When Charlotte Voisey, William Grant & Sons USA Portfolio Ambassador visited Sydney, she told me that she was equally excited to learn about cocktail trends in Australia as I was to eager learn about cocktail trends in the U.S. Before Charlotte took on her current role, she was a renowned mixologist with a string of coveted awards to her name.
Cocktail Trends with Charlotte Voisey
While cocktail enthusiasts and bar flies look forward to new trends in libations, bartenders want to find the next thing, whether it is an ingredient, a vessel or technique.
Here are five cocktail trends in the U.S. as told by Charlotte Voisey.
1. Spirits
Gin is very popular in the U.S. but agave-based spirits (tequila and mezcal) are on fire right now. Bartenders love them and consumers are picking up on their passion and enjoying them as well. What influential bartenders love is what becomes a mainstream trend 4 to 5 years later.
2. Bottled Cocktails
Bottled cocktails or pre-batched cocktails are another trend. Most good bars in America have a bottled cocktail option such as the bottled Negroni and carbonated bottled cocktails such as the Americano and French 75. These are great drinks that have a beautiful ritual when made but can still be indulgent when readily served. This trend was likely to be a reaction to the speakeasy phase where everything slowed down and the craft of the cocktail became more important than time. Meanwhile, the consumer wanted a good cocktail and didn’t want to wait 15 minutes for it.
3. Clarifying Non Alcoholic Ingredients
In terms of technique, there is a trend for clarifying non-alcoholic ingredients then putting them into cocktails. An example is clarifying citrus then putting it back into a stirred cocktail. David Arnold’s bar, Booker and Dax in New York is the pioneer of that trend in America. They do a Stirred Bird, a Tiki cocktail that is clarified and stirred. The drink plays with the senses. It looks like a Manhattan, then the flavour jumps out and it remind you of the cocktail but the texture is something else.
4. Barrel Aged Cocktails
Barrel Aged Cocktails are not a trend now but a part of the industry. They were pioneered by Jeffrey Morganthaler of Portland Oregon in the U.S. They have achieved not quite mainstream status but fairly well known status in America. It’s an example of a successful trend that has reached mainstay.
5. Large Format Drinks
In high volume cocktail bars, large format drinks such as the punchbowl are becoming a trend. The punchbowl is either served at the table or from behind the bar. The NoMad bar in NYC does large format drinks using a dispenser with spigot instead of a ladle into pre-garnished glasses. Bottled cocktails also fall into this category.
And on a last note, Charlotte states that quality is key in mixology and there is no tolerance for doing it badly. It’s cutting corners for speed but never cutting corners at quality.
Photo Taken at The Barber Shop in Sydney by Cocktails & Bars – © Copyright: All rights reserved.
