The Peat co-owner, manager and mixologist Ben Qiang was sent to our fair city to get someone else’s cocktail bar up and running. The job completed, Qiang moved on to his bigger dream: his own bar, done his way.
That dream has manifested itself in The Peat, a whisky lounge with backlit shelves of bottles rising two stories tall, with the uppermost only accessible by ladder and viewable from every seat in the box-shaped bar.
When we visit on a recent Friday, it is crowded – though The Peat has only been open a few weeks.
A smiling waitress sets down two glasses of water along with a 70-page, thumb-thick menu listing whiskies by region. As the name suggests, The Peat specializes in peaty, or smoky, flavored bottles. With 500 different alcohols in stock, it’s safe to say it there is something to suit any whisky drinker’s fancy, with prices starting around RMB78.
Qiang says that new whiskies come in weekly, from a mix of suppliers, private collectors and friends.
But it’s Qiang’s crafty cocktails that separate his establishment from other well-stocked whisky lounges. You see, peaty whisky usually doesn’t play well with other cocktail ingredients; its assertive flavors overpower everything else.
We watch with curiosity as Qiang makes The Peat One (RMB108). The drink uses Lagavulin, aged 16 years, homemade ginger puree and lemon juice. It is topped with foamy egg white and served in a wooden sake box. The balance of ginger and a -smoky aroma evokes the feeling of watching a good foreign film for the first time: it is something completely different, yet excellent in unexpected ways.
The Peat One manages a silky balance between smoky whisky, ginger and egg.
Asking for something geared towards the fairer sex, Qiang suggests the Peach Lady (RMB88), made with Ketel One Vodka, peach and peach juice. A small scoop of raspberry sorbet is left floating in the drink to be eaten by spoon. As we poke at the sorbet, it breaks up, tampering the drink’s sweetness with raspberry tang.
The music could use some work – it’s a strange mix of R&B that clashes with the quiet elegance The Peat is aiming for with its polished bar, real candles and indirect lighting. The joint also does not have its own bathroom, and the switch from a laid-back lounge to a florescent-lit public toilet is a jolt.
“We want customers that can drink a little and enjoy it. Not people who drink too much,” Qiang says. And fair enough; when a man who has gone one whisky too far demands we join his table, an English-speaking waitress steps in to mediate.
Price: RMB200 for two drinks
Who's going: whisky swillers, curious white-collar workers
Good for: peaty whisky cocktails, any whisky of any sort
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