After almost five years working at a cocktail bar, I’ve barely touched the collection of bottles accumulated in my living room. What began as a money-tight, slow-burn Covid project to build a robust collection on my kitchen shelf eventually turned into my primary source of income, and now the original accumulation is collecting dust.
The ridiculousness of it came to my attention when my roommate’s parents were visiting recently, and they commented on the “impressive” bar car, something that signifies a type of considered alcoholism despite sitting almost completely idle, getting more movement when I need to reach the supply closet behind it rather than anything happening with the bottles.
The act of making dozens if not hundreds of cocktails a night renders the activity more mechanical than joyful, and having fine spirits at my disposal (and drinking them as part of my compensation) makes me not inclined to drink cocktails in my off hours. Usually, after and outside of work, I stick to a can of imported beer or a neat pour of a decent scotch.
The main exception to this is a negroni, always built in glass. It’s the wrong way to make the drink, something I’d never do for someone who has to pay $12 (before tax and tip). When a drink is bought and paid for, the first sip should be like that famed bite of an apple, and all the rest are chasing it. But just as a bottle of white wine is meant to be chilled, and yet its complexities reveal itself as it meets the room temperature, so too does the extremities of a negroni become apparent only as its profile passes through diminishing ice.
Into a rocks glass I free-pour gin, sweet vermouth (Cocchi Torino is the most agreeable with any gin, and not as over-powering as more premium products like Carpano Antica), and red bitter (almost always a Campari substitute, I prefer Bruto Americano from St. George). I can eyeball each pour to where the second ingredient doubles the last, and the next halves the whole, filling close to half the glass in total. I drop in a single, large cube from the tray I store under another, as the top one usually sublimates its cubes given how infrequently I use them. I don’t stir, but maybe give the glass a gentle twist to initially incorporate everything into a cooling homogeneity.
The first sip isn’t bad, it’s never bad. If I’d paid for it I wouldn’t have the best feeling about the service, but could wait it out until the ice gradually turns it into the drink I want. What’s in front of me are the ingredients, naked as they are, undiluted and without pretense that they’re supposed to be anything else yet. It’s too bitter, too boozy, too sweet—something I’d shoot half an ounce of on shift rather than prepare. I forget about it, it goes on the coaster as I read, watch or listen.
Before I realize it, the drink’s perfect. I look back and it’s about a third gone. Somewhere in my ignorance, the drink has made itself, and everything’s briefly in order—properly chilled, properly diluted—and I’m properly spirited. From there it dissipates as the drink’s temp stays stable, but it only gets waterier and waterier, whispering away from its ideal state, fading from the high it once had. It’s still good (it’s always good), but it’s intentionally finite, and in a way that brings attention to that by starting as imperfect rather than presenting itself first and foremost as the best it could be. It lives a life.