Black Rock

The whisky is not shelved by region. It sits in six cabinets sorted by balance, fragrance, fruit, smoke, spice and sweet, so you order by what you want to taste.

Why go

Tom Aske and Tristan Stephenson built the Worship Street Whistling Shop before this, and they opened Black Rock on 11 March 2016 with an eighteen-foot, hundred-and-eighty-five-year-old oak trunk in the middle of the floor. It is halved, routed down the length, glass-topped, and lined with American charred oak and toasted European oak so that whisky ages inside the table people are drinking at (Hot Dinners).

Two hundred and fifty bottles went on the wall at opening, on a three-tier dram price so you never have to work out what a pour costs before you ask for it. Ten years on the bar says it is in its tenth year and runs a distillery tasting every Tuesday.

The cabinets are the real work. Holly Graham, writing for Time Out, called it "London's best whisky bar" and put her finger on why: the shelving "makes getting to grips with whisky easier for the newbs as well as aiding new discoveries for the initiated" (ref). She also named Brora and Port Ellen on the list, which are distilleries that no longer make anything.

When the bar took the format to Hong Kong in 2017 it shipped its glassware, its staff and its snack menu, and built a seven-tonne, two-hundred-and-sixty-three-year-old oak table to sit them around. That is the measure of how much this room is about one idea.

Order this / avoid

• Order: a dram from the smoke cabinet if you know your own taste, or describe what you like and let the bar choose. Something from a closed distillery while it lasts. The table whisky, from the trunk. Soda bread with peat butter.
• Avoid: arriving before 5pm. Ordering by region out of habit, because the whole room is built the other way. Assuming the cocktail list is what it was in 2016, since the sources disagree and nobody has published a current one.

What locals & experts say

• Holly Graham, Time Out, 14 June 2017: "London's best whisky bar (and a personal favourite of ours)". On the system: the bar "organises its whiskies in six cabinets based on balance, fragrance, fruit, smoke, spice and sweet, making getting to grips with whisky easier for the newbs as well as aiding new discoveries for the initiated." On the stock: Lagavulin, Glenkinchie, Cragganmore and "the rare as hell Brora and Port Ellen". ref
• Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners, 10 March 2016, announcing the opening: "Obviously there will be MUCH whisky to try outside of the cocktail list with 250+ bottles on view, all available by a simple three-tier price point for a dram." On the centrepiece: "an 18ft, 185 year old oak tree-trunk... the trunk itself apparently acts as an interactive cocktail ageing system." ref
• The gap, stated: nobody with a byline has written about this bar since June 2017 in any source this database accepts. The bar's own claim to four consecutive CLASS Magazine awards as the UK's best specialist bar carries no years, so it is reported here as their claim and kept out of the award metadata.

Good to know

• Where: 9 Christopher Street, EC2A 2BS, a basement between Shoreditch and Liverpool Street.
• Timing: Monday to Wednesday 5pm to 12.30am. Thursday to Saturday 5pm to 1.30am. Nothing before five.
• Booking: the bar says reservations are recommended and not compulsory.
• Tastings: a different distillery every Tuesday. Blending and tasting sessions run for private groups of six to twenty.
• Hygiene: there is no Food Standards Agency record for this business, which is normal for a spirits bar with a short snack list. The register does hold a separate food business, The Apulian Corner, at the same street number, and that record belongs to them rather than here. Trading status for this entry comes from the venue's own live hours and running tasting programme.
• Sites: one. The 2017 Hong Kong appearance was a residency at Frank's Library in Foxglove, not a second bar.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries this row with an empty note. The master list's line about a bar built around a split oak trunk came from a later enrichment pass, not from him, though it happens to be accurate.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth crossing London for if whisky is the reason you are out. Tom Aske and Tristan Stephenson, who built the Worship Street Whistling Shop, opened this basement on 11 March 2016 around an eighteen-foot section of a hundred-and-eighty-five-year-old oak, halved, routed down the middle and lined with American charred and toasted European oak so that whisky ages in the table you are sitting at. Two hundred and fifty bottles went on the wall at opening, priced in three tiers so nobody has to read a list to know what a dram costs. The part that matters most is the shelving. Holly Graham for Time Out: the bar 'organises its whiskies in six cabinets based on balance, fragrance, fruit, smoke, spice and sweet, making getting to grips with whisky easier for the newbs as well as aiding new discoveries for the initiated'. Sorting by flavour instead of by region is a decision made for the drinker rather than for the shelf, and it is why a beginner and someone chasing Brora or Port Ellen can both be served properly at the same table. Graham called it London's best whisky bar. It holds at should-visit rather than higher because the evidence is old: the last bylined verdict is from June 2017, the bottle count has not been restated since 2016, and the award the bar leads with cannot be pinned to a year.