BLACK ROCK, SHOREDITCH – Single-malt champion intent on demystifying the world of whisky
Oh show me the way to the next whisky bar. . . This isn’t any old whisky bar, though. Tom Aske and Tristan Stephenson, the pair behind the time-warping Worship Street Whistling Shop nearby, wanted to twiddle with the spirit’s rather masculine, pin-stripe image.
Those ranks of single malt can be a bit imposing. So the bottles in this easy-going subterranean den are arranged on shelves in three price tiers and according to flavour. And instead of an actual bar the bar-tenders amble around to funk and Nineties hip-hop, or sit at one end of the long wooden table that stretches down the centre of the room.
It’s no ordinary table, though, but a 185-year-old hunk of oak tree with two channels carved into it containing whisky and a cherry rye whiskey, both slowly ageing within and poured from a tap at one end – the best sort of log flume.