Quick Brown Fox Launch, Friday July 6th

Giv­en the pas­sion of cer­tain Welling­ton­istas for all things cof­fee, and the obses­sion of oth­ers for cock­tails, it was nev­er going to be hard to tempt us to the launch of a new arti­san cof­fee liqueur. Add a label fea­tur­ing an anthro­po­mor­phised fox inspired by the Wildean dandy Lord Hen­ry Wot­ton, and throw the par­ty at one of our reg­u­lar enabling holes, and it’s no sur­prise that we were scrab­bling over the few invi­ta­tions on offer.

Made by a for­mer Welling­ton­ian in Dunedin with what sounds like an obses­sive atten­tion to roast­ing detail, Quick Brown Fox is def­i­nite­ly not the sweet brown gloop that most of us asso­ciate with cof­fee liqueurs. It real­ly does taste like mild­ly sweet­ened good cof­fee, with a sub­tle cin­na­mon tinge that adds com­plex­i­ty rather than dom­i­nat­ing. It’s enjoy­able straight, but some of us had our first intro­duc­tion to it at Hooch via the Foxy Man­hat­tan, where its pleas­ant bit­ter­ness beau­ti­ful­ly com­ple­ments the clas­sic Man­hat­tan flavours.

A few of the more ded­i­cat­ed Welling­ton­istas had also spent some time at the bar assist­ing Jen­ny with the devel­op­ment of the cock­tail that became the “Lit­tle Fen­necs”. You know, for sci­ence.

The Lit­tle Fen­necs is a cousin of the Old Fash­ioned, with raisins mud­dled in QBF instead of sug­ar syrup, and Jen­ny’s orig­i­nal recipe used cognac as the base spir­it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the strong flavours of the Quick Brown Fox and the orange zest swamped it. The Welling­ton­ista’s ded­i­cat­ed team of cock­tail experts nobly worked their way through a shelf and a half of spir­its look­ing for some­thing that could stand up to the QBF before some­one had the bril­liant idea of try­ing spiced rum. We hearti­ly rec­om­mend that you get down to Hooch and try the result. It’s real­ly quite some­thing. The kick of the rum mix­es well with the cof­fee flavours and cre­ates a pleas­ant sip­ping cock­tail that suc­cess­ful­ly avoids the sweet, innocu­ous oh-no-I’ve-had-how-many quaf­fa­bil­i­ty that you often find with Old Fash­ioned vari­a­tions.

As well as the above, the list at the launch fea­tured the Fly­ing Fox, which sur­pris­ing­ly com­bined the cof­fee liqueur with apri­cot brandy, basil, grape­fruit and gin­ger beer. It was as refresh­ing as the sum­mery ingre­di­ents would sug­gest, and while there was no real cof­fee flavour, the Quick Brown Fox com­bined with the gin­ger and apri­cot to pro­duce an appeal­ing bis­cu­ity, if not but­tery, base. The fourth cock­tail on the list, the White Vel­vet, was rather too creamy and vanil­la for our tastes (though there are rumours that some of us may have mess­i­ly exper­i­ment­ed with QBF in com­bi­na­tion with Krak­en rum and choco­late chilli ice cream, but if the cock­tail police ask, it nev­er hap­pened, right?)

But behind every exquis­ite thing that exist­ed, there was some­thing trag­ic. Call us spoiled brats if you will, and we’re prob­a­bly the first to acknowl­edge that yes, we are, but if a beau­ti­ful­ly designed invi­ta­tion says “join us for drinks, nib­bles and cock­tails”, we’re going to show up imag­in­ing that those drinks, nib­bles and cock­tails will be pro­vid­ed for free, as part of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty. It was some­thing of an unpleas­ant sur­prise, then, to find a cock­tail list which told us the price of every­thing and the val­ue of noth­ing, and with no sign of the promised nib­bles (or, in fact, any­one not either a Welling­ton­ista or a friend-of-the-Welling­ton­ista) until well into the event. The launch was pleas­ant enough in the end, and Quick Brown Fox has found its way into many of our new favourite cock­tails, but the over­promis­ing left a touch of bit­ter­ness that can’t be put down to the cof­fee.

Pho­tos by our own Greg Bod­nar.