The way forward to creating exciting and innovative cocktail drinks

Today, all mixologists are making drinks that are instagramable, most of them taste brilliant, and there is always a heart-warming story behind the drinks being told from behind the counter. So, how does one stand out?

- Bhavya Verma

In 2018, near Haifa in Israel, the world’s oldest brewery was discovered, and researchers found residue of 13,000 year old beer on the site, which they believe must have been used in ritualistic feasts to honor the dead. In 2100 BC, the Sumerian and Egyptian people were using alcohol for its medicinal value; the Hebrew Bible recommends giving alcoholic drinks to the dying and the depressed so they could forget their misery. In the 1st century BC, wine was a staple in Greece and in the Roman Empire.

In 2019, I used whisky, some home-made bitters and a teaspoon of cough syrup and served it to one of the patrons of my bar. I called the cocktail ‘SoarThroat’. Cocktails, in my opinion, are the product of man’s desire to let intoxication take a backseat. Instead, the craft of creating cocktails is about allowing the rampant creativity of countless great craftsmen take the driving seat and steer the story of alcohol away from the ritualistic-medicinalpublic nuisance setting to the exciting and captivating world of mixology that we live in today.

Until a few years ago, classic cocktails used to fly off the shelves. But with the advent and spread of the cocktail culture all across the country, even small pubs in my hometown now have their own signature cocktail menus. The era of social media has blown this movement into something that I refer to as ‘Instagram mixology,’ wherein the presentation and dressing of the glass has unfortunately become more important than the actual contents of the glass itself. It is the era of style over substance in which elaborate contraptions and glassware cast their dizzy spell and where the use of dry ice and liquid nitrogen by untrained hands with no safety equipment is the new norm.