Cocktail spesh

Who doesn’t like a bespoke, boozy, beautiful drink? While the rise of cocktails predates the pandemic, I think like many others I fell in love with cocktails over lockdown because I started to make my own at home. The word performative has got a bad wrap recently, but everything about it a cocktail is a production and it's unashamed. It’s the ritual of making it, drinking it, the kit. It’s the tinkling of the ice on the side of your glass as you take it to your lips (I sometimes think about the foley artist making this noise over and over again for Mad Men). I think for some of us, it was having one perfect, mindful drink as opposed to some open-ended portion of a bottle of wine. 

And then all this also transitioned nicely to going out again when Covid restrictions ended - as we put down pre-determined Netflix show, and returned to the spontaneity and live theatre intrinsic to a night out. If you’re gonna head out, let’s make it a fucking production.

It can take a while to cultivate a go-to cocktail order, which conveys your taste and tribe (elegant dirtbag? bimbo vampire? sleek chic? etc). My partner and I have always into a predictable, possibly overly hetero go-to his-and-hers order of a negroni and a whisky sour. (Yes, it annoys me that you can guess whose is whose.) And, of course, it changes over time - the go-to drink of your 20s is rarely that of your 30s.

In 2019, the New York TImes ran a piece about how, for all its virtues, the Aperol Spritz is unfortunately not very good, and only made popular mainly because of a marketing drive after Campari bought Aperol. (The people/internet replied and said, fuck you, yes it is, and was labelled one of the worst takes of 2019.) But this brings us to another point about cocktails – they themselves can grow and morph as our taste buds move on. No need to throw the whole spritz out with the Aperol baby – Metro were “paying” $2.25 odds on the drink of the summer being the St-Germain Spritz (elderflower liqueur, prosecco and sparkling water.) “If not this, something like this,” they write. “Perhaps bars will just call it their ‘house summer spritz’”. The whisky sour can become the cherry sour.

Habits aside, there are a million cocktails for a million situations. There are early evening cocktails, and there are one more for the road cocktails and there are elegantly simple cocktails that flirt with being a single straight liquor (like that apocryphal tale of Winston Churchill whispering the word vermouth into his martini), and there are ridiculous cocktails with paper umbrellas in. And so you can also cultivate an air of sophistication by at least pretending to think about it before your order you drink. 

Wonderhorse - the original

Alex Williams, who Hamiltonians will recognise from his plaits his beard, and if you live in Hayes Paddock his massive Leonberger named Cheeseburger, got his start in hospo at Cobb & Co.. This is no doubt controversial, but the C&C non-alcoholic traffic light for kids is many people’s first experience with the cocktail experience. Williams is also the stalwart of the Hamilton cocktail scene - opening Wonderhorse at a time where most bars were owned by two people and everyone ordered the house wine or the tap beer. (These were dark days - the excellent reporter and ex-Hamiltonian Rob Kidd for example, once uncovered the inner city bars price fixing scheme in 2010).

People have described the vibe at Wonderhorse as NYC loft, and Williams once told Stuff in 2017 that actually the vibe is what you want it to be. This makes total sense when you look around the bar and see a really broad base of clientele (always an indicator of a good bar) - it’s old, it's young, it's corporate, it’s rural - and they’re not on their fucking phones (we took pics of our drinks strictly for reporting purposes anyway.) And order what you want, but an Aperol Spritz is kinda out of place here.

You can always order the classics here with a chalk board of revolving others - at the moment the cherry cola sour is a standout, and without the egg-foam that I’ve recently thrashed to death.

Hayes Common - the a.m. cocktail

Having paused their evening service, the new Hayes Common cocktail menu reflects the brunchy vibe, i.e. “not super boozy,” explains owner Lisa Quarrie. (Keen, perhaps, to avoid the bottomless brunch crowd, which is a whole other genre of daytime drinking.) Lisa Quarrie, of Hayes Common, says the two stand out cocktails from their Spring/summer menu so far are both gin based - they umeshu cooler (scapegrace uncommon gin, plum wine, lemon), and the spring revival (blush rose, gin, cointreau, orgeat, lemon, coconut water). Seasonal, and using byproducts from the kitchen and garden that would otherwise go to waste - think local spirits paired with shrubs or syrups from stewed fruit from the kitchen. 

Mr Pickles - riverside

When Mr PIckles will always be first and foremost a restaurant - but then they opened the people spoke, and it became much more of a drinks destination than they counted on. ( I mean, the location…) They take a collaborative approach to their cocktail menus - by committee, essentially, where everyone brings ideas. These are also cocktails you can’t produce at home, because you can’t put their homemade shrubs and infusion on your shopping list. 

So far, the tropic thunder (rum, peach, pineapple juice, grenadin) is Javiel’s (Mr Pickles’ bar manager) takes on classic shaved ice, and is lovingly compared to a cyclone ice block by the team. Meanwhile, the lost cherry (cacao nib rum, cherry heering, cherry and vanilla shrub, soda) - comes from bartender Dave. The cocoa nibs rum is infused in-house, just as the cherry and vanilla essence shrub is too (they spent two weeks getting the recipe right).

And you can relax, because “The gummy bear sour is never going anywhere. Ever.”

Ernest - playing grown up

When Ernest opened, we all let out a collective sigh of relief knowing Kirikiriroa could sustain not one but two cocktail bars. How grown up! It’s good for pretty big groups that would overheat Wonderhorse - I’ve been there with a large work group and also sat across from a massive hen’s party having a really wild night. The food on the menu is seriously underrated (and has spoiled us for dinner ever time).

This is the kind of place it feels rude not to photograph your drinks. 

Cocktail wise, it’s the perfect place to go in, describe a vibe, and see what gets delivered. Every bartender should be able to do that, really, but it’s nice they invite you too on their fabric-bound menu. They have all the classics, either in print or unofficially (Hemmingway would have approved of the coconut daiquiri), and have a number of novelty drinks - I ordered the blue moon recently (vodka, yuzu, elderflower, limb and bubble), which warms like some kind of magical delicious cough syrup. When my bubble burst (making the table sticky - the poor wait staff) before I photographed it, Craig the owner had appeared from what felt like actual thin air and offered to reapply it. I didn’t mind and said it was fine, but what I really mean to say is really to say, the service is really, really impeccable.

It was one of the bartenders at Ernest who, while making my drink, taught me how to get that really crispy egg white foam at home. (It’s all about the speed at which it hits the top of the shaker as it flies over your shoulder.) Because you can always count on your bartender being passionate about their craft, and generous with their tips, because they know they’re not really competing with your drinks cabinet at home, even if you have mastered the perfect martini, because it’s just not performative enough.