Netflix’s ‘Drink Masters’ create art you can sip
Nexflix’s “Drink Masters” is about so much more than who makes the best margarita or gin and tonic. No, the competition series that begins streaming its 10 40-minute episodes Friday, Oct. 28, is more about the artistic side of mixing drinks. Here, 12 of the most skillful and creative bartenders – or mixologists as the series refers to them – are tasked with infusing, stirring and blending their way through a gauntlet of high-stakes cocktail challenges. The victor, as judged by award-winning bar entrepreneurs Julie Reiner and Frankie Solarik, moves on to vie for the chance at winning a $100,000 grand prize at season’s end. Actor Tone Bell (“The Flash”) is the host. But these aren’t your father’s cocktails. These are drinks that often tell a story – about the drink itself, the contestant or something else. And the story doesn’t necessarily have to be only in the glass. It could be on a small tray with other ingredients surrounding the glass. If there was a Michelin star for mixologists, these folks would have one. It’s really outside-the-box thinking on the part of the contestants, all of whom have culinary backgrounds and thus take that approach to their liquid creations. “They really have a culinary background because it’s the mixing, combining of flavors and really changing the composition of certain ingredients into something different,” explains executive producer Tim Warren (“Bar Rescue,” “Undercover Billionaire”). “So yeah, they’re bartenders, they’ve all been strictly behind the bar, many of them have their own bar but they’ve kind of elevated cocktails to a whole different level . ... So they have this combination of great bartender skills as well as a culinary background/appreciation. And that combination is what enables them to create these unbelievable drinks.” In the first episode, the contestants are challenged to make one of the world’s most requested drinks, the margarita, what we know as a mixture of triple sec, lime juice and tequila with salt on the rim of the glass. But these folks are using odd ingredients like gelatin, tea, elderberry and smoked salt to make their interpretations, which range from a deconstructed margarita to a Japanese-inspired variation. What the judges want to taste is something they’ve never had before – a tall order for this drink – but one that still captures its essence. And always with complexity and creativity. “What these mixologists are creating is liquid art,” Warren says. “You know, that’s really what these are. So very much (like) ‘Blown Away,’ (where) they’re creating these pieces of art with glass, our mixologists are creating art with their cocktails – or cocktail art, if you will.”