Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/46939
At Ruby, Nick Kobbernagel-Hovind whips up a drink with muddled carrot tops. Ruby is one of Copenhagen's chicest cocktail spots, filled with well-heeled revelers who pose on the leather couches and plush chairs in the apartment-like setting on the first floor. In the room containing the bar in which customers stand and flirt, bartender Nick Hovind created a cocktail for us playing up Purity's herbal notes, using leafy green carrot tops, Purity, vermouth and orange bitters, served with a peeled carrot twist. Also on the menu here are a range of crowd-pleasing cocktails with interesting twists, including a Rhubarb Jam Daiquiri, an Apple-Celery Margarita and a Rum Punch with Ruby Red grapefruit juice, in tribute to the bar's name. Umami is an über-hip second-floor Japanese restaurant equipped with U-bar downstairs, where Bar Manager Chris Doig poured us a selection of house cocktails. The beverage program here centers on Japanese ingredients, including shochu, saké, umeshu and a range of Japanese whiskies that would make any American bartender jealous. Here we enjoyed a Koala-Ti Martini, made with Purity O cocktail, in which water is infused with fresh ingredients for a low-calorie, high-potency drink. Dinner that evening was at Geranium, a progressive restaurant whose chef, Rasmus Kofoed, won the Bocuse Vodka, eucalyptus and chamomile. This was Doig's version of an H2 Chris Doig, Bar Manager at U-bar at restaurant Umami, prepares a Purity H2 O cocktail. d'Or . We began dinner with a Purity Vodka drink made with cucumber and cilantro, then moved on to a wine pairing with dinner. Late at night, the few brave souls still standing after a 17-course meal, made it to The Union, a New York–style speakeasy bar operated by expatriates from several different countries. There, Geoffrey Canilao, a former Employees Only bartender from New York, served up a cocktail made with a local weed he picked from a seaside town, along with Purity Vodka and ice frozen with dill and white pepper. This unconventional thinking is found throughout the cocktail menu, which incorporates ingredients such as edible gunpowder and peach tea–infused bourbon, lemon curd and lots of absinthe. Though during the late summer (strangely, the quiet season in Copenhagen) only the downstairs bar is open, the rest of the year another upstairs bar called The Bureau offers additional seating. Other notable bars in Copenhagen include the Manhattan- esque 1105, the Friday-night-only speakeasy Moltkes Bar (which hosted a grand vodka and caviar pairing event last year) and Brass Monkey, a tiki bar in trendy Vesterbro that's known for being a party palace. Should your travels take you to Copenhagen, you'll have no problem locating Purity Vodka— and no difficulty finding a great bar in which to drink it. november 201 1 / the tasting panel / 73