‘The Sapiens of the cocktails’ is an ambitious project of four-volume for lovers of the sector, bartenders and catering professionals. The first book deals with the origin, history and evolution of the cocktail.
When a cocktail ceases to be one? What are all the fluids? What, then, does a daiquiri frappé is still a cocktail? What is a mixologist, a chef from the liquid? Is it the same for a cocktail in Spain than in Japan? The answer to these and many other questions is in Cocktails, cocktail bar and bartenders, the second book of the Bullipedia, which arrives in bookstores next December 3 with the support of Bacardi, which aims to put order in the universe of the cotelería, a world where there is still a lot of urban legend, little rigorous information and more of a misunderstanding.
The volume begins at the beginning: the semantic, the origin of the term -the first mention appeared in The Morning Post and Gazetteer of the march 20, 1798, in a reference to satirical to what they had taken some politicians, in a bar, although the origins of the punch are nearly two centuries before-, after delving into the issues of geopolitics of the cocktail, their classification and cultural uses. Because there are those who consumes a cocktail to celebrate a promotion, but also who it takes to calm the nerves after a funeral.
The cocktail is today a field which is a contradiction because, as explained by the journalist Mar Calpena, despite the boom in the media that is living through the last link of the chain, the bartenders, the cocktail still have a long way to go to enjoy the same cultural prestige that wine has. And as Simone Caporale -“the god of cocktails” according to Ferran Adrià, the craft of the bartender is as much an empirical as poetry.
In Spain we are very bars. There are more than 300,000 points in hospitality, but as he remembers Adrià, the 50% does not last more than five years. And nearly a quarter, 22%, closes at the end of two years. A disaster. Why? “Having an idea is not starting a business”, explains Adrià. To him, no one explained to him what that it was a company or a budget when I started. “We have had to scramble. And we want the new generations to have it easier,” he says. That’s why the next volumes will focus on how to make a business profitable and shall include, as an absolute novelty, tasting notes.
it Is difficult to determine with accuracy when they were invented, the lamb, account Adrià, but with the majority of cocktails that’s not the case: there are usually at least a date or a particular place associated with its birth. And yet, most of the information that exists on the internet is very basic. “My generation has not had a book to explain the world of the cocktail. Dependías to find someone who will explain how they do things, but almost never told the why”, says Caporale. And he adds, on the four volumes projected on the subject: “This is not a book about cocktails, is a college scholarship”.
The Bullipedia, recall, it is this ambitious publishing project in which Ferran Adrià wants to overturn all the accumulated wisdom while he was at the front of the best restaurant in the world. Of time, they are working 35 titles of different categories, smaller encyclopedias dedicated to the wine, the coffee, the products… now comes the first volume of four that will be dedicated to the cocktail, with the subtitle of Fundamentals and the seal experts like Javier de las Muelas, the above-mentioned Calpena and Caporale, Ferran Centelles and Marc Álvarez. All work together in a selfless manner, quite an achievement in a world that recognizes the Teeth, in which “the egos are very present.”
The premise that pervades the whole collection, does not tire of repeating Adrià, is to understand to innovate. He calls it “method Sapiens”, and it consists in understanding what one is doing when mixing gin, Campari and vermouth red and remove them before serving. “We don’t want to be dogmatic or to tell the reader whether it is better to the classic cocktails or modern. But you have to understand what is classic and modern, before starting to serve cocktails,” says Adrià. “The people do not know what that is to innovate or create. The majority of innovation is a lie, is to adapt a case of success”, he adds.
Of the fashion tiki cocktails during prohibition or the Cold War (or the Moscow Mule as an excellent marketing operation of Smirnoff), the book is a vision of 360 degrees about the combined. Although, as he says Javier de las Muelas, a romantic without a remedy, “no matter who is in government, whether you win or lose Barca, or Real Madrid… The bars will always be the land of emotions. And that we did not remove any app”.
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