BEHIND t e BAR 50 Gin Cocktails from Bars Around the World 50 Gin Cocktails from Bars Around the World ALIA AKKAM ALI A AKKAM From renowned bars to new ones that you perhaps have never encountered before, Behind the Bar: Gin provides a snapshot into myriad bars worldwide. With over 50 recipes, learn how bartenders are experimenting with gin and letting it stand out in their bar programmes. Behind the Bar: Gin transports you to bars around the world, to give you a taste of their culture and their recipes through the lens of gin. You can try your hand at The Hope from The Gin Bar, Cape Town; Poppy Collins from Dear Irving, New York; or The Sherry Kicker Martini from Gin Palace, Melbourne. Plus, there are features that explore topics such as Amsterdam’s love for genever cocktails, Tasmania’s rich gin culture and fabled London bartender Salvatore Calabrese. No matter the time of day, Behind the Bar: Gin will take you to a beguiling bar where you will find exactly what you didn’t know you were looking for. BEHIND t e BA R UK £12.99 US $19.9970 DUNES MAYBE SAMMY, SYDNEY INGREDIENTS 30 ml (1 fl oz) gin 25 ml (¾ fl oz) fino sherry 30 ml (1 fl oz) watermelon juice 15 ml (½ fl oz) lemon juice 15 ml (½ fl oz) agave syrup 3 dashes of Peychaud's bitters rosemary sprig, to garnish METHOD Place all the ingredients in a mixing tin with ice. Shake. Strain into a coupette. The bar serves the drink crowned with a Flavour Blaster edible rosemary bubble, but a simple rosemary sprig will work just as well. Prior to the site turning into Bellagio, the resort and casino that invigorated the Strip in 1998 – and generated a revolutionary cocktail programme overseen by ‘The Modern Mixologist’, Tony Abou-Ganim – it was the Dunes. This kitschy Arabian Nights-themed property with the tagline ‘The Miracle in the Desert’ bloomed in Vegas in 1955, just as the Strip was being developed into a transporting paradise. That the owners of Maybe Sammy, Vince Lombardo, Stefano Catino, Andrea Gualdi and Martin Hudak, would be taken in by the Dunes’ lagoon, V-shaped pool, and vintage Baghdad trappings is not surprising. One glance around their Rat-Pack-influenced Sydney bar in The Rocks and it’s obvious the space is a time capsule of its own, a profusion of pink and green, smoked mirrors and wallpaper that channels a bygone Caribbean. That adoration of the Dunes led to an easy-going cocktail of the same name, a Maybe Sammy bestseller that captures the synergy between gin, sherry and watermelon – exactly what one wants before easing into a velvet banquette with a Gibson straight from the Martini trolley or a vintage Negroni with Gordon’s and Campari from the hedonistic 1970s. A US T RALI A70 DUNES MAYBE SAMMY, SYDNEY INGREDIENTS 30 ml (1 fl oz) gin 25 ml (¾ fl oz) fino sherry 30 ml (1 fl oz) watermelon juice 15 ml (½ fl oz) lemon juice 15 ml (½ fl oz) agave syrup 3 dashes of Peychaud's bitters rosemary sprig, to garnish METHOD Place all the ingredients in a mixing tin with ice. Shake. Strain into a coupette. The bar serves the drink crowned with a Flavour Blaster edible rosemary bubble, but a simple rosemary sprig will work just as well. Prior to the site turning into Bellagio, the resort and casino that invigorated the Strip in 1998 – and generated a revolutionary cocktail programme overseen by ‘The Modern Mixologist’, Tony Abou-Ganim – it was the Dunes. This kitschy Arabian Nights-themed property with the tagline ‘The Miracle in the Desert’ bloomed in Vegas in 1955, just as the Strip was being developed into a transporting paradise. That the owners of Maybe Sammy, Vince Lombardo, Stefano Catino, Andrea Gualdi and Martin Hudak, would be taken in by the Dunes’ lagoon, V-shaped pool, and vintage Baghdad trappings is not surprising. One glance around their Rat-Pack-influenced Sydney bar in The Rocks and it’s obvious the space is a time capsule of its own, a profusion of pink and green, smoked mirrors and wallpaper that channels a bygone Caribbean. That adoration of the Dunes led to an easy-going cocktail of the same name, a Maybe Sammy bestseller that captures the synergy between gin, sherry and watermelon – exactly what one wants before easing into a velvet banquette with a Gibson straight from the Martini trolley or a vintage Negroni with Gordon’s and Campari from the hedonistic 1970s. A US T RALI A136 GIN BLOSSOM Created by Julie Reiner CLOVER CLUB, BROOKLYN INGREDIENTS 45 ml (1½ fl oz) Plymouth gin 45 ml (1½ fl oz) Martini Bianco vermouth 25 ml (¾ fl oz) apricot eau de vie 2 dashes of orange bitters orange twist, to garnish METHOD Place the gin, vermouth, eau de vie and bitters in mixing glass and stir. Strain into a Nick & Nora glass. Garnish with the orange twist. During its Restaurant Row heyday, Smith Street in Brooklyn helped mould the borough’s mounting reputation as New York’s most captivating place to live. The advent of Julie Reiner’s Clover Club in 2008 seemed to cement it. Many were already familiar with Reiner’s cocktail canon through her work at the now- departed Flatiron Lounge. Visitors swooned over the pressed tin ceiling and Reiner’s lush Clover Clubs (her recipe calls for dry vermouth) but all these years later, with new Brooklyn lairs jamming social calendars (The Long Island Bar, from Cosmopolitan creator Toby Cecchini, serves a worthy Gimlet), Clover Club still swells with guests. ‘It hits the sweet spot in between swanky cocktail bar and neighbourhood joint,’ says Reiner of the bar’s longevity. ‘It is comfortable, approachable and always delicious.’ In the summer, the bar ‘opens to the warm sunlight,’ she adds, and in the winter ‘we fill up from the fireplace in the parlour first, where our guests can warm up and forget about the freezing temperatures outside’. Beyond the Clover Club’s signature drink, other favourites are ordered over and over again, too. Tom Macy’s Port of Call (gin, ruby port, cinnamon, cranberry preserves), is a Thanksgiving beauty, an autumnal standard. Reiner’s own Gin Blossom, a modern classic replicated the world over, is a delicate apricot-scented Martini that thrusts one right back into the Clover Club’s walnut-cloaked interior. UNIT ED S T A T E S136 GIN BLOSSOM Created by Julie Reiner CLOVER CLUB, BROOKLYN INGREDIENTS 45 ml (1½ fl oz) Plymouth gin 45 ml (1½ fl oz) Martini Bianco vermouth 25 ml (¾ fl oz) apricot eau de vie 2 dashes of orange bitters orange twist, to garnish METHOD Place the gin, vermouth, eau de vie and bitters in mixing glass and stir. Strain into a Nick & Nora glass. Garnish with the orange twist. During its Restaurant Row heyday, Smith Street in Brooklyn helped mould the borough’s mounting reputation as New York’s most captivating place to live. The advent of Julie Reiner’s Clover Club in 2008 seemed to cement it. Many were already familiar with Reiner’s cocktail canon through her work at the now- departed Flatiron Lounge. Visitors swooned over the pressed tin ceiling and Reiner’s lush Clover Clubs (her recipe calls for dry vermouth) but all these years later, with new Brooklyn lairs jamming social calendars (The Long Island Bar, from Cosmopolitan creator Toby Cecchini, serves a worthy Gimlet), Clover Club still swells with guests. ‘It hits the sweet spot in between swanky cocktail bar and neighbourhood joint,’ says Reiner of the bar’s longevity. ‘It is comfortable, approachable and always delicious.’ In the summer, the bar ‘opens to the warm sunlight,’ she adds, and in the winter ‘we fill up from the fireplace in the parlour first, where our guests can warm up and forget about the freezing temperatures outside’. Beyond the Clover Club’s signature drink, other favourites are ordered over and over again, too. Tom Macy’s Port of Call (gin, ruby port, cinnamon, cranberry preserves), is a Thanksgiving beauty, an autumnal standard. Reiner’s own Gin Blossom, a modern classic replicated the world over, is a delicate apricot-scented Martini that thrusts one right back into the Clover Club’s walnut-cloaked interior. UNIT ED S T A T E S147 VILLA VIKTORIA BECKETTS KOPF, BERLIN INGREDIENTS 40 ml (11/4 fl oz) gin 15 ml (½ fl oz) red vermouth 10 ml (1 //³ fl oz) dry vermouth 15 ml (½ fl oz) Mirabelle eau de vie 7.5 ml (1/4 fl oz) orange curaçao METHOD Place all the ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir until well chilled and strain into a cocktail glass. A photo of the late Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett hangs in the window of Becketts Kopf, a dimly-lit, red-splashed bar in Prenzlauer Berg that elicits a Berlin of yore. Oliver Ebert, who owns Becketts Kopf with his wife Cristina Neves, has a theatre background, but he says Beckett’s illuminated visage was happenstance; the idea for it simply coming to his mind ‘after we decided to just put a picture in the window instead of a name above it’. Chance is also what prodded Ebert and Neves to open a bar. As Ebert matter-of-factly explains of their motivations, he and Neves wanted to work together ‘and I didn’t want to wake up early every day’. Basking in morning sleep aside, their instincts were spot-on, for the cocktails at Becketts Kopf, often laced with obscure regional liqueurs, are poetic triumphs. One of the drinks stirred behind the tiled bar is the Villa Viktoria, named for a now-defunct hotel in Düsseldorf built in 1914. Looking to the little-known Claridge Cocktail (purportedly invented at the Hôtel Claridge in Paris by a bartender named Leon Ferrari) for inspiration, the Villa Viktoria fuses gin, vermouth and orange liqueur, but trades the Claridge’s apricot brandy for mirabelle plum eau de vie. Holing up with one of these in a cocooning Becketts Kopf armchair confirms that Ebert has succeeded in his ambitions to engender an ‘atmosphere of introspection’. GE R MA N Y147 VILLA VIKTORIA BECKETTS KOPF, BERLIN INGREDIENTS 40 ml (11/4 fl oz) gin 15 ml (½ fl oz) red vermouth 10 ml (1 //³ fl oz) dry vermouth 15 ml (½ fl oz) Mirabelle eau de vie 7.5 ml (1/4 fl oz) orange curaçao METHOD Place all the ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir until well chilled and strain into a cocktail glass. A photo of the late Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett hangs in the window of Becketts Kopf, a dimly-lit, red-splashed bar in Prenzlauer Berg that elicits a Berlin of yore. Oliver Ebert, who owns Becketts Kopf with his wife Cristina Neves, has a theatre background, but he says Beckett’s illuminated visage was happenstance; the idea for it simply coming to his mind ‘after we decided to just put a picture in the window instead of a name above it’. Chance is also what prodded Ebert and Neves to open a bar. As Ebert matter-of-factly explains of their motivations, he and Neves wanted to work together ‘and I didn’t want to wake up early every day’. Basking in morning sleep aside, their instincts were spot-on, for the cocktails at Becketts Kopf, often laced with obscure regional liqueurs, are poetic triumphs. One of the drinks stirred behind the tiled bar is the Villa Viktoria, named for a now-defunct hotel in Düsseldorf built in 1914. Looking to the little-known Claridge Cocktail (purportedly invented at the Hôtel Claridge in Paris by a bartender named Leon Ferrari) for inspiration, the Villa Viktoria fuses gin, vermouth and orange liqueur, but trades the Claridge’s apricot brandy for mirabelle plum eau de vie. Holing up with one of these in a cocooning Becketts Kopf armchair confirms that Ebert has succeeded in his ambitions to engender an ‘atmosphere of introspection’. GE R MA N YNext >