The Wild Drink Blog

I’ve just been to Amsterdam on my stag weekend.

The reason I gave no warning about this was because I didn’t know that I was going until I was actually there. Yes - my lovely brothers and friends kidnapped me, put me in a dress then  blindfolded me and put an ipod + ear defenders on me. I was then walked, driven and flown around until 6 hours later the blindfold was taken off and I was sitting in a bar in Amsterdam*.

I’m quite clearly not going to go into all the details of the trip, as some of it would be enough to make a grown man cry, but I will share a couple of educationally orientated drink excursions we took.

Pat, my brother had collected together a few interesting distillery and brewery visits for us to take a look at in between drinking games. The first one which we visited was the Lucas Bols Museum.

Now I have never been a huge fan of Bols products, their sweet fruit and herbal liqueurs are usually a little synthetic and in my experience the french alternatives are a lot better. I was however very intrigued to see how the museum would look, because whether I like it or not Bols claim to have setup their distillery in 1575 making it the oldest in the world and because I knew that their roots were firmly planted in the gin predecessor, Genever.

Fortunately we were in for a treat. The museum had been renovated very recently and both the content and media in which it’s put across are top notch. Touch screen computers in every room with interactive history lessons about Bols, smell testing of every one of the Bols range, interactive taste testing, record your own flair video, IMAX style cinema screen, there were also large ‘flight’ style draws containing order books, recipes and old samples.

After the tour you are invited to the Bols bar where you can claim a free genever cocktail. Before we get there i’ll just quickly run over a few genever facts for anyone that’s interested:

Genever [yen-aver] is distilled spirit from Netherlands and Belgium made using malt wine spirit flavoured with herbs and spices (including juniper). Bols make three types of genever:

• Oude (Old) - which is not aged but means the older recipe of low quantities of malt wine and high aromatics.

• Jonge (Young) - being the newer recipe of very light aromatics bordering on vodka.

• Corenwyn (Corn Wine) - 51% malt wine and aged, tastes a bit like a very light whisky mixed with gin.

All of the cocktails in the bar are based around genever with the addition of Bols liqueurs to add some fruit. We were given the option on a touch screen computer to choose between light and fruity, strong and heavy etc. style drinks, then you can choose your specific cocktail and a slip is printed which you must present at the bar.

I have to say that the drinks were very well thought out, lots of citrus juice to combat the sweetness of the liqueurs, but overall balanced and tasty. I went for a drink called VOC which contained old genever and green tea liqueur… I can’t remember what VOC stands for though because the barmaid set about giving us lots of samples to try and by the end I was quite tipsy - not bad for €10.

Most people who read this site have an interest in drink in one way or another, some coffee, some spirits & beer, I would recommend though that anyone who is in Amsterdam visit the Bols Museum, we had a few guys in our team with little knowledge of spirits but they loved it.

All photos including Flickr set taken by Chris Philp.

*Yes, I was sitting in a bar in Amsterdam, though it was an Irish bar and I spent 30 minutes convinced by the other guys that I was in Dublin…