Hold the Hibiscus

"Your Shout" column this month – Geoff Ross (founder and creator of 42 Below).  "I had one cocktail at a well-known bar in London that was bordering on a smoothie with a small garden growing on top."

Are cocktails getting a little fru-fru? Are we going overboard pummelling 27 different fresh fruits, swishing them around with hibiscus water and infused almond-liquorice vodka, shaking it all up and topping it off with a mountain of Zanzibar vanilla pod foam?  Have we forgotten the beautiful simplicity of a clean Martini? 

I love a well-made cocktail, one that is made to dance across the taste buds and is strong enough to taste of liquor but doesn’t blow your hairpiece off. But do I need one that has taken 37 minutes to produce and which I can’t figure out how to drink without getting vanilla foam on my nose?

On a recent trip to Australia and Europe I found a night out on cocktails was like eating a 12-course degustation meal. Rather than happily skip home after visiting seven top bars, I rolled myself up to my hotel door and passed out on top of the bed. I wasn’t drunk. I was full. I used to say “eating is cheating” when I was a lager lout at university, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to include cocktails in a night that also features a two- to three-course meal and wine.  Are cocktails getting a bit lavish these days?

Now this question might seem a little shocking, coming from a guy that has depended on cocktail culture to grow his premium brand in a country known for its “lager and buttery Chardonnay”. When I first launched in New Zealand in 1999 there was only one bar that was making interesting cocktails, The Matterhorn in Wellington. Everyone else made drinks – and a drink usually involved small bits of ice with Coke or orange juice. So I poached some of the Matterhorn bartenders and put on events where we made cocktails New Zealanders had never seen.  We researched what was going on in London and Australia and we made the Pomegranate Martini, the Passionfruit Cosmopolitan, the Honey Mojito. We
loved introducing delicious cocktails to the beer-swilling, Sauvignon Blanc-quaffing Kiwis. We discovered that getting squiffy can be a very tasteful, pleasant affair. 

But have we gone a little over the top in this muddling, chopping, infusing affair?  What would Jerry Thomas, the creator of the Martinez, say? How about the inventors of the Gimlet, the Whiskey Sour, the Martini, the Sidecar, the Manhattan, the Mint Julep and the Caipirinhia. Have we lost sight of the beautiful simplicity of the well-made cocktail? Are these fruity numbers a little over-the-top? I had one cocktail at a well-known bar in London that was bordering on a smoothie with a small garden growing on top.

Now like anything, there is a time and place for the radical. We hold an event every year in New Zealand where we fly in 42 bartenders from around the world and put them on the side of a mountain, and see what the best of the best are making in the cocktail world. And I love this event. I get to see the wildest of wild concoctions. Four teams in 2005 used foam in their cocktails. Three teams used floral flavours (lavender, hibiscus, rose and geranium). We had to gather ingredients such as sake, plum powder, balsamic vinegar, cherry tomatoes, ginger root, cucumbers, marmalade, cinnamon, pomegranate molasses, saffron, star anise, celery, guava nectar and red pepper for the different teams. Many used this new-fandangled term called molecular mixology – where you pair unusual flavours like vinegar and raspberries.

Now this is what we would expect to find at a cocktail competition. If we weren’t pushing the boundaries in this arena then something would be wrong; this is where the brave create the new. 

However, when I go out for a drink I don’t want to have to fast for two days beforehand. I want to be able to have four or five cocktails, feel the effects and also have room for medium-rare fillet.

All fashion fads are cyclical. Just as jeans go from tapered to flared to tapered to flared, cocktails go from lavish to simple to lavish to simple. For the last four to five years, cocktails have been getting more outrageous. It’s been about muddled, fresh organic fruits, pulps, nectars and juices. 

But I predict over the next year we will see a return to the simple, refined, clean cocktails of the 1930s.  Something that you have to sip because if you had seven of them you would never get off your bar stool. We have been decadent, hedonistic and just a little bit OVER THE TOP in our liquor creations of late, and it’s time to trim it down little. “Keep it simple” can even apply to cocktails. Especially with the right quality of ingredients.  db March 2006

Geoff Ross is the founder and creator of 42 Below, a premium vodka all the way from New Zealand