REVIEW: Hendrick's Emporium of Sensorial Submersion, Edinburgh ✭✭✭

Hendrick’s Emporium of Sensorial Submersion

91 George Street, Edinburgh

Three stars

Hendrick’s Gin is a familiar name on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but this year it returned with a theatrical experience called the Emporium of Sensorial Submersion, staged across three floors of a Georgian Grade A-listed townhouse in George Street. Part of the Fringe programme with a cast of actors, it is a sensory experience that is illuminating, entertaining and often bewildering.

The two-hour promenade show for gin lovers was created with world-leading sound artist Mark IJzerman from the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. Starting in a quirkily decorated 1920s-styled hotel reception, guests receive a welcome cocktail and a madcap introduction from the character of Silas Fifi Templeton, who gets us into the spirit of the event with some nonsensical interaction and chummy over-intimacy. This absurdity is tempered only slightly by the arrival of another classicly styled character, Professor von Steinberger who explains we are embarking on an “auricular and gustatory” journey.

Donning white coats, we are taken up to the Quietest Bar on Earth, where every inch is in stark white, from the furniture and lamps to the small cocktail bar. With noise-cancelling headphones, we sit in complete silence to focus on the flavours of a Martini – inspired by 20th-century American writer EB White’s description of the classic gin cocktail as “the elixir of quietude”.

After a rousing burst of Holst’s The Planets, we are move to another room that has been transformed into an old-style teaching laboratory, with a blackboard, test tubes, beakers and a microscope. We again put on headphones but this time listen to different sounds that are designed to affect our sense of taste as we sample three differently coloured liquids in mini test tubes. As we sip the drinks, we have to identify flavours and intensities of each one on a flavour wheel. It is an excellent demonstration of how our perception of flavour is affected by our other senses.

Upstairs is the Quantumphysical Soundscape room, which is the most unusual part of the tour. With deep red drapes around the room, we are immersed in a cacophony of sounds created by the metal cocktail vessels on the tables in front of us. As your hands hover around the rim or tap the base, different sounds come from each, building up into a discordant crescendo as we sip what’s inside: a classic Corpse Reviver No 2.

After all this sensory overload, we end up on our backs, lying on mats in a room with a giant gong at one end. A stern headmistress figure tells us to be quiet and let our bodies be submerged in a “gong bath” – an ancient form of holistic therapy that promotes healing and meditation through the reverberating tones of a gong. Anyone who is pregnant or has a pace-maker is asked to leave the room (along with any tipsy gigglers). Despite snatches of “My my my Delilah” and Purple Rain from a karaoke bar next door, it is a relaxing, meditative experience that is rarely found on the Edinburgh Fringe.

To pick yourself up, the quirkily styled bar on the ground floor offers plenty of more traditional Hendrick’s sensations through an extensive cocktail list. It includes drinks created by some of Edinburgh’s leading bars such as The Voodoo Rooms, Bramble and The Bon Vivant alongside classics such as a Martini. While the actors and experiences upstairs have entertained us and opened our minds, we can enjoy the flavours, aromas and colours of our cocktails where they work best: in a bar.