Beware the cocktail bore

The man at the posh London bar stood with our drinks but wouldn’t give them to us. He had a lecture to deliver first, for cocktail culture – or ‘mixology’ as the craft is now known – is nothing if not didactic.

As I looked enviously out at the people with pints of beer across the way, I wearily reflected on how the message to the customer has hardened in the years since cocktail bars with American ambitions crossed the pond. It is: the £19 you’re paying for the drink isn’t enough. You need to be quiet and listen, for you’re not just a drinker: you’re a supplicant.

Be that as it may, I felt my eyes violently glaze over as the man redescribed, in even more verbose detail, what we had already pored over on the menu. The words came thick and fast, a veritable wall of sound. Discernible was talk of emulsions and infusions and constructions and creations and inspirations, and ways of drinking, and guiding concepts of cocktail recipe-making, seasonality, mood, style and taste.