Drink in Focus: Bamboo at Bar Anima

“In the 19th century, people drank cocktails for socialisation and status,” says Pei Cheung, Anima’s assistant bar manager. “The spirits and equipment available at the time were generally of lower quality. People relied on sugar, spices and fruit juices to make drinks more palatable, so many old recipes are simpler, sweeter and designed to mask imperfections in the base spirit.”

One of Bar Anima’s current signatures, the Bamboo, is an icon of this era as mixology took off in Japan. Cheung recounts the cocktail as invented by German bartender Louis Eppinger, who was hired as head bartender at the Grand Hotel (built in 1887) in Yokohama, a port city that was the first point of contact for Western cultural ideas like jazz.

The Bamboo appeals to that ethos in just three ingredients. The drink was Eppinger’s twist on the classic Adonis, for which dry vermouth is used instead of sweet vermouth alongside dry sherry and bitters. “In my point of view, the simpler the ingredients, the harder it is to be outstanding, like with scrambled eggs,” Cheung adds. “The ingredients of the Bamboo are both low-alcohol, wine-based liquors. With spirits like these, aromas tend to be lighter and more delicate. Through bartending techniques, you can bring out more aroma and flavour, but if you handle them too roughly or dilute the drink too much, they can easily turn sour and may even leave an astringent aftertaste.”

Such a minimal, technique-heavy approach to mixology appears spartan next to the many techniques available to bartenders now. Cheung finds that technology and ingredients today raise the bar on quality such that consistency, polish and storytelling are required to create a modern and stellar bar experience. “People want a reason to go out and seek a complete bar experience, not just the flavour of a single cocktail,” she says.

Anatomy of a cocktail

Name: Bamboo

Bar: Bar Anima, 8/F, 11 Stanley Street, Central