Cocktails will make a Mint

I keep hearing lots about Mint Leaf. The new restaurant and bar just off Shaftesbury Avenue in London has had a fair bit of press since it opened at the end of June - most of it directed towards the food and the interior. But people just keep banging on about the cocktails. "Ooh, you must try the Vanilla Vodka Sour," urged Dawn Davies, head sommelier and wine buyer at the Boxwood Café in Knightsbridge.

And where did Jonathan Downey take Audrey Saunders for a cocktail one Friday night recently? Yep, Mint Leaf. Downey, in case you don't know, is the man behind London's hippest and hottest cocktail joints, Match bars, and Saunders is the shaker-wielding beverage director at the legendary Bemelman's Bar in the Carlyle hotel, New York. Praise indeed, then.

"Yeah, I heard they were in," says general manager Gerard McCann. McCann, you see, used to run another legendary cocktail and restaurant spot, Che, before it was sold this summer, and so did half his team - including crack bartenders Danny Smith and Mark Pratt.

Mint Leaf does have more than a ring of Hakkasan about it - it has a similar wenge wood boxed-off dining area and long, dramatically lit bar (with 540 bottles, no less). And where Hakkasan whiffs of orchids, Mint Leaf wafts incense - joss-sticks burn continuously. Plus, the celebrity count is on a par - US actor Matthew Perry (of Friends) celebrated the London opening night of his stage play Sexual Perversity in Chicago in here.

Then there's the cocktails, which are every bit as good as those at Hakkasan. I tried three: A Burst of Mint (Wyborowa muddled with fresh mint, sugar, lime juice and orange bitters, served with crushed ice and topped up with vanilla liqueur); Blackcurrant and Apple Bison (Zubrowka, fresh lime, Chambord, blackcurrant pur‚e with apple juice, shaken and served long); and finally that Vanilla Vodka Sour (vanilla-infused Wyborowa, shaken with fresh lemon and lime juices and sugar syrup).

"We make our own vanilla vodka," says Pratt, who has done time with cocktail legend Gilberto Pretti at Duke's hotel, and at the Lanesborough, both in London. Three Madagascan vanilla pods are scored down the middle and added to the house vodka, Wyborowa. "But don't leave them in there for more than three weeks - the flavour turns," says Pratt.

There are more than 100 cocktails on the list, about 40 of them being unique to Mint Leaf, although some are Che favourites that the boys have brought with them. What's hot right now? "We're selling Watermelon Martinis like they're going out of fashion," says Pratt. And both the Burst of Mint and the Vanilla Vodka Sour are also selling well, he reports.

I asked Pratt for his spirit predictions. "Vodka is still number one, obviously, though we're getting a lot of requests for rum," he says. "And Tequila and Bourbon are beginning to come through, which is good."

From this week, you can now just have a drink at Mint Leaf. "We opened with a restaurant licence to ease ourselves in gently," explains McCann. Not that the earlier licence made a difference to bookings - it was heaving then (with lots of men, oddly) and it will heave now.

Shorts

Oaking around Glenlivet has been testing oak finishes for its latest launch - the Glenlivet French Oak Finish 1983. Three years ago master distiller Jim Cryle set aside some of Glenlivet's finest 1983 to mature in Limousin oak. The result? "It adds those rich, yet delicate flavours so prized by wine and Cognac producers," he says. There are 800 bottles available.

For more information, visit www.theglenlivet.com.

The future is… sake
Kazu Yamazaki believes that sake is not only a drink to wash down traditional Japanese food, but also something that pairs well with modern Western European and US cuisine - "even chocolate", declares the president of the Japan Prestige Sake Association. To prove it, he has been taking some of his country's finest sakes to some of the world's top restaurants, the most recent being Rubicon in San Francisco.

Chef Dennis Leary came up with a six-course menu last week to match Yamazaki's line-up. Dishes included late summer vegetables with broiled tuna belly, baby clams and purslane, with Wakatake Daiginjo "Onikoroshi" (Shizuoka); Sonoma duck roasted in orange leaves with chanterelles and a cr‚pinette of pig's trotter and foie gras, with Narutotai "Genshu" (Tokushima); and poire belle h‚lŠne, Rubicon-style, with Hanahato "Kijoshu" aged sake, eight-year-old (Hiroshima).

Apparently, top US sommelier Roger Dagorn of New York's Chanterelle restaurant was so inspired after a tasting with Yamazaki that he has become known throughout the country as the sake sommelier.

An apple a day…
Top Polish vodka Wyborowa has added a new apple-flavoured variety to its range. With a 40% abv rating, it's made from natural fruit infusions using apples grown near the distillery and "demineralised underground spring water", and is the only vodka in the world produced from 100% rye grain, which is then triple-distilled. Try the Appletini - 40ml Wyborowa Apple and 20ml Vermouth, served in a chilled martini glass and garnished with an apple peel twist.