A bit bitter and twisted
Cocktail bitters are big news–and some of the best are made right here in Britain, says Emma Hughes
Emma Hughes tries British bitters
THEY’RE a concentration of Mother Nature,’ declares Agostino Perrone, master mixologist at the Connaught Bar in Mayfair. He’s talking me through the hotel’s gleaming black-andchrome martini trolley, which, as well as the usual selection of gins and garnishes, bears half a dozen or so little brown-glass pipette bottles straight out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. They contain the essence of carefully chosen plants, herbs and roots known as cocktail bitters, a neutral spirit (about 40% ABV) infused with aromatics.
He continues: ‘Coriander seeds, elegant with subtle spice and citrus notes… Lavender, a great mix of floral and woody notes, almost like rosemary. Very good with gin.’ Visitors to the bar can opt for a couple of drops to finish their martini in a theatrical style. ‘They add complexity,’ he tells me. ‘And if the guests are very into spirits, we can approach it in a more technical way and explain how all the flavours work together.’
Forget the single, sticky bottle of Angostura gathering dust in the kitchen, bitters are big news. Driven by an enthusiasm for bestof-the-best ingredients, industry-leading drinks website Master of Malt stocks more than 100 different artisan varieties, from cardamom to ginger and black truffle. Many of those attracting the most attention are made in the UK, from Bitter Union’s range of smallbatch ones, which founders Tom and Lucy Moore describe as being like ‘conducting an orchestra’, to Dr Adam Elmegirab’s Bitters, produced in Aberdeen. Even American craftbitter label Bittermens sells a Scarborough bitter, infused with the parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme from the ballad commemorating the Yorkshire fair of the same name.
‘They’re the glue that holds a cocktail together,’ enthuses Bob Petrie of Bob’s Bitters, which, despite having a kiwi on the label, are manufactured in Essex. A former pastry chef, he got into the bitters business in 2005, when he was asked by The Dorchester to create a few to complement their menu of gin and tonics. The result was a range of precisionmade single flavours, such as chocolate, grapefruit and mandarin. ‘The first cocktails—spirits, water, sugar and bitters— came from London,’ he points out. ‘So for me, they work in a quintessentially British way.’
A descendant of the herbal tinctures that have been in use for millennia, bitters made the sneaky transition from the medicine cabinet to the drinks trolley in the 19th century. Angostura bitters were created by a doctor in Venezuela to treat soldiers with malaria and Peychaud’s bitters were the brainchild of chemist Antoine Peychaud, who owned a pharmacy in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Although it ended up becoming the principal component of a Sazerac, the gentian, anise and mint-based concoction was ‘intended as a health tonic rather than a cocktail ingredient,’ says drinks writer Alice Lascelles in Ten Cocktails: The Art of Convivial Drinking (Saltyard Books, £16.99).
However, as the century went on and morning sharpeners became voguish, herbal bitters were used to cloak pre-lunch cocktails in a veneer of medically sanctioned respectability. They ‘helped these drinks to pass as a constitutional, rather than simply pleasurable,’ Miss Lascelles notes wryly. By the 1920s, nobody was tutting over the contents of anybody’s hip flask and bitters had cemented their status as a behind-the-bar essential. The wheel has turned full circle now and they’re increasingly being used to enliven non-alcoholic drinks—bitter Union suggests adding a touch of its Lemon, Hops and Herbs bitter to a cup of green tea or a dash of the Spiced Orange one to a hot chocolate.
Back at the Connaught, Mr Perrone is unveiling two of his own London-made blends: a combination of tonka bean with apricot (‘it has a lovely marzipan flavour; the mellow notes work very well with the spiciness of the gin’) and his signature, the Dr Ago, made with bergamot oil and ginseng. Yet, although his bitters are the result of painstaking experimentation, he stresses that there needn’t be anything complicated about using them at home. ‘A classic orange bitter is always good in a martini,’ he advises. ‘And less is more; start with a drop, see how you feel.’
Wherever you’re drinking them, one thing’s for sure—they’re exactly what the doctor ordered.
By the 1920s, bitters had cemented their status as a behindthe-bar essential