Your archetype
The Host
The best table in town is yours.
You would rather cook for six than eat out with two. Your bar is stocked, your ice is clear and your speakers are placed properly. You know which whisky to pour for whom and you never run out of tonic. Your weakness is a hangover on Sunday and a kitchen that looks like a crime scene.
Your ritual: Sharpen the knife and fill the ice trays on Thursday night, so Saturday is easy.
- The suit
- A soft double-breasted jacket in tobacco linen, no tie, sleeves that do not mind a kitchen
- The watch
- Something with a story you can tell at the table: a vintage Omega or a Longines Spirit
- The drink
- An Old Fashioned with a big clear cube, made without measuring
- The car
- A Volvo estate with room for cases of wine
- The scent
- Warm, spiced, evening only
Your signature
Your reading list
The Host: your reading list
Spirits · Whisky
Six Bottles for a First Whisky Shelf
Speyside, Highland, Islay, Ireland, Japan and America, between €40 and €80 a bottle. A shelf that covers the whole map and teaches you what you like.
Spirits · Cocktails
Make an Old Fashioned Properly
Whiskey, sugar, bitters, ice, orange. Five ingredients, one technique, and about a dozen ways to get it wrong. The definitive method.
Spirits · The bar
The Home Bar: Twelve Bottles, Thirty Drinks
A gin, a bourbon, a rye, a rum, a tequila, two vermouths, Campari, a triple sec and three bitters. That is the whole bar, and it makes every drink worth making.
Living · The table
How to Host a Dinner for Six
One dish you can cook with your eyes closed, one drink made in a jug, candles, a playlist and the discipline to sit down. The dinner that makes people want to come back.
