No. 10 - Mezcal Margarita, Valentine Schlegel, Jumbi
A mini-margarita, an under-the-radar French artist and a record bar in Peckham
Mezcal Margarita - Whitebox
Whitebox’s Negroni in a can from No. 7 piqued my interest in the rest of their range. So first up is their Mezcal Margarita, a collab between White Box, Clapton Craft and Pensador, who supply the mezcal. Margarita’s have a somewhat disputed history, with Mexican, Texan and even Irish bartenders attributed as the inventors. I’m guessing most people would imagine Mexico when ordering one though. Perhaps last week’s cringe-fest Mexican week Bake-Off was the result of the show’s producers tucking into a few too many of them over a brainstorming sesh.
Onto the tasting! To honour the contents - Pensador is a pretty serious mezcal - I set this up properly. Lime round the glass rim. Dipped in sea salt. Lots of ice. Garnished with a couple of lime slices. Learning nothing from my experience with Whitebox’s Negroni, I took a large, end-of-the-day glug. “Oof”. Again I’m shocked at the potency of these little marvels. A hit of smoky, earthy, sour citrus and the fine flakes of salt. Wakes up tired tastebuds. I set the glass down and give it a swirl to melt the ice and mellow the experience a little. Which works a treat. As the smokiness of the mezcal subsides it all melds together gloriously. It’s deeply refreshing, but complex in taste, and as all good cocktails should be, dangerously more-ish. Another winner from Whitebox!
Nothing quite lifts the spirits like a wickedly strong summery cocktail on a drizzly, weekday evening in autumnal London*. I heartily recommend this and their Negroni. I used to be adamant that the best things you could buy in London for £6.00 were Tayyabs Lamb Chops. Said lamb chops are I’m sure still excellent, but are now £9.50. Inflation eh?! So they’re out of the running, and these pocket cocktails are £5.50. My new under £6.00 champs!
Available here.
Valentine Schlegel
Instagram gets a bad rep as a time-sucking, consumerist vortex setting unrealistic life ambitions for those succumbing to the scroll. Not to mention the creepy habit it has of showing you adverts for things you’ve talked about near your phone. I’m not sold on the denial by the folks at Meta that they don’t use microphone access to target ads to you. But anyway, moving on…
It can be all these things and yet still a great place for discovery. I came across Valentine Schlegel via Yuthanan, (Nicholas Yuthanan Chalmeau) a half-French, half-Thai stylist, photographer and designer based in Tokyo. As you’d expect for someone with such an international background, he has catholic taste. So when he popped up some photos a few weeks of some intriguing looking ceramics, I dug a little deeper, and liked what I saw.
Valentine was born in Sète in the South of France in 1925 and worked between there and Paris. Over her life she produced everything from ceramics to wooden cutlery, sandals and leather bags, all inspired by her Mediterranean birthplace. But she became best known, among those lucky few in the know, for her fireplaces and interior installations - somewhat difficult to display in museums. Made with wire frames and then plastered, they seem to me like having a little bit of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp in your home. Her ceramics remind me of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
Have a quick scroll through Google images here to get an idea of her work, and these articles give quick summaries of her work and life - here and here.
One nice snippet I found in my reading was that she was famous for her ability to sleep almost anywhere. An exhibition inspired by her work was named “This Woman Could Sleep in Water”, uttered by a local fisherman friend to sum up her laid-back attitude to life. She also had a double-sided sign on her studio reading ‘Je dors/Je travaille’ (I’m sleeping/I’m working), after which a book on her work is named.
Jumbi, Peckham
Jumbi is a recently opened hi-fi bar and music venue in Peckham Rye. Set up by two locals, Nathanael Williams and Bradley Zero, whose entire record collection you can see in the racks there. As you enter, through a warren of alleys behind the Bussey building, you can see the focus of the space, as the stacks of vinyl tower ceiling-ward, framed by two speaker stacks and decks in front. Tables set out in the space during the day are cleared away in the evening to give space for dancing.
On our visit last Saturday the place was packed with a friendly, trendy, but not achingly so crowd skewing late-twenties to mid-thirties - this is something I notice these days as I’m in the tail-end of that latter decade! With a licence until midnight it’s never going to be a fully raucous club experience, but as the evening went on and the DJ toured us through an eclectic mix of tunes, it was definitely a good spot for a dance. And the vinyl sounded great through the sound system - warm, punchy and loud, but not deafening. Well-worth the trip, and hopefully, along with other record focused bars popping up across town, the start of a bigger trend.
More info here.
*Please drink responsibly.