After seeing a few gorgeous posts on the Winerist instagram page with cocktail mixes, I started thinking about how I got into cocktails. And I have a few stories for you, named in Friends style:
- The one with Champagne – it was our first date with Mark, I was (un)fashionably late and Mark was waiting for me at the bar of the restaurant. When I arrived there, Mark asked me which cocktail I would like and as I didn’t have any knowledge about cocktails at the time, I asked the barman for a menu and he said they don’t have one for cocktails. Great! So asked him: what do you have? And he started listing cocktail names that I never heard in my life and the only word I recognized was champagne and I stopped him and said: yes, champagne! Not a cheap date at all!
- The one with the cocktail workshop – I was still not convinced that I liked cocktails, I was used to wine, sparkling or cognac so any mixes with other stuff didn’t sound too tempting for me. But at one of my jobs in the UK, the company organized a cocktail making workshop. Learned how to make 2 cocktails, it was fun. Time to go home. but after running like crazy to the train station, I missed my train and had 30min to wait for the next one so I was upset and went back. The 2 gents that were teaching us how to make cocktails said: welcome back, do you want another cocktail? And guess what I replied! I’m Moldovan, I don’t like mixing stuff, just give me a shot of vodka! I now understand why Mark says that I sound rude sometimes haha!
- The one with the Hollywood barman – a few years ago Mark took me to Beaverbrook for my birthday and we went to the bar first, I need to say that the bar is just beautiful (have a look at the gallery here). And we usually like chatting to the waiters, barmen, we like guessing where they are from and so on. So we started chatting to the barman and it seems that he dreamt of becoming a Hollywood actor, lived there for a while, met famous people, but surely you know how hard it is to have a break through so for the time being he was in the UK making (exquisite) cocktails. This is when I got into Manhattan and Old Fashioned type of cocktails (I forgot to mention I don’t like sweet alcohol drinks, except for Baileys!). So we had a nice chat and tried nice cocktails. I really hope the chap got back to Hollywood and will fulfill his dreams 🙂
- The one with no Bloody Mary – we were meeting friends in London and one of our friends came from Germany, we didn’t see him in a long time and met for drinks. Anyway, by this point I was having cocktails occasionally and I wanted to order a Bloody Mary and the waiter said they don’t have any. So our friend went to the bar and asked: do you have vodka? do you have tomato juice? do you have tabasco sauce? and black pepper? The answer to all was yes. So he ordered all that and we made the cocktail ourselves haha!
- The one with James Bond – I once asked for a Dry Martini and the waiter asked me if I wanted it with gin or with vodka? I asked which one he recommended and he said it depends if you want it like James Bond? Although, he continued, James Bond had a lot of vodka shots in his cocktail, he had an alcohol problem and he was running from commitments, he was not a hero as people like to make of him. Gin it is! I ordered while thinking about a fictional character.
- The one that makes me tipsy – even if I’m into cocktails by this point, I am still more of a wine drinker. I like a nice glass of red wine or a sparkling wine (be it an expensive champagne or a cheap cava from Lidl) and I generally enjoy a drink with food more than just drinking. But I have a little trick that I use sometimes (and it works especially for cheaper sparkling wines): add a teaspoon of cognac in a glass of sparkling wine. Not only it will give it a special flavor, but it will also relax all your muscles and make you feel tipsy(er) or at least this is the effect it has one me.
So here is my cocktail experience so far. I’m sure I’ll have more stories to tell about it, but I would love to know as well, do you have any cocktail stories?
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