Today is the first proper day of London Cocktail Week and having managed to secure myself a special pass I've booked into lots of trade talks and seminars.

Today's talk is on 'The Magic of Maturation' i.e. how different methods of maturing alcohol have different effects. It was an interesting discussion and the differences in the flavours of the drinks depending on what they'd been stored in (i.e. wood, glass, steel etc) was really apparent as was more specific details such as what type of barrel, if it was new or previously used etc.

During the talk some guys from Bramble Bar in Scotland discussed barrel aging cocktails, that is making up cocktails and leaving them to sit. The one we tried was an Affinity cocktail and the differences between the fresh and aged ones were very noticable. Not only do they age the cocktail but they then bottle and seal it adding a label with the date of barreling, unbarreling and bottling. It's then served in the bottle for you to drink and add ice etc to your choosing.

Seeing as you can do the aging in glass or stainless steel containers I'm tempted to root out my thermos flask and give one a go...

Before leaving I took advantage of the bar and tried a Morello Cherry Sour. I'm not usually a fan of whiskey (or whisky- whether it has an 'e' in the name or not depends on its country of origin) but in a sour I love it.

On the way home I was pleased to find myself walking past Dezeen Space, which I had been reading about and wanted to vist but not actually got around to looking up the address. The reason I wanted to visit was to see these incredible watch sculptures by Dominic Wilcox. You can see the watches in motion here but the pop-up shop will be open until the 16th October if you get a chance to visit they're worth seeing in real-life.