Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient
Mariner came to mind: “Water, water
everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
Apparently I was missing the point –
picking up the wrong end of the cocktail
stick as it were. It was the award-winning
bartender Mattia Pastori who put me right.
“The function of salt in a cocktail is
as a taste enhancer,” he explained. “Its
job is to accelerate our perception of
flavours, hence to increase their intensity.”
Born in Pavia, where he learned the
ropes in his family’s bar, Pastori picked up
experience in the UK before establishing
himself as one of the star players on the
Milan mixology scene, working at the bars
of five-star hotels such as the Park Hyatt,
the Armani and the Mandarin Oriental.
So what does he think of the new
salty cocktail craze? He immediately
corrects me in my choice of words.
“I wouldn’t speak so much of a craze
as a desire to explore new frontiers,” he
says. “Many bartenders are using savoury
ingredients in new creations, partly to
meet the demand of a drinking public
increasingly curious to try out unusual,
sometimes unbelievable flavours.”
He explains how a touch of saltiness
lifts a spirit’s aromatic notes.
“If I add a few drops of salt and water
solution to a G&T, you won’t perceive its
flavour but you will have an amplified
perception of the bouquet of the gin.”
Ultimately, unlike Barberis, Pastori
reckons the salty trend has stirred but
not shaken the Italian mixology world.
It’s more an evolution than a revolution.
“Take classic cocktails. You’ll find
that savoury ingredients are already in
the DNA of a number of recipes. The
Spritz, for example, was originally served
with olives in brine.”
The same is true, of course, of
the Martini, a cocktail Pastori has
reinterpreted with a savoury twist. In
his Oasi Martini, created for the drink
list of Armani Café, he blends one
part passito wine in which brined olives
have been infused with three parts gin.
The effect is one of palate-numbing
dryness attenuated by a deliciously
mellow aftertaste.
Another of Pastori’s takes on an
old favourite is the Champagne Mary,
also created for the Armani Café, a
Champagne Cocktail flavoured with a
blend of crushed tomatoes and a “shrub”
(a 17th-century word for a medicinal
syrup) of cider vinegar, thyme and sugar.
Besides revisiting the great classics,
Pastori also mixes and matches them.
“One of my most successful
experiments is the Cosmo Maria, an
original synthesis of the Bloody Mary
and the Cosmopolitan created for
a bar in Pozzuoli, north of Naples,”
he says. “It consists of tomato juice,
cranberry juice, vodka and lemon mixed
with teriyaki sauce to add a salty kick.”
If Pastori’s creations explore the
possibilities of the saline and the savoury,
those of other exponents of the new wave
are inspired more explicitly by the sea
and marine life. At the Novantiqua bar
in Bordighera, near the French border,
bartender Daniel Roudaut has come up
with the Rob Royster, in which diverse
flavours – three types of whiskey (rye,
single Islay malt, bourbon) and sour cherry
red vermouth – are accentuated by the
water from an oyster shell (the shucked
mollusc itself is used to garnish the glass).
The move towards savoury is closely
bound up with the tendency of a growing
number of restaurants to serve dinner
with cocktails, with chefs and bartenders
working in tandem. At the Milanese
concept restaurant Bioesserì, Federico
Della Vecchia in the kitchen and
Domenico Cosentino at the counter
have made a name for themselves with
their edible cocktail, the fishy Coral Bay.
To prepare it, they use a mixture of fresh
coriander, marinated onion, lime syrup,
pepper, orange and lemon zest and kombu
algae infused in mezcal as a marinade
liquid for an amberjack carpaccio. After
which they filter the liquid, shake it
and serve it in a glass garnished with
the onion and the amberjack itself.
I recently came across an article about
cocktails in a 1933 issue of the magazine
La Cucina Italiana. In those days, when
fascism was at its height, the practice
of mixing drinks was evidently viewed
with open hostility by gourmets.
“It is really disgusting to see some
individuals drinking a cocktail before
meals,” says the writer. How would he
react today, now that “some individuals”
are mixing the cocktail with the meal? Oasi Martini
MAKES 1
1 large green olive in brine
15 ml passito wine, plus extra
for infusing
45 ml gin1 Infuse olive in passito (3 days).
Add remaining ingredients to
a cocktail shaker with ice, shake
and strain into a chilled Martini
glass. Garnish with olive and serve.Champagne Mary
MAKES 14 cherry tomatoes, cut into half
Powdered olive stones or
olive salt (see our feature on
flavoured salts p39), to serve
40 ml chilled Champagne or
Franciacorta
THYME-CIDER SYRUP
120 ml apple cider vinegar
35 gm caster sugar
1 tsp thyme leaves1 For thyme-cider syrup, blend
ingredients in a blender to a syrup.
2 Add tomatoes to a cocktail
shaker, season to taste and
muddle with a barspoon, then
add 20ml thyme-cider syrup
and shake to combine. Strain
into a Champagne glass dusted
with powdered olive, top with
Champagne and serve.GOURMET TRAVELLER 65