The carnal cocktail: This is not your father’s gin and tonic

ZOE STRIMPEL

FOR the philosopher Bertrand Russell, drinking alcohol was a sign of misery: happy people – a category that for the rapacious Russell included sexually satisfied people – did not seek escape in booze.

Yet for the rest of us mortals, sexy drinks and sexy feelings often go hand in hand.

Sure, necking a few pints in a grungy pub probably has a similar effect – scientifically – to sipping away at a succession of perfect negronis on an Italian beach.

But today’s trendiest booze makers and bar people insist on going further than the simple imbibing of alcohol. They want their drinks to invoke lust. Gin is the centrepiece of the sensual cocktail revolution.

But what’s so aphrodisiac about gin? Mostly, the botanicals (the plants, spices and essences) it’s brewed with.

Cardamom, cinnamon, chocolate, honey and nutmeg are examples and can all be found in contemporary versions of mother’s ruin.

But gin alone can’t pull off the scene.

So tonic i s no longer tonic but a magical dance with aroma.

And cocktails are not necessarily just drinks anymore, but an exercise in sensuality where nose, eyes and tongue are marshalled in one smooth operation.

A little sherbet here, a whiff of edible perfume there, a spray of violet essence, a flash of colour or fire or sugar.

Which is exactly the kind of thing on offer at a pop-up at the Sanderson Hotel’s Purple Bar, Fitzrovia, in London. The result is, in fact, somewhere between the sublime and grotesque.

Potions include the likes of lapsang suchong whisky, golddusted rose- infused gin stirred with a giant sugar diamond and those naughty cocktail pastels in flavours such as spiced rum and whisky sour, equivalent to half a shot each.

Your date is meant to be dazzled by fizzing smoke spewing from the “Thyme for Tea” cocktail, which is presented in a teapot, marvel at the way the (slightly sickly) maraschino-liqueur-filled “Violet You’re Turning Violet” turns a deeper shade of purple as it was being poured and yelp with joy when a spoonful of chocolate sherbet is topped with Bailey’s, while a rather surprising edible Christmas essence is sprayed overhead.

The intention is to dazzle and scramble senses, and – presumably – to tip you into bed when you’ve downed tools.

Meanwhile, over at the Green Bar at the plush Hotel Café Royale on Piccadilly, bar honcho Derren King has built a wardrobe of gin and botanicals that are more sophisticated. After making an intuitive read of each person’s tastes and even moods, he produces a botanicals-infused gin to match.

Perhaps it’s fitting that sensory cocktails have taken flight in the age of Tinder, in which dates too often feel mechanical, bonds week, conversation a bore. If the app often fails to infuse dates with chemistry, the new breed of high-functioning cocktails can help.

Strimpel is a PhD candidate at the University of Sussex. This article was first published in The Conversation.

Infusions meant to inspire carnality are tempting the cocktail set.