Welcome to Tarquin's Tipples

A Lifetime on Both Sides of the Bar ( & Sometimes Under It )

More than half a century of drinking culture, professional hospitality, changing tastes and the occasional questionable decision.

My acquaintance with alcoholic beverages began rather earlier than some might consider advisable. I believe I was about seven years old when I first sampled a drink.

That was more than half a century ago. I hasten to add that I haven't been drinking continuously ever since, although there may have been occasions when appearances suggested otherwise.

Tarquin's Tipples, written by T. J. Gray, is drawn equally from two rather different perspectives: a professional career in the hospitality industry and a lifetime spent enjoying, observing and occasionally criticising it from the other side of the bar.

My professional education began at sixteen. I started with the unglamorous essentials: cleaning bars in the morning, stocking shelves, changing beer barrels and learning how an establishment operated before its first customer arrived.

Gradually, I progressed to working behind the bar itself, learning the practicalities of service, the importance of presentation and the rather delicate art of dealing with customers, some of whom became considerably more interesting as the evening progressed.

By the age of twenty-two, I had become Food and Beverage Director of a multimillion-pound leisure centre, overseeing substantial hospitality operations. Among its more unusual distinctions was what I recall as the first licence in Britain permitting alcohol to be served within a public swimming baths.

It was certainly an unconventional setting in which to develop a hospitality operation. Fortunately, the intention was to serve the drinks, rather than encourage customers to swim in them.

That early progression provided an education few textbooks could have supplied. It taught me that successful hospitality depends not simply upon what is served, but upon how it is purchased, stored, prepared, presented and delivered.

Since those early management years, another four decades of experience and observation have followed. Although the past fifteen years have been spent largely in semi-retirement from the industry, my interest has never diminished.

I have simply spent considerably more time on the paying side of the bar.

And that, of course, provides an entirely different perspective.

As a customer, traveller and critic, I have continued to visit everything from modest local pubs to some of the world's most distinguished hotel bars, observing standards of service, appreciating exceptional drinks and occasionally wondering quite how an establishment manages to charge so much for so little.

Our tastes change as we grow older. Drinks once considered sophisticated may eventually seem rather less appealing, while flavours dismissed in our youth become firm favourites. Experience, curiosity and the occasional unfortunate hangover all contribute to our education.

Throughout these pages, we shall explore legendary cocktails, distinguished wines, unusual spirits, traditional pubs, celebrated hotel bars and the changing customs of drinking across the decades.

There will be professional insights, historical recollections, personal anecdotes, recipes, independent reviews and new discoveries.

The accompanying book and this website will develop together, sharing material drawn from a lifetime of experience while continuing to record new journeys and changing tastes.

Above all, Tarquin's Tipples is written by someone who has spent a substantial part of his life on both sides of the bar — and has developed opinions about both.

The philosophy remains straightforward: a good drink deserves appreciation, a good bartender deserves recognition, and an expensive drink is not necessarily a good one.

After all, growing older is inevitable. Growing wiser is apparently optional.

T. J. Gray
Tarquin's Tipples