Gin Lane Ale

[old faithful]

There is a fine new ale in Toronto: and the name is as good as the taste, Gin Lane Ale, the new draught barley wine at the Granite.

William Hogarth, the famous English painter and engraver, gave us an enduring emblem of good old English cheer in his lively Beer Street. It depicted a London street scene in which people were mirthful, well-fed and of good heart, and drank beer. Contrasting unfavourably to this was his portrait Gin Lane in which excessive drinking of spirits rendered people insensate and depraved. These works are forever considered together, as opposite sides of the coin of bibulosity.

Ron Keefe has played a sly joke on us, offering his flavourful, very English barley wine under the counter-intuitive name Gin Lane Ale, a jape on the strength of the beer. Of course, the bucolic beer is no spirits-like injection but rather squarely in the tradition of a hearty, sinew-building English ale, the kind one expects to find more in a slate-lined pub in Sussex than the prosaic surroundings of Eglinton and Yonge. But there you go, the anonymous office block houses a true drink of Old Albion no less effectively than would a thatched roof - and Gin Lane Ale isn't the only English-type drink at the Granite but is perhaps the best, all sweet Ovaltine/cocoa and sub-acid with an intriguing raisiny/sherry-like backdrop.

Bravo, Mr. Keefe.

Ale ho, this is the toast of the season in Toronto, say I! That and Perry's excellent Tsarina Katarina Imperial Stout.

The Empire lives on.

Gary