JOMA RIVERA

Zouk

“I always find extra time to prepare and practice for my cocktail presentation. I invite regulars to try my drinks, gather honest feedback, and also bounce off stories and ideas with them.”

The bar supervisor at Zouk, Joma Rivera, drew from his personal experience to become Singapore’s 2019 winner of the inaugural Campari Bartender Competition in Asia. His winning factors? Have a story behind the drink, know the brief and balance your flavours. The 2014 winner of the Philippines’ Diageo World

Class competition knows what he’s talking about.

Rivera chose to go with a spin on the humble lychee martini, which he called Cachee. “This isn’t a drink that is commonly served in most of the cocktail bars I’ve worked at, but it’s a popular request amongst patrons at the club,” he says. “I challenged myself to create an adventurous and complex take on this cocktail, so instead of using vodka, I switched it up with Campari, giving the drink a more elegant and flavourful base, along with a little bit of citrus for acidity and coconut foam for additional texture.”

TAKE A SIP: “I’m a huge fan of low-abv [alcohol by volume] cocktails. One of the bespoke cocktails we currently have on the menu at Queens [Zouk’s cocktail bar] is called Bamboo. It’s a wine-based, low-abv cocktail that comprises butter-washed oloroso sherry, vermouth, orange bitters and lemon peel. We used a special fat-washing technique with butter to add creaminess to the sherry, while the orange bitters add a citrusy aroma to the drink.”