Brace yourselves for London Cocktail Week at Covent Garden | Festival review

London Cocktail Week is a unique celebration of our capital’s unrivalled cocktail culture. Through a host of seminars, pop-up bars, tastings, parties and master classes, aimed at both novices and the discerning experienced professionals. This year, the festival’s events will be held in a concentrated area of London – the historic and beautiful Seven Dials, Covent Garden. 

The “pop-up” Cocktail Week Kettle One Hub based at 15 Short Gardens, Seven Dials is the central hub for where cocktail-goers meet to collect their wristbands, which allows them access to a wide scope of brilliant bars taking part in the capital. These can be purchased there and then for £10 but at £4 purchased online, it’s a steal. You can sign up here.

From here you can head out armed with your guide to a mix of high-end luxury hotels, underground bars, retail spaces and exclusive members clubs, which will be buzzing with tastings, master classes, pop-up shops and cocktail parties. All venues will be offering £4 cocktails throughout the week, which is music to our ears since reasons why people don’t drink them that often is because of the £12 hit to your wallet or going for the “happy hour” cocktails which can result in watered down, over sugary death traps. 

A Cocktail Week is not complete without fun-filled tours, including downloadable maps of areas in London and with free rides on vintage routemaster buses to make it easier to cross the city. With an extensive list of events to take part in from making your own gin at The Ginstitute, sampling Smatt’s Rum & Ice Cream shack cocktails, to learning about Zubrowka bison grass vodka from mixologist experts and tasting Talisker whisky paired with oysters, there’s something for everyone. The list and creativity are endless. 

We had our first taste at The Cocktail Week shop; it was one of their beautifully presented short elderflower cocktails served in a brass kettle, smoking out puffs of iced air, looking quite magical, a spectacle in itself!  With subtle floral hints and the arousing punch of alcohol aftertaste, it’s a snippet of the standard of cocktails available during the week.  Highly recommended to give it a go. Drink responsibly (we sometimes forget this) and enjoy! 

Selina Periampillai

For further information on tickets and events visit the London Cocktail Week website here.