Devin
Cross
The man behind Mesh’s cocktail bar,
Mix, on how an intense personal journey
led to a new approach to cocktailsGQ: How did you
get involved in the
alcohol industry?
Devin Cross: I became
interested in alcohol from a very
young age. My parents had a liquor
cabinet at home with so many types
of bottles, and they used to have
cocktail parties at home. I used
to read through these old labels,
like Galliano, and I would smell it
and think, “I don’t understand it.
It doesn’t smell great, but it doesn’t
offend me.” As I got older, I started
realising why these things were so
praised, and I started noticing in my
late teens people would spend loads
of money on whisky, and I thought,
“There must be something here.”
After I finished studying sound
engineering in London, I wanted to
be a music producer. But the whole
music industry fell apart. I was
living in London and frequenting
a lot of cocktail bars, and one night
we were sitting at one of them, and
these cocktails were coming out,
and all my friends were around me
going, ‘Dev, this is your thing, you
love whisky, this is your thing!’
Later, I ended up falling in love
with a Scottish girl and moved to
Edinburgh, where she’s from.
I knew a bit about whisky by then,
so I started working as a whisky
sommelier. I was geeky, and I was
passionate; I was that kid who was
way too passionate about whisky
but didn’t understand the business
side. So I didn’t progress in that
job much because I was just too
passionate about the good stuff,
and I didn’t want to sell customers
the really expensive stuff – which
weren’t always that great.
After some time I broke up with
my girlfriend, and my mom got
sick back home, so I came back to
Cape Town to help take care of her.
The only job I could find was at the
cocktail bar Orphanage. I started
there as a barback (a bartender’s
assistant) and earned my stripes.
But I kind of got ahead of myself
a little and started making drinks
when I shouldn’t have been making
drinks. I learnt a lot of lessons about
working as a team and working as
a bar instead of by yourself.GQ: Yet the creativity
kept popping up.
DC: Totally. Eventually, I started
doing well. I realised I had a good
palate – I can smell things mostEssEntials Taste