The Influence of the Digital Age on Bartending

We live in an age of vanity. Our current culture fuels the social value of likes and re-blogs, rewarding immediate visual satisfaction to the point that it’s easy to lose focus on anything except the shiniest thing with the most exorbitant flair. And bartending is no exception.

WORDS ° Kurtis Bosley

Credit: Alibi Woolloomooloo Credit: Alibi Woolloomooloo

I had to redirect my train of thought towards learning as much as possible about flavour and service, not only focusing on the glitz and glamour of non-sustainable drink garnishes and extravagant presentation.

Our industry is inundated by drinks that are more interested in being exhibited in an art gallery than being served over a bar.

I’ve seen first-hand the influence of this new wave of ‘drinkstagram’. People have become consumed with filling newsfeeds with beautiful booze and have forgotten the importance of what a drink tastes like. Even I’ve been lost in that world, finding myself driven to create a drink that would land me on the pages of a magazine or newspaper.

My focus was on sheer experimentation and conceptualising my drinks as artistic ideas. I was transfixed on making the drinks look amazing, without thinking through the flavours and techniques that would instead further myself in an industry built on delicious drinks and excellent service.

It’s taken me a few years to really understand the skill and knowledge needed to harmonise those qualities.

I had to redirect my train of thought towards learning as much as possible about flavour and service, not only focusing on the glitz and glamour of non-sustainable drink garnishes and extravagant presentation.

That being said, there’s something to say about the influence visually stunning drinks have on today’s punter. You can’t serve the flavoursome drinks you’ve worked hard to create and perfect without guests at your bar, and drink aesthetics are a big motivator for consumers to enter an establishment. In fact, it’s become a large part of what entices so many people towards our industry as a whole.

Attention to visual style creates excitement, even before customers have actually ordered that first ‘clarified nitro-infused, fat-washed galactic hopped negroni’. Bars worldwide are creating incredible concoctions, served in amazing vessels, with jaw-dropping garnishes, which are then purchased and photographed every single day. Places like Eau De Vie (located in both Sydney and Melbourne) have found a balance of theatre, presentation and flair, alongside serving up high quality drinks. So, it CAN be done!

Sydney’s PS40 is another example of a bar that has found the balance between unique drink design, attention to detail and guest service. The team promotes the bar’s original concept in the venue and on its social media accounts, but they are serving the drinks and charismatic service to back all of it up.

So, can both have a place? It’s not a bad thing that the bartending community is trying to elevate what we do into a popular art form; aesthetics and the Instagram movement has garnered global attention for our industry. But it will always be important for us not to forget that service and quality drinks come first. The glitz and glam of an attention grabbing Insta-feed will soon wane if customers aren’t coming back because all that was in it for them was a photo.

James Wheeler, General Manager at Dandelyan, London

THE WEIGH IN

We asked two influential bartenders for their thoughts on the ‘drinkstagram’ cocktail movement.

DRINKS WORLD: Instagram is now a key part of the consumer experience. Do you take this into account in the process of creating the drinks menus at your venue?

JAMES WHEELER: Drinks definitely need to look good visually and yes, we do take it into account, but it’s certainly one of the lowest priorities when we create our new drinks.

PATRICK TULLY: The answer is yes, but very carefully. At Christopher Hanna, we put a lot of energy into considering all of the aspects of a drink. This certainly means creating beautifully presented drinks, but how it tastes and smells is equally important. What we definitely avoid is creating tacky, viral kinds of drinks that are just there to look over the top and forsake flavour. Our guiding principle is, ‘elegance through simplicity’.

DW: Do you think there is a danger of bartenders placing too much focus on the look of a drink at the expense of other parts of the service experience?

JW: Yes, 100%. Around the time that we opened Dandelyan, almost four years ago, many of the bars in London were focused on making their drinks look as incredible as possible and it seemed like they were all forgetting that a drink should taste good too.

PT: This is definitely one of the biggest dangers of social media in regards to a lot of things, not just cocktails. The experience a venue offers is so much more than just what a drink looks like. There are so many different factors that come into play. What a drink smells like, what it tastes like, what it looks like, how it’s served, the furniture in the venue, the music and the customer service... Social media holds a magnifying glass to just one of those factors and blows its importance out of proportion. This in turn over exaggerates the importance of this one factor in bartenders’ minds.

DW: Do you see the Instagram movement as a ‘trend’ or something that’s here to stay and should be considered as part of a bar’s drink strategy?

JW: I can’t see Instagram becoming any less important to people any time soon, and I’m sure it will be equally as important, if not more so, in the future. As long as people remember that it’s not the only thing. I actually think it’s more productive to create a menu that’s aesthetically beautiful, so it ends up on Instagram a lot.

PT: I think it’s here to stay, but I also think that how we approach it can and will change. We’ve really just replaced the word beautiful with ‘instagramable’, so when we are writing a new menu, we aim to create drinks that fulfil all of the requirements of a great drink, including being beautiful. Social media genuinely does push bartenders to create more

beautiful drinks, we all just need to remember that we are also creating something intended for consumption.

DW: Do you think the consumer drive towards venues that serve these highly stylised drinks may impact the business of local or small bars that don’t have the capacity or expertise to be serving drinks of this nature?

JW: No, not at all. The small, local bars that are making good drinks and providing good service will always do well no matter the popularity and stress placed on ‘Instagramable’ drinks.

PT: Not really. Some people want to drink lavish, stylish drinks and others are more focused on simple, quality cocktails. Some people don’t care either way and just want to enjoy a tall frosty one in good company. I think there will always be room for venues that don’t over complicate things and stick to what they do well. If anything, the venues that do specialise in a very specific style of cocktail are limiting their audience to those who prioritise that style of drink.

Patrick Tully, General Manager at Christopher Hanna, Sydney

DW: What are some foolproof tips to creating a drink that tastes great but also has visual appeal?

JW: It’s always good to keep it simple. A nice clean looking drink with a neat, pretty garnish will work wonders. For example, serving a drink with a simple, little edible flower always gets a good reaction. If a drink is on crushed ice, you can’t go wrong with a good mint sprig and piece of fruit. Also, if the drink doesn’t need a garnish then don’t garnish it!

PT: I truly think the best drinks are the simplest ones. Look at the daiquiri, for example. Keep your ingredient list short – less than six. The presentation should always tie into the story of the drink and never be unnecessary. For example, there is absolutely no reason to garnish a daiquiri with a lime wheel. It is perfect just the way it is. Sours are always an effective canvas for creative presentation. Stencilled images, dehydrated fruit, especially citrus always looks good.

DW: Have you ever taken it too far in the pursuit of a beautiful cocktail and created a drink where the taste was negatively impacted?

JW: Absolutely not. I take pride in creating equally delicious and visually appealing drinks.

PT: I never put it on a menu, but I have spent years toying with a colour changing cocktail. It is based around using certain naturally occurring pH indicators, in my case extracted from red cabbage, and then modifying the acidity. No matter how perfect I got it to look (and it does look amazing!), there was no getting away from the fact that it tasted like Berroca and cabbage.

DW: Bringing it back to basics, if you had to choose between a visually stunning drink and a basic drink with great taste, what would you choose?

JW: Tasty drink, any day of the week. The customer doesn’t buy the drink to look at it. If it doesn’t taste good, they’ve wasted their money.

PT: As my old music teacher once taught me, it’s better to play ‘Three Blind Mice’ really, really well than it is to fumble your way through Bach. Simple and delicious any day of the week.