This Wednesday, Hendrick's gin launched the Hendrick's Unusual Umbrella Emporium as part of their contribution to London Cocktail Week 2011. Part-bar, part-museum, the Covent Garden-based Emporium has been established in a bid to rehabilitate the much-maligned cocktail umbrella's image in the on-trade.

Not content with this effort however, there was also the small matter of the Hendrick's Cucumbrella Cup, a cocktail competition with a difference. Some of London's finest bartenders were escorted to the venue by little people dressed as policemen. The challenge was to create not only the best cocktail, but the best cocktail umbrella to accompany it.

The winners emerged as Aaron Jones and Pierre Dos Santos from Salvatore at Playboy Club, London whose creation The Phileas Fogg was appropriately accompanied by a beautiful, helium-filled hot air balloon-style umbrella.

News item from Imbibe.com, 14-10-2011