us all a shot of the oakiest whiskey that's ever passed our lips.

L2: As if this weren't enough, next we were led to a room where a wolf kissed a girl and we all drank Meantime beer.  Then we were led into an enchanted forest where gin flavoured chocolates grew in cages from a literary apple tree.

L1: She's right, there was gin everywhere, but not normal gin... this gin was made from apples from the organic cider apples from the fields of Chase Distillery and made the most marvellous mini martinis, and boozy-jelly-worms.

L2: The last thing I remember is snorting some sort of (chocolate) powder in the toilets. I think there was a Big Brother contestant there.

L1: We didn’t want to do it, but they convinced us. It was peer pressure. And I suppose maybe we wanted to look cool.  Look, we're sorry.  Please don't tell our mothers.

L2: I'm sorry officer but we promise we’re telling the truth. Honestly, it was something called the Tasting Sessions: Deliver us from Innocence, cooked up by the ladies who were behind Towards A Fluid State, it’s their fault.

L1: Yeah, and Damian Allsop is the man responsible for all of the chocolates

L2: You should check The Tasting Sessions' website for the next session if you don't believe us.

Towards a Drunken State

We've seen the future, and the future is in Dalston.

Well, at least for one night this weekend it was anyhow.  Off up the Kingsland Road we ventured on Saturday night to Towards a Fluid State; a food and drink experience held in an ex-motor something or other, complete with exposed brickwork, slightly frightening alley entrance and a glorious feel of the unfinished which we ladies find so very appealing.

In its essence, Towards a Fluid State is a trade fair, but this is a far from accurate description.  Are you welcomed to The Good Food Show by 6'5" harajuku-style drag queens?  Do you have the pleasure of watching rather niche, semi-naked performance art at Taste London?  No, of course not.  And that's because to draw comparisons between these fluorescent-lit-forty-something-fests and Towards a Fluid State is ridiculous.

As you wander through the venue, you can stop off at various points of your journey for a 'fluid encounter' - which, by the way, we feel is a charming new term for getting off one's tits.  These encounters were each based around matching a boozy drink (sake, cognac, wine, whiskey and GIN) with taster-sized morsels of the highest quality foods, from foodmongers such as Saf, La Fromagerie and Bacchus to name but a few.

Now, I wish I could tell you much, much more about the standard of the sake or the credibility of the cognac, but truth be told as soon as the words 'gin room' hit my eardrums that was where I was.  And what better place to spend an evening, surrounded by a good old-fashioned feast prepared by Bacchus (pork belly stuffed with black pudding, roast chicken, roast potatoes, meat-in-meat-in-meat), being ladled glasses of Hot Gin Punch by the wonderful Sam from Sipsmith while the air was gently filled with baroque loveliness from live harp and flute.  This was all followed by a 'Reverse Gimlet' using Haymans' new 1820 Gin Liqueur, and a superb molecular gin cocktail made by none other than JJ Goodman of London Cocktail Club, which used Williams Chase Distillery's brand new apple based gin, which launched that very day! 

Towards a Fluid State is the brainchild of Hayley Sudbury and Angella Newell of The Tasting Sessions, and we certainly cannot wait for what they come up with next.