The King of Tequila – On-Trade Interview

Fresh from the accolade bestowed upon his über-cool tequila bar by the Evening Standard, Henry Besant sat with Robyn Lewis to chart the genesis of Green & Red and share his vision for the future

The day I meet Henry Besant of the Worldwide Cocktail Club, the ground floor of his fêted bar, Green & Red, looks like a building site. I was here last night, enjoying tequila cocktails and the laid-back vibe of what is currently London’s hippest bar. There was slick service, funky music, good food, even better drinks and lots and lots of London’s cool crowd out to play. 

This afternoon it is empty, and it smells of wood-glue and paint. The staff are gathered around a table discussing their holidays, and the vibe is distinctly more humdrum than the night before. It neatly encapsulates the two sides to working in the on-trade: the glamour and the buzz of the evenings front of house, versus the practical day-to-day work behind the scenes of a business. It is a good introduction to Besant, a glamorous mixologist running a bar that is currently the most talked about in a city blessed with the hottest bar scene in the world, but also a bartender who understands that it is only this hard work behind the scenes that can pull it all off.
Green & Red has just won the 2006 Evening Standard Bar of the Year award, and critics from Jay Rayner (The Observer)

to Guy Dimond (Time Out) have sung its praises. Even more surprisingly, this success has been achieved in Shoreditch, hardly a haven for top-quality bars and restaurants. And this is a bar dedicated to tequila, the spirit that, by Besant’s own admission, most people say they don’t like.

“How on earth,” I ask, “did you do it?” “It was a very brave move,” he admits. “Dre Masso (Besant’s partner in this and the Worldwide Cocktail Club, more of which later) and I have always loved tequila, but there’s never been much of a presence of it in the UK. We have worked a lot with Tom Estes, the European ambassador for the spirit, and he invited us to travel with him to Mexico, with the Tequila Regulatory Council, a few years ago. So we went along with various other tequila lovers from around the world, did a whole bunch of distilleries and were lucky enough to learn a great deal about the product. The problems with tequila are that there is a lack of knowledge and information, and some not-so-great products out there, which are leading the market. And, of course, it is what everyone thinks made them sick when they were 16, ignoring the 25 pints they had beforehand. Anyway, going out there and travelling, we fell in love with it, and it became more than just something we liked as bartenders – we became passionate about it. We just fell in love with the region, the food, the people, and when we, as the Worldwide Cocktail Club, had the opportunity to open our own venue, it was just the natural thing to do. I think if you are going to invest this sort of time and money – and your heart and soul – into something, then it’s best that it is something you love.”

And so Green & Red was born. Besant admits that there were times he worried about the wisdom of such an ambitious project. “It was a big challenge, and there were times when we thought we’d made a mistake: a spirit that most people hate and food that no one really understands – because there’s no real Mexican food in London. And we were doing it in Shoreditch!” However, he also feels that the gamble has now paid off and that it is all beginning to make sense.

“The great thing about it is that it’s a win-win situation: once you get people in, although they might initially say they don’t like tequila and want a gin and tonic, the staff here are so passionate and knowledgeable about tequila that they are able to show them something they do like. People go out saying, ‘I had no idea it could be this good’, and that’s very rewarding.”

Tequila – good tequila, anyway – is a relative newcomer to the spirits category, since the 100% agave stuff (all the tequilas listed at Green & Red are 100% agave) has only been exported since the 1980s, according to Besant. So, having staff that are knowledgeable enough about the product to engender these sorts of turnarounds in opinion means that Besant and his partner have had to spend a lot of time and effort on training. Luckily, this is exactly what the two do best. “Training is really what we do, Dre and I. It’s our job and a fundamental part of what the Worldwide Cocktail Club is.” When it comes to teaching sceptical bartenders about the joys of tequila, Besant says the two have used every trick in the spirits book and have also, intriguingly, borrowed heavily from the world of wine. “We always talk about tequila as the wine of the spirits world, because every other spirit is made from something that is just harvested over the year – grain, cane or whatever – but agave plants spend 12 months in the soil and are very much affected by the terroir and how much sun or rain there has been in any particular year. So, we are borrowing from wine a lot in terms of the things we are doing with tequila here, things like tequila flights and so on. The growth in awareness about wine in this country – grape varieties, terroir, etc – is impressive, and the wine industry has done an incredible job to get that education, that information, across to the mass market. Apart from having a business, we have a side mission, and that is to promote tequila. We are hoping to be able to do both those things at once.” There are even plans to match food with tequilas on the menu and there are the beginnings of a tequila club taking shape.

Educating a new generation

There is no doubt that Besant and his partner have pulled off the unimaginable with Green & Red, but that does not mean the two are about to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their success just yet. Their work as the Worldwide Cocktail Club continues, and as consultants they continue to advise on bars: they have recently been involved in the opening of the much-revered All Star Lanes and are currently working on the relaunch of Ronnie Scott’s (“Renew your membership,” he advises me. “It’s going to be fantastic.”). However, their big project of the moment is a scheme called the International Bar Business School (IBBS).

“It’s early days on this project, but we are involved in developing a school for the bar industry that encompasses all aspects of the job: not just bartending skills, although this is part of it, but also business skills: accountancy, bar design, management, etc. The real nitty-gritty elements of running a business.”

The project is being backed by the Ricard family, whose island off the coast of France will provide the school with a home. It is hoped the bartending element will be launched in the autumn of this year, with the rest to follow by 2007. There is even work going on behind the scenes lobbying the EU to try and get university certification for the course. “Anything that validates good work in the industry has to be a good thing,” Besant explains. “This is a creative industry, but there are definitely practical skills that you can teach. In terms of training, we have moved on from the approach taken by hotel and catering courses, and something needs to be done to develop that even further. We have a sophisticated industry now and we very much have a vision of moving that on through things like the IBBS.”

Besant does not think that the cocktail revival (and the growth in standards and knowledge that that has brought with it) is a short-term trend. He believes that we have come too far now to ever return to the dark days of warm beer and cheap vodka. “The time when listings were based on price – the cheapest vodka and so on – is well behind us. Consumers now know what a good drink is, what a Mojito is. They are drinking cocktails every night and enjoying it, they are starting to brand-call… now the whole culture has become too ingrained to go back. It isn’t just about the cocktail revival, it’s about good bars, good service and as much about making a good G&T as anything else. For me the cocktail revival isn’t just about cocktails, but about a standard of bars and service that people have – quite rightly – come to expect.” And long may it continue, although Besant is well aware it is only his and others’ continuing hard work at the less glamorous
end of the industry that will make this a continuing reality.  © db June 2006

How to create a great bar
Given that the Worldwide Cocktail Club has been involved in opening some of the most successful bars in London in its time, Besant seems to be more than qualified to give us a few tips on what makes a great bar.
“There’s no magic formula. It’s just a number of things, each of which you have to get right,” he explains. Here is his list:

1. The concept and the product;
2. Location;
3. Environment (in other words, design);
4. Music and lighting;
5. Staff – training them and keeping them;
6. The business side. This is vital. So many bars fail because great barmen don’t always make great businessmen. Get someone in to help if you need it.