Lightning in a bottle

Rudimentary cocktails – spirit, mixer and perhaps something fruity – have long been available as ready-to-drink (RTD) products, including UDL cans and Vodka Cruiser bottles. They may be well established but these sweet, fizzy, often lurid alcopops are not well regarded by David Box, who literally wrote the book on local craft gin (Australian Gin, published last year). “RTDs are the scourge of the distilling industry,” he says. “They’re not the best experience for people with a palate for cocktails.”

So discerning drinkers looked askance in 2015, when celebrated Fitzroy bar The Everleigh (theeverleigh.com) released batched bottled cocktails that are simply poured over ice and garnished with a citrus twist or olives. As their high-end single-serve RTDs became available in cinemas, and online business Melbourne Martini (melbournemartini.com.au) even put theirs on planes in 2017, the slow conversion began. Lingering naysayers may have thought twice in May, when Port Melbourne distillery Starward (starward.com.au) won the 2020 World Premix Awards' top prize for its (New) Old Fashioned bottled cocktail.

According to Hamish Goonetilleke, it was a smart move by The Everleigh (also delivering freshly made cocktails currently), because bars “have been batching cocktails for years.” Owner of Beneath Driver Lane bar (driverlanebar.com), Goonetilleke explains, “we get cocktails out to a customer as fast as possible by batching certain ingredients,” then finishing them with other ingredients to order. Batching numerous Negronis, for example, also delivers consistency, and enables bartenders to perfect the flavour profile with, say, 30 millilitres more vermouth, rather than trying to measure three more for one cocktail.

Already producing hipflask-style bottled cocktails for his Rum Diary Spiced Rum business (rumdiaryspiced.com), Goonetilleke decided good value half-litre bottles would work best for Beneath Driver Lane’s punters in lockdown. He concluded that “discretionary spending would be quite different in COVID” and more volume also made sharing at home easier. The range includes gin martini and Coffee Caramel Old Fashioned.

Michael Cotter, co-owner of a triple-layer cake of bars, started making single-serve bottles branded with his BarNone cocktail bar in October, when bar-meets-liquor-store Rosalita’s opened upstairs. “We went from doing 30 to 40 cocktails a week through the bottle shop to doing a couple of hundred” when the first lockdown transformed Rosalita’s into an online food-and-drink business (rosalitas.com.au), says Cotter.

Unlike most bottled-cocktail purveyors, who stick with spirit-heavy drinks to avoid shelf-life issues, his range includes fruit-driven concoctions such as Mojitos and BarNone’s signature Princess Fiona. Remarkably, these cocktails in simple screw-cap bottles don’t require refrigeration (though are best chilled before serving).

“We’ve had some for six months sitting on the shelf … that taste almost as fresh as if you’d just made them,” says Cotter. He believes they should be fine for 12 to 18 months but these bottled rockets have been in production for less than a year so he “can’t guarantee it” yet.

Citric acid is BarNone’s vital ingredient for preserving bottled cocktails’ fresh fruit flavours. “We essentially marinate the citric acid on the zest of the fruit in a sous-vide bag for three or four days,” says Cotter, “then mix it with boiling water to dilute the acid, and strain the zest out.” A vibrant mint taste is also achieved by blanching the herb, refreshing it in an ice bath and infusing it in sugar syrup.

Cotter, who recently added Hurricanes, Sazeracs and daiquiris to his ready-to-drink range, says, “It’s definitely cheaper to buy the [ingredients] and make it yourself.” However, “the benefit of the bottled cocktail is you can have a bit of variety,” don’t need any bartending skills and avoid the hefty up-front cost of ingredients. “There are five rums and maraschino liqueur in a Zombie,” says Cotter. “If you were to buy all of those it would set you back $400.”

Well kitted out

When launching her online cocktail-kit business in 2018, Mel How recognised the benefits of reducing those up-front costs for DIY shakers and stirrers. She wanted to “give consumers an opportunity to experience different brands and styles of Australian alcohol ... without having to buy the full-size product.” How had difficulty sourcing custom mini bottles from often tiny local producers, however, and also “completely overestimated the demand”.

Indeed she was considering closing The Cocktail Shop (thecocktailshop.com.au) before “sales went through the roof” in March. “The lockdown created this demand for cocktails,” she says, “because suddenly people thought: ‘What’s going to be missing in our life?’” Some decided to up happy-hour-at-home fun, including virtual drinks with friends, colleagues and clients, by ordering How’s kits, which contain the ingredients to make four Negronis, for example, including garnishes, plus instructions.

So instead of having to offload a stockpile of what she describes as “hyperlocal” products including Maidenii vermouth and Imbue gin in custom-size bottles, How has been frantically packing and posting kits. She recently “organised a corporate order for 70 cocktail kits for another virtual event,” introduced dry martini and Tom Collins kits, and also added BarNone’s bottled cocktails to her store. “I’m working on an espresso martini [kit] at the moment with local cold-drip coffee manufacturer First Press,” adds How, who also intends to expand her barware range and tutorial videos.

Expansion is also on the agenda at Gintonica (gintonica.com.au), the online craft-gin shop founded by David Box in 2018. From a base of Australian gin tasting packs, including subscriptions, Gintonica released its first cocktail pack in June. A simpler affair than The Cocktail Shop’s kits, the martini pack has 50 millilitres each of Australian gin and vermouth, and a card pointing to online instructions.

Box believes most Australian households are inadequately prepared for cocktail-making. “People don’t generally have a bar that even has vermouth in it and even if it is ... it’s probably gone off [being spiced wine, not spirit]." What the ready-to-drink alcopop critic describes as “ready-to-mix” cocktails fill any gaps by delivering an instant little bar to your door. Gintonica’s packs also enable DIY mixologists to adjust ingredient proportions to taste and reveal some of the 150-plus Australian gins Box has sourced.

A Negroni pack joined the martini a few weeks ago and Box will introduce a gin-and-tonic pack next month. Others in the pipeline include an Australian take on the French 75, and he is “in discussions to find an agave spirit that’s made in this country because I want to make a Long Island Iced Tea pack”. Since last month, there’s also the Gintonica podcast, for which Box chats with local distillers.

He’s evidently eager to improve our at-home appreciation of local craft alcohol but Box is also keen to raise a glass in a bar. “In early November,” he reveals, “assuming no extreme lockdowns, Australian distilleries and bars are going to make a world-record attempt at gin tasting.” A record number of participants, he hastens to add, not gin.