There’s a reason The Dorchester – or the ‘Dorch’, for those of us that know her well – has sat at the pinnacle of the London hotel scene for nearly a century. It’s not simply its location on Park Lane, nor the feeling you get as you arrive – from the well-groomed doorman to the massive display of fresh flowers in that immaculate lobby lounge – that you’re entering somewhere special, every time. It is, in a word, timeless.
Indeed, it is the very definition of timelessness. It just doesn’t go out of fashion. More’s the point, you come to The Dorchester not because it’s the latest ‘must do’, it doesn’t need to follow fashions – if anything, it sets them – you come because you’ll get something special. What they do, they do very well. So, when they have something new to offer, you know it’s going to be exceptional – even if you’re just ‘popping in’ after a day at the office.
Bars aplenty launch new drinks lists, mixologists go mad for the opportunity to create a new menu and, amid many misfires, the occasional ones cut through – but there are precious few places that, when they do it, make you sit up and take notice. One such place is the Vesper Bar at the Dorch (ahem).
Sat beneath a 1930s Palladium leaf ceiling, and in the company of a series of Cecil Beaton portraits, there are fewer places I’d rather be for Martini hour than in this recently-renovated nod to a former guest in the 1940s, one Ian Fleming – add to that the new menu and this becomes far more than a simple post-work snifter.
With a brief to ‘celebrate the connection between scents and memories’, the bar team, led by bar manager Lucia Montanelli and head bartender Denise Elisei, have crafted a list of cocktails that heightens the senses by reflecting on experiences and emotions, notably those triggered by aromas.
Each member of the team has come up with a cocktail personal to them, and the results are as extraordinary as they are delightful. Think of mushroom foraging in the forest, salty sea air from summers on a boat, picking berries on country lanes, nostalgic childhood birthday cakes, thunderstorms, and leather-bound library books. With imaginative and creative mixology, the cocktails play on the senses, with scents and aromas evoking an experience and bringing that memory to life.
So, my end-of-week tipple became something of an evening, triggering my own trip through times gone by. Morning Sunshine seemed a fitting opener, celebrating the beginning of spring. It plays not just on scents, but light, namely when the morning sunlight catches something to cast a splendid rainbow over the room. In this case, served in a tumbler of coloured mosaic glass on an uplit coaster to create that refraction, it features Enemigo Blanco tequila and Genever, and a subtle burst of fruits including lychee and kiwi, with hints of aromas of jasmine and magnolia.
I continued on the seasonal theme and what immediately resonated was Sunkissed Summers. Designed to evoke a boat trip to Capri in the heat of Italian summer, it’s long drink of Seatrus gin and tangy rhubarb ‘sea water’, capped with an aloe vera foam for those top notes. It felt like sherbert in a glass. As we crave summer after a drawn-out and damp winter, I could see it easily replacing the Aperol spritz as the signature sundowner.
An equally delightful alternative, to close out the evening, is met in Turning Pages, which speaks to being tucked away in the corner of an antique library; the musty, sweet scents of leather-bound books resonant in Jack Daniels single barrel whiskey, cognac, white port, paper syrup and smoke. ‘Paper’ syrup? Smoke? Didn’t I say these are drinks designed to transport you, figuratively and literally.
Like any memory that becomes timeless, particularly when conjured up from a sensorial association, these new cocktails at the Vesper Bar look set to become as timeless as the hotel itself. There are eleven in total, for which I can’t wait to return and see where else they take me.
The new cocktail list launches on 26 April and will sit alongside Vesper Bar’s signature Vesper Martini. To view the menu, and to book a table, please visit www.dorchestercollection.com.
