My brother sent me a picture from Finland. He was in an “ice bar”.
Yeah, the whole “artisanal cocktail” thing is all the rage. I’ve been to a few of these bars, and I’m not much of a cocktail guy but I found them to be an interesting change of pace. I’m mostly a wine drinker.
But I couldn’t tell from the OP if the folks throwing the party called it “pretentious” and were looking for joke drinks, or if the OP was just characterizing it as “pretentious” and the host was serious about wanting folks to bring clever cocktail variations.
As pulykamell suggests, definitely something with obscure homemade bitters, so we’re talking a whisky cocktail.
Start with muddled jabuticaba. For heaven’s sake not over-muddled jabuticaba! Practice an imperious sneer if anyone else even attempts to muddle.
Plenty of whiskies to choose from but I’ll suggest George Dickel Rye Whiskey. Affordable, suitably obscure. Go nuts on the pronunciation of Dickel. Points for getting others to break character and giggle. Anybody who mentions a finer rye like Sazerac for a mixed drink is the epitome of gauche. Conversely, even the most expensive single barrel bourbon is “insufferably low-rent”.
Make a sugar syrup from organic turbinado sugar. Try to mention “organic turbinado sugar” at least thrice. Stir thrice. Say “thrice” a lot.
Amaro is so chic right now and goes great with whisky cocktails. Something like Amaro Silano, and since you’re designing an original, you’re free to name the cocktail and expound on its origins in the pre-war Calabrese underworld.
Finish with a twist of buddha’s hand and voilà!
What is your choice of muddler, though? I’ve heard that only a well-used muddler, one that has muddled for decades, if not centuries, is the only true way to muddle. I search estate sales for well-used muddlers, but the prices are ridiculous. That’s why I contact people directly in attempt to cut out the muddle middle man.
My grocery store has Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail, ande Libby’s Fruit Cocktail. They are not very pretentious.
The thread is about pretentious cocktails, not pretentious bars. But to be clear: anything that can be described as artisanal pegs out the pretentiousness meter. I mean, the meter explodes in a flurry of glass and bronze shards, and the needle lodges itself in the finely-groomed beard of a nearby hipster.
It is in a quantum superposition of ironic and unironic. On one hand, it’s done with full self-awareness. But on the other hand, people are excepted to make an effort. Old recipes, specialized liqueurs, unusual ingredients, complex methods of preparation, and so on all presumably win points. And it should taste good in the end.
Thanks all for the suggestions. I am already on the ball regarding clear ice; it’s one of my specialties. Homemade bitters sounds awesome, but I’m not sure I have the time… it’s about a week away.
An excellent point. For extraction of mint oils I use a high silver content 18th-century French apothecary spoon in the Mazagran style purchased from the estate of a descendant of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier’s executioner. Of course this would not be the proper implement for the jabuticaba where less finesse and a rougher hand would be warranted. For this I have lathed my own muddler from an unvarnished blackthorn policeman’s nightstick that was itself fashioned from a shillelagh my great-great-great grandfather won in a drinking competition.
You should simply ask for a Pappy Van Winkle, neat.
Upscale jello shots (examples: here).
Because you can take the pretension of a perfect manhattan and up it by “ironically” turning it into a frathouse staple.
Hmmm, if only there were a food item that sounded similar to ginger…
I am surprised how popular artisan cocktails have become.
Surely you could add spices to rum, gin or vodka. And saffron is expensive and gives a lovely yellow colour. And what goes well with saffron? Rice, butter, seafood… Gentleman, I give you… The Potable Paella.
1 lobster claw
1 jumbo shrimp, cooked
1 clam, steamed
1.5 oz sake
0.5 oz homemade saffron vodka
0.5 oz Dr. Pepper
1 pink peppercorn
1 sprig green onion
2 ice cubes with gold flakes or silver dragees
Cocktail names are the best.
‘I’d like a long, slow, comfortable single-entendre, please, bartender’.
I had never heard of Buddha’s hand before last week. And…here it is again.
Nah, probably something more like Dale DeGroff’s “Flame of Love”, where the main attraction is the theatrical aspect from flaming something like half a dozen orange peels into the drink (too lazy to actually look it up.)
But the thing is, what makes for a pretentious cocktail? Plenty of cocktail books will call out specific spirits, but the drink is hardly going to be irretrievably maimed if you use another spirit in the same category. For example, there’s a cocktail book I have with a drink that calls out Woodford Reserve bourbon. It’s still pretty damned good if you make it with Evan Williams.
That said, I tend to think the ones that are trying to show off wealth or that have some cheesy theatrics are the ones that have the most pretense. For example, if you go into a bar and order a vodka and tonic, that’s cool. But if you douchebag out and order a Gray Goose with Q Tonic, that’s pretentious and probably deserves a punch to the crotch.
I’ve never heard anyone call out the brand of the mixer (it’s rather doubtful they stock multiple brands of tonic), but calling the liquor is perfectly normal, especially since the bartender will either ask you your preference (if he wants to upsell a bit), or (more usually) simply just give you the well liquor. That said, if I knew a bar had several kinds of mixer and I had a preference, I wouldn’t see any problem in calling the specific liquor and mixer and wouldn’t see it as pretentious at all (although, like I said, I’m not a cocktail drinker.)
-I’d like a single plum floating in perfume. Floating in a man’s hat.
-here you go.
Actually, come to think of it, I did go through a gimlet phase a few summers ago, and at one bar I did call it as Bombay (not the Sapphire) gimlet with half of their lime mix and half Rose’s or just all Rose’s. (They typically made their gimlets with fresh lime juice & simple syrup, but I just have an affinity for Rose’s in this particular drink that it doesn’t taste right to me unless it has some Rose’s in it.) So, maybe I am the pretentious douchebag, but the bartender was always happy to accommodate me. He didn’t really care because it was all premixed stuff, anyway, he just has to grab a different bottle or one extra bottle. It never even occurred to me to think of it as pretentious, as I was just there by myself after work, not trying to impress anyone.
And here I’ve been wasting my fragment of the True Cross on healing the sick.
In my hometown, where bartenders can occasionally be lazy, anything other than a beer can be pretentious. I was once informed a Rusty Nail was a pretentious drink.
I really like pretentious drinks. Love to think about the history or thought involved. It’s a lot better then drinking sour beer to be cool. If you want to make a pretentious drink, think herbs, basil, sage, rosemary. Put some fresh herbs in a whip cream dispenser and go crazy with herb foam.