The Velvet Morning #001: A Martini and old faSHioned coats, mixed with a lick.
That’s a cryptic crossword clue I thought up for the title. You use part of the clue as wordplay, and another as the definition. ‘Coats’, mixed with a ‘lick’ (making an anagram of the words coats and lick), gives you cocktails (‘A martini and old-fashioned’). Fun right?
I’ve done years of bar work, including a stint at a fancy place in Eora/Sydney’s East, where I had the opportunity to learn under brilliant career bartenders and mixologists. I learned how to make countless drinks I’d only heard of in movies, and countless more I’d never heard of at all (Boulevardier? Naked and Famous?).
I took this wealth of knowledge home and started mixing things here and there cos it’s just fun to use the shaker sometimes. You come out the other end having a decent idea of what flavour profiles work well together and mild tendonitis in your shoulder.
Liquor famously isn’t cheap in this town, so you make the best with what you’ve got or buy the cheapest labels possible. Both work surprisingly well. You get to impress friends with cocktail trivia, it gives you something to nerd out about with other bartenders, you have alternative drink options to whatever you find in a bottle or a can, and you make it specific to your tastes, a little different every time. It is WAY easier making a drink when you don’t have a purist breathing down your neck telling you you’re stirring the ice the wrong way.
Cocktail tools are cheap and can be found in most op shops pretty easily, too, so as much as it is definitely a luxury of the wealthy to drink cocktails all the time when you’re out, at home, you can throw together what you like the way you like it every time.
And yes, you can go deep into the weeds about cocktail history, heritage, traditional practices, the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ of it all, which is super interesting and fun to learn and keep in mind, but when it comes to making your drink taste a little better to you, you’re the one drinking it, so do what you feel. I love mixing drinks; it’s fun making something a little more complicated and specific as a treat. I think of it like baking cookies.
classics made simple
Old Fashioned – boozy, rich, perfect to sip on. Think sitting by a fireplace next to a towering bookshelf. Great for quiet celebration, unwinding after a long day of writing magazine columns, or warming up in this bitter winter
60ml (or a good slug) of bourbon into a big glass you won’t drink out of, then a few dashes of bitters, an orange peel and a pinch of sugar or sugar syrup (You can make sugar syrup by stirring a 1:1 mix of sugar and boiling water and storing it in the fridge). Stir and strain over ice.
Espresso Martini – needs no introduction. Fan favourite, looks great in the photos at your home poker night, and satisfyingly foamy. Looks great in your
2 parts vodka, 2 parts coffee (espresso, cold brew, pods, work with what you’ve got), 1/2 part sugar syrup and (if you have it) 2 parts coffee liqueur. Tweak ratios to your desired sweetness and strength
Ribena Maria - Sweet, Summer-y, great for jugs. Perfect for a discreet thermos at the beach. Original recipe.
Shake 1 part tequila, 1 part Ribena, 2 parts pomegranate juice, and a squeeze of lime juice. Pour over ice, topped with soda water. (This one’s an original recipe I make with my girlfriend)
Vodka/tequila sunrise - Club classics, sweet goes with pretty much everything – dinner, movie night, pre-drinks, whatever you need. Nothing to it. Vodka or tequila, orange juice and ice. The trick to making it look like a sunrise is to put a straw or spoon upside down and pour the red cordial down it so it goes straight to the bottom, making it look like the sun is rising.
Cherry Wine (Mocktail). A decadent treat, with 0% alcohol. Have it for dessert, after a run or while you’re tapping away at your laptop.
Cherries, muddled (crushed) with lemon juice and a drop of chilli oil. Pour over ice, top with soda
Yes, I’ve written Easiest Cocktails On A Budget, but the point of writing this is to express that you don’t actually need the name or the ‘right’ way to make them. If you don’t care, you can just… start. When someone mentions cocktails, getting caught up in the proper recipe, names, and the bureaucracy sucks the fun out of it, and then you’re left wondering why even bother. In bars, getting paid to make them, obviously, is a different story, but if you’ve ever played the King's Cup, you know how much fun it can be.
If you’re still not sold on making them yourself, or you enjoy paying for the comfort of knowing that your drink was made by the pros the same way it was 100 years ago, here are some bars that will give you the magic of a perfectly-made drink without making you feel like you need to be pretentious about it.
Bar Planet / Newtown - An austere martini bar, with new custom and house cocktails regularly, you’ll be spoiled for choice.
The Blind Bear / Cronulla - Timeless, wood-pannelled tavern that makes pints feel just at home as their house-made sours.
