The Cocktail Lovers Magazine Issue 45 Summer 2023 by The Cocktail Lovers

INGREDIENTS FOR MORE THAN GREAT DRINKS THE COCKTAIL LOVERS.COM SUMMER 2023

ISSUE 45

ISSN 2052-059X

Farm-to-glass bars

Collaborative, community-driven, flavourfocused: farms + bars = big win all round PAGE 40

Seek, find, drink

The foragers partnering up with bars to deliver home-grown cocktail experiences PAGE 50

Cheers! Raising a glass to neighbourhood bars The joys of supporting your local PAGE 54

HOME IS WHERE THE HARVEST IS

Five brands championing locality in their bottles

contents 34 Local heroes

From Australia to Sweden, China to France, Yael Weisberg checks out the bartenders who are keeping the ingredients in their cocktails close to home

Amuse bouche

News, views, reviews and interviews, including the local ingredients bartenders love, where they’re drinking in Edinburgh and Sotol, could it be the next big thing?

18 11 local reasons

Born in the UK

to be a cocktail lover… Creating a buzz, becoming a gin-thusiast and supporting your neighbourhood bar – just three of the ways to drink local this season

Whiskies, gins, a cider and a rum, all born and raised in the UK

22 In the hotseat

Fabio La Pietra, Creative Director at SubAstor, São Paulo

24 Snack like a local

40 Farm-to-glass bars

Salty, crispy, moreish – the nibbles they serve around the world to keep your drinks company

The bars building communities by partnering up with local farms. By Forest Collins

50 Seek, find, drink

Millie Milliken finds how the smartest bars are teaming up with foragers to find fresh, new drinking experiences

54 Cheers! Raising a glass to neighbourhood bars

In celebration of the venues close to home

Yes, he Cannes

The cocktail girl & guy

Destination Côte D’Azur to learn how Emanuele Balestra collaborates with local businesses

He’s in Sicily, she’s in London – both in search of the latest projects from their favourite bar operators

32 Home-grown spirits

In praise of the true taste of terroir. By Clinton Cawood

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59 Liquid intelligence

Why local honey is the bee’s knees, with Jack Sotti

44 Home is where the harvest is Shining a light on the homegrown ingredients starring in some of our favourite bottles

Issue 45 Summer 2023 Editors Sandrae Lawrence Gary Sharpen Creative director Scott Bentley – Bentley Creative Copy editing Laura Hill Cover photography Gary Smith Contributors Clinton Cawood, Forest Collins, Holly Graham, Juliette Laroui, Jim Meehan, Millie Milliken, François Monti, Jack Sotti, Yael Weisberg

For all editorial and advertising enquiries, please contact:

(+44) 020 7242 2546 mail@thecocktaillovers.com

Find us:

TheCocktailLovers.com @cocktaillovers meet.thecocktaillovers @thecocktaillovers

P EX E LS B I LL VEL A PATI Ñ O

Reproduction in whole or part of any contents of The Cocktail Lovers Magazine without prior permission from the editors is strictly prohibited.

Mains & Martinis

The flavours of Lima

Community matters

Three restaurants where the cocktails are more than a match for the food

Why the capital of Peru is topping the taste charts

Paradiso’s Zero Waste Lab has big ideas for the future

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All details of bars featured in this issue were correct at time of going to press. Please see individual websites for up-to-date information. The Cocktail Lovers Magazine is printed in the UK by Stephens & George.

PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

APERITIVO

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Taking part in The Mission: One of Fabio's great initiatives

ASK APERITIVO THE EXPERT

IN THE

H TSEAT Fabio La Pietra, Creative Director, SubAstor, Brazil You’re an Italian who honed his bartender skills in London before moving to Brazil. How have the three cultures shaped you into the bartender you are now? All three have shaped my vision and sensibility for service and ingredients. But Great Britain has been the place of cocktail renaissance over the past two decades, and it was Montgomery Place in London that shaped me the most. Classic, history, service… it was amazing to start working there at the age of 19. Brazil was a surprise to me as it was a hard decision to move there. I had great passion for the country and I found real hospitality, so I decided to stay and work at SubAstor as head bartender. Describe the look and feel of SubAstor and the ethos behind it? SubAstor is an urban-chic cocktail bar in the basement of Astor, a hybrid barbistro in Vila Madalena, a bohemian neighbourhood in the west of São Paulo. It can host 90 people, there’s a long counter of alabaster quartz and it has a cosy atmosphere. The music is based on Afro-Latin rhythms mixed up with soul, R&B and funk. We want everyone to feel at home and spend the night in a modern space with drinks based on local ingredients. We want people to have fun and come back to us. Now on to your menu: tell us about some of the native ingredients used… We should start with the very first love I had in Brazil: before coming here, I didn’t know that the cashew nut has a beautiful fruit! It’s super fragrant, delicate and juicy. Then one of my favourites: breu branco. It’s an aromatic resin from trees growing in the Amazon, and it’s used by the locals as a medicinal cleanser for the lungs and for helping with breathing issues.

When did you first become aware of the extensive biodiversity in Brazil? When I moved to São Paulo, I became obsessed with hunting out producers who could logistically supply us. Brazil is a huge country and whether an ingredient is at its best will often depend on how long it travelled before getting to us. I met with Antonia Padvaiskas, who supplies many native ingredients from all over the six biomes of Brazil, and she showed me more than 25 types of ingredients. The new products I tried completely blew my mind! I realised then what the concept of SubAstor was going to be: I had to show everyone the six biomes of Brazil. You run a project called The Mission. What’s it all about? The idea for The Mission came in 2017 after a bartender friend, Alex Kratena, visited Ilhéus and Gandú in Bahia, eastern Brazil, one of the most unique microclimates for high-quality cocoa. When I asked Alex about the trip, and about exploring more of the country, we came up with the idea of The Mission. Discovering and championing local ingredients, farmers and producers would give us the opportunity to do something completely different. The idea was to have a meaningful connection with the local biodiversity, learning how to prioritise what we have close to us. That’s what The Mission is all about: educating bartenders from abroad, as well as our own team and also our guests, offering them a whole new lexicon of flavours. Who has taken part? The Mission is aimed at the global community of bartending and food and beverage sectors. Since starting in 2018, we’ve hosted seven editions and many friends and colleagues – including Shingo

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Gokan, Monica Berg, Tony Conigliaro, Jad Ballout and Vasilis Kyritsis. Tell us about some of the most exciting results… I think the most exciting result is the way The Mission has inspired many Brazilian bartenders, the new generation of hospitality professionals, as well as many global colleagues. Sometimes bartenders and chefs tend to look at what they can import to make better drinks and better dishes, but they overlook their incredible local produce. The Mission is inspiring them to go local, to meet their people, to know what is native. What are your future plans? We want to invite writers, journalists, brand managers… more people who can help us shine a light on local farmers and natives who work and live with their land, and who are often trying to save species that are almost extinct. What does local and incorporating locality in bars mean to you? Thanks for this beautiful question! In Brazil specifically, to me it means helping farmers and producers who fight every day to keep their house standing and their land safe. There are too many ‘agrotoxic-based’ mass producers buying out small locals, decimating hectares and hectares of native biomes and creating semi-slavery conditions for the people who work for them. It is a massive problem here, and there are no laws that can prevent it from happening. What we can do is not look away, and teach the new generations of food and beverage creatives that this is where we came from and these local farmers are to be saved. We need to desire less what comes from the US and Europe and appreciate more what we have on our doorstep, and we can do so by supporting locals.

Yael Weisberg goes in search of the bars and bartenders championing local ingredients

rom Michelin-starred restaurants to corner cafés, the phrase ‘locally sourced’ has made its way onto menus and chalkboards all over the world. Sure, there are still plenty of places featuring mileage-heavy and out-of-season ingredients, but there is no doubt that the cache of locally sourced ingredients has increased dramatically in the past decade. In a 2020 study by the National Restaurant Association, 76% of respondents said they are more likely to visit a restaurant that offers locally sourced food, proving the longevity of this global phenomenon. It ticks a lot of boxes, offering guests a place-specific experience, highlighting seasonality and delivering optimal freshness, whilst also supporting sustainable practices and reducing waste. That said, there are some downsides to limiting the menu to local, especially in climates that feature dark cold winters

or scorching summers. For bars, those limits are even more constricting, as the production of spirits doesn’t happen everywhere, and some, like tequila or scotch, can only be produced in one particular place. Consumer preference also comes into play. Many of the classic cocktails that people expect to be able to get anywhere, like a Daiquiri or a Whisky Sour, call for fresh ingredients that certainly don’t grow all over the world, all the time. Unstable weather patterns are also impacting harvests, making it more difficult to predict what ingredients will be locally available. In the face of these challenges, bartenders all over the world are increasingly aware of how their choices impact the environment, and how much of a difference they can make to small farmers and producers. Our local heroes, those who have made the commitment to local sources central to their mission, excite their guests and inspire the industry with clever twists on classics and novel concoctions that would convert the most staunch Margarita lover or Old Fashioned aficionado. From Australia to Sweden, these bars are reducing their carbon footprint and boosting their connection to soil and season. If one of these spots is local to you, pull up a stool and find out just how much taste, how much flavour is waiting to be explored in your own backyard.

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LOCAL HEROES

SWEDEN

Facit, Umeå Located in the largest city in northern Sweden, Facit adheres to local principles in an extraordinarily unforgiving natural environment, using no imported products. “We invest in Swedish booze,” its website proudly proclaims, and with a spot on The World’s 50 Best Bars list, it seems like that decision was a very sound investment. The menu features a ‘Geografi’ section, with each cocktail representing a different region, as well as a classics list that offers local takes on crowd favourites. Familiar acid sources like limes and grapefruit have been switched out for rhubarb, quince, apples and lingonberries, delivering delightful alterations to familiar flavour profiles. Facit is the brainchild of Emil Åreng, a Swedish bar industry veteran who has spent the past 13 years exploring the local ingredients that have always been part of his world. He works with producers and small farmers throughout Sweden, engaging them in his process to support long-term sustainability. “Each year the local ingredients have gotten better and more producers have realised that it’s not that ‘hard’ to do.” Emil relishes the moment when guests discover just how rich the natural bounty of his native land is. “People from Sweden are more surprised than tourists that we are such a diverse country with so many different distilleries and producers!”

AUSTRALIA

RE, Sydney Located in an old train workshop that has been transformed with a pared-back, modern style, RE is a bar on a mission: to serve guests food and drinks that surprise and delight them, whilst fundamentally changing how hospitality businesses source products, in Sydney and beyond. RE was conceived by Matt Whiley, a long-time champion of local and hyperlocal ingredients, first in London and now in sunny Sydney. Always seeking new ways to close the loop and achieve zero waste, Matt set a challenge for his team to create a variety of ingredients from the 10 food items that most often end up in the bin. They had to develop 10 innovative and delicious cocktails using only components made from these ingredients. In one of their experiments, they cured banana skins in koji and salt for a month. The result: something that tasted exactly like green olives. And according to Matt, this is only the beginning. “If we can make a banana taste like an olive, we can do anything.” Outside the bar, they are going even further. Knowing that 30% of produce grown never even makes it off the farm due to oversupply or imperfections, Matt and his team are trying to attack this problem at the source. “Our five-year plan is to create a marketplace for local produce that growers would otherwise throw out.” Growers make money on produce that would have been destroyed.

Hospitality businesses save money on supplies. Food waste is reduced. Everyone commits to the system, and everyone benefits. If you’re worried that all this talk of waste might ruin your appetite, don’t fret. The ‘W’ word is nowhere to be seen on the cocktail list and the bar is a lecture-free zone. Ultimately, the viability of the business and its mission rests on its ability to deliver great experiences for guests. “Going to a bar isn’t about being educated. It’s about having fun.”

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PHOTO STORY

How utilising local ingredients is making all the difference Photography Gary Smith

ice, honey, cocoa, sugar cane and stone. What do these five distinct ingredients all have in common? They’re all adding more than a touch of local flavour to five very different bottles. The results are as individual as they are delicious.

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The London Vermouth Company No.3 S.E. Dry Featuring… HONEY FROM LONDON An abundance of bees isn’t what you expect to discover thriving in a bustling city. But it’s the carefully cultivated beehives of The London Bee Company that produce the floral, herbaceous yet gently acidic honey used by The London Vermouth Company. Taking the place of refined sugar, the honey delivers the subtle sweet notes integral to the elegant No.3 S.E. Dry Vermouth.

Corpse Reviver No.2 30ml The London Vermouth Company No.3 S.E. Dry 30ml London Dry gin 15ml Cointreau 15ml lemon juice 1 dash absinthe Lemon twist, to garnish Shake the ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist. londonvermouthcompany.com

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OUT AND ABOUT

THE COCKTAIL GIRL SWOONS… Over her latest bar crush

Kwānt 52 Stratton Street, London, W1J 8LN. @kwantmayfair

I’ve waited two whole years for Erik Lorincz to reopen his bar, Kwānt, and although I was pretty annoyed at the time, it’s definitely been worth the wait. My first hurrah is for the location, or more specifically the new premises. I mean, honestly, I would travel for miles for Mr L’s gracious hospitality but the fact that he’s found a gem of a space in fabulous Mayfair, on street level rather than the difficult to find basement room Kwānt previously occupied, is manna to me. Then to seal the deal, the new building is blessed with

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majestic dual-aspect windows. All the better for admiring the decor – an intoxicating mash-up of African, Polynesian and Zen-like fabulousness. You know when a building gives you the feels? That’s what I get from Kwānt Mark II. It’s the sense of space and airiness that does it for me. While most bars have a tendency to make you feel ever so slightly hemmed in, entering this one with its ceiling that seems to soar up for miles, is like slipping out of a pair of too high, too tight shoes and sinking into some buttersoft, calfskin loafers. Loafers, not slippers mind. While there’s no discernible Mayfair dress code, even if you usually veer towards the more casual end of the dressing spectrum, I’d say this place is worthy of trading up to a designer version. But back to Erik, back doing what he does best: hosting a room, charming guests and making drinks like a boss. God, I’ve missed him. He’s one of those young, old-school bartenders who still prides himself on delivering the ultimate guest experience. It shows up in the way he’s worked with Code Studios to design his dream venue – tropical carpet and bespoke island bar and all – and continues through to the cut of his signature white jacket. The drinks are every bit as suave and clean-cut as the man himself. So too is the ultra-thin, super-elegant glassware they’re served in. I’m rather partial to the Skin Contact (Ki No Bi Gin, Tío Pepe Fino Sherry, tomato water and liquid shio koji) and the Arandas (Olmeca Altos Tequila, banana, Sauternes and agave), but the Bloody Mary (pictured left) is a revelation – light, fluffy and a masterpiece in my book. Then just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, there’s the food. Oh my golly gosh! It’s fine dining and then some. Only Erik could lure a talent like Joni Ketonen, formerly of Michelinstarred venues including The Fat Duck, Jason Atherton and St John, to work in a bar. It’s a match made in Mayfair heaven.

Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Gina Lollobrigida, Kirk Douglas, Grace Kelly… the list of exceptionally glamorous guests who once graced the elegant Igiea Terrazza Bar in Palermo is endless. Imagine, if this bar could talk, what stories might it tell? Well, thanks to the ingenious mind of Salvatore ‘The Maestro’ Calabrese it is telling them. And this cocktail guy was more than ready to pull up a bar stool in the beautiful bar and listen. The space itself is a work of art. Situated in what were once the vaults of Villa Igiea, its sandstone walls are adorned with 1950s frescoes depicting historic and mythical scenes. Lighting is provided by dramatic wrought-iron chandeliers. As for the bar area itself, it appears to be one long, very impressive creation of marble and wood, divided perfectly in two. However, one section is many decades old, while the other is brand new but cleverly crafted to perfectly mirror the original. The reason? The Maestro was keen to accommodate more guests in the intimate setting, while retaining the original’s sophistication. Moreover, though, it is the older of the two bars that has seen and heard it all over its many years of service, and apparently it shares these wondrous stories at night with its younger sibling. So says Salvatore, and it is these ‘conversations’ that have been romantically brought to life by him and his team to inspire the new menu, Once Upon a Time. I started with Kirk 103 (Bulldog Gin and Belvedere Vodka scented with extra-virgin olive oil, and Vermouth del Professore infused with black olives). Now, so this particular story goes, Kirk Douglas lived to be 103 years old, Martini in hand. Whilst I’m not advocating this as a lifestyle diet, this particular Martini, featuring local ingredients such as black olive, oregano and rosemary, and served ‘naked’ (sans dilution, a style pioneered by Salvatore), was bold and beautiful. My date was drawn by Divina (Cîroc Vodka, basil, kiwi and honey cordial, and Champagne), a lowsugar cocktail created in honour of the healthy lifestyle of another famous guest, operatic icon Maria

THE COCKTAIL GUY IMAGINES… Sipping with stars of the silver screen in Sicily Igiea Terrazza Bar Villa Igiea, Salita Belmonte 43, Palermo. @villaigiea palermo

Callas. And after her first sip, my companion declared that she was feeling better already. Paul Newman loved a beer, hence the refreshing and punchy Newman’s Day (Wild Turkey Bourbon, mango, passion fruit and APA Sicilian beer). While the legendary ‘Ice Queen’ – actress (and later Princess of Monaco) Grace Kelly – is honoured in an appropriately ice-cold and seductive drink of the same name (Ketel One Vodka, Acqua Bianca, eucalyptus and anise aromatic ice). As we sipped away the drinks

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confided more of their stories. And as the evening light slowly began to fade, we slipped out on to the equally stunning terrace itself to enjoy the breathtaking views over the Gulf of Palermo, still imagining ourselves in the glamorous company of our famous friends from a bygone age when stars of stage and screen really were stars. And, just for the briefest of moments, thanks to the sumptuous surroundings and those exceptionally exquisite drinks, make-believing that we were stars too.