Is ice really “a thing”, as the kids say today, asks JONATHAN MARGOLIS at the launch of a new teardrop-shaped mould aimed at whisky lovers.
It can come as no revelation to sophisticated readers that luxury companies try quite hard to get a mention of their products in How To Spend It. We, on your behalf, pride ourselves on remaining unmoved, focusing on product and product only.
Even so, it was hard not to be curious about the day Chivas Regal put on for journalists recently to announce an unspecified product. A fleet of Ferraris picked us up at our homes and took us to The London Heliport. From there, we were choppered to Farnborough Airport for a private jet to Aberdeen, and driven by bus (but a nice bus) to the Chivas distillery. The itinerary would later take us for lunch at a Chivas-owned country house, back to Aberdeen, jet‑helicopter-Ferrari again, to The Connaught for cocktails, followed by dinner at Angela Hartnett’s Café Murano on St James’s Street.
But on the way to Aberdeen, we were still trying to work out just what Chivas was so keen to tell us/you about. Even after a wonderful tour of the quirky old distillery, there was still no clue. Then, over lunch, we were introduced to Paolo Pininfarina, CEO of Pininfarina Extra, part of the Turin design company behind so many legendary Italian cars, and all was revealed. We were here for the announcement of a revolutionary new ice cube.
Chivas and Pininfarina had long been brand partners, we learned, but now Pininfarina had developed a new shape for ice and a new press (second picture) for making it. The new shape, not a cube at all, was developed in a wind-tunnel, Mr P explained, following his curiosity about how the wind shapes ice.
The Pininfarina take on ice is an enormous, fat teardrop (third picture). It is made by putting a rough lump of ice into an ice press, a heavy, no-moving-parts machine which uses gravity alone to press down on the lump. Pressure, of course, melts ice, and within a remarkably short time – a minute or so in my later tests – everything melts apart from a perfect pear-shaped drop just the right size for a whisky glass and, for promotional purposes, with a big, embossed 18, to remind you that whatever whisky you put the ice in, it’s supposed to be Chivas Regal 18, a rich and multilayered blend that includes over 20 of Scotland’s rarest single malt Scotch whiskies.
From my first sip of Chivas 18 containing a Pininfarina ice-drop, it was evident that they were onto something. Think about it, and traditional ice cubes do rather jostle around in your drink and can bump into your nose. Not so a single giant, glass-height ice‑blob. It sits in the glass delightfully symmetrical and smoothly formed, clinking in a manly sort of way and with no impertinent nose-butting. Practical issues aside, the Pininfarina ice looks beautiful, a feeling that, I have to confess, grows on you when you’re into your second glass.
Nonetheless, I wondered if this whole hoohah was entirely serious. Is ice really, as the kids today say, “a thing”? Over the remainder of our day we were to discover that it most assuredly is. I realised this at The Connaught later when we were treated to a cocktail masterclass by 29-year-old barman Micah Melton, who is beverage director at The Aviary bar in Chicago (the Italian Stallion cocktail, first picture), where up to 37 types of ice are on offer, from flavoured ones (raspberry liqueur, crab apple, orange, sherry) to crushed ice – perfect crushed ice (made in a special mat to ensure each tiny spherelet is the same size – handchipped shards, abstract chunks, perfect spheres (fourth picture) and now, Chivas teardrops.
Melton (a rather good name for an ice professional) was on Chivas’s dollar at The Connaught, but I caught up with him later by phone in Chicago. So is the Chivas teardrop a serious advance in ice, I asked?
“Yes, it’s cool to have someone think differently about the scene and be inspired,” he said. “We now offer it and people are blown away. It’s aesthetically pleasing, especially since it’s perfectly clear.”
Getting ice to be clear is a thing, too. Melton refers those who want to buy the £275 home version of the Chivas press to check out Alcademics.com, which has a big ice section explaining ways to achieve clarity. I also spoke to Gary Sharpen of British magazine The Cocktail Lovers. At the Chivas event, I detected a touch of scepticism when he referred to Melton’s perfect-sphere mat as “a solution to a problem we didn’t know we had”. But he is all for the new ice.
“For me it’s a logical extension of big ice spheres, which arrived about six years ago from Japan,” Sharpen says. “It does a very similar job, but the teardrop shape gives it another dimension. I do like the iceberg effect of it being partially submerged. Drinking a quality whisky like a top-of-the-range Chivas with the teardrop and a really good rocks glass make it a really elegant ritual. There’s also science behind it. The teardrop presents a far smaller surface area of ice to the whisky, so while it still cools the drink efficiently, less of it melts and the spirit doesn’t get watered down and lose flavour.”
To borrow another modern buzz phrase: who knew?
JONATHAN MARGOLIS
