For Anneliese Grazioli, it starts with the spirit

Anneliese Grazioli is the owner of two Darwin bars: Hanky Panky Lounge, which focuses on classics, and Bar Kokomo, where things get a little more Caribbean in nature. She’s also one of Australia’s best bartenders, and as a result, Anneliese is one of the top 25 bartenders in the Espolòn Afterlife To The Bone cocktail competition.

That means you can get a taste of her entry into the competition, called Summer Cup Sieté, at Bar Kokomo throughout August. And, if Anneliese impresses the judges, her drink might even see her getting to Sydney for the national final during Sydney Bar Week next month.

Below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Anneliese tells us about her drink, about Bar Kokomo, and the creative process they employ.

Tell us about the drink you’ve got for us today. What’s name of it? What’s the big idea?

The Summer Cup Sieté was inspired by the Summer Cup number seven.

So the idea behind my drink was really looking at the flavours of Espolòn Reposado, and how to make a really successful Summer Cup with that being that the love of tequila is obviously in full form at the moment, and we’re using better tequila and better ingredients to match it.

So tell us what’s in your version?

So it’s Espolòn Reposado. It’s a carbonated drink to 55 PSI and it’s got an acidulated grapefruit and ginger hydrosol as the dilution component, and sous vide Bees Creek local honey with saltbush and lemon myrtle. That’s all in the carbonation. And then poured over crushed ice and topped with a float of strawberry leaf sous vide Aperol.

What is a hyrdosol for this who are unfamiliar?

It’s basically the water component of something. There’s a couple ways you can do it. On the stove at home is one way, but I’m lucky enough to have a rotovap. So basically I put grapefruit juice and blended fresh ginger into the rotovap and removed all the water from it at a low temperature, and because it’s under pressure it stops it from cooking, so the actual grapefruit doesn’t turn bitter, the ginger doesn’t caramelise. I got all the liquid out of the ginger and the grapefruit. What was left was a bit jammy sort of but not cooked. It was like fresh jam. And I got all the water out of that and then used that as the dilution for the carbonated drink.

Tell us, when did Bar Kokomo open? What’s the big idea here?

Yep, so we opened October last year, so it’s still relatively new. We’re only about ten months now, so very fresh still. The idea behind it, similar to Hanky Panky Lounge, I found a gap in the market in Darwin. Obviously, we’re still a very small population, so the bars themselves — as great as they are — there’s not many. We’ve been looking at trying to find what’s missing and how to bring that to Darwin in a great way, but without over flooding the market.

Hanky Panky is a classic sort of bar with whiskey and gin as the forefront. So I knew I wanted to do something very different. I love South America. I love the Caribbean, obviously Mexico. So all that area felt really comfortable and was a big inspiration for me. But we are inspired by rums from around the world, we have a very heavy Australian selection, and we’re trying to get more and more from throughout the world as we go but obviously being heavy in the Caribbean style.

It’s sort of night time in the Caribbean, I’d say. Obviously we are already quite a tropical city, so we don’t want to lean too heavy into that, we want to be a little bit of an escape for sort of a holiday.

You own two bars, do you get behind the bar as much these days?

I really enjoy being behind the bar. It tends to be just on weekends these days, but I really, really enjoy service. Training, with the teams, that’s probably what I focus most of my time on outside of events and on-shift work.

Training in a small town where we don’t have a lot of people who came before me has been hard, but through the years there’s been so many passionate people. A lot of us are self-taught and then we get together and teach each other.

I’m not the only skilled person in the group, but it’s sort of that, I guess, push of development and letting people train each other and grow together. That’s really important to me.

What’s your creative process when it comes to crafting new drinks?

I probably go two ways. Sometimes I start with the spirit and I like to know about the spirit, obviously not just the flavour notes, but more their inspiration behind why they made that spirit. And then into the flavour notes and then into the drink.

Or sometimes I start with an ingredient. If something’s in season, I tend to get it and then, with the team, we try five different techniques with it. We’ll do different things and see really how the flavour changes in that ingredient. And sometimes we’ll end up using all of the tests, sometimes we’ll just use one or two, sometimes we’ll chuck it all out.

Summer Siete Cup

Group Serve ~ serves 3

• 150ml Espolon Reposado
• 45g Sous vide Honey with Lemon Myrtle & Salt Bush
• 300ml Acidulated Ginger & Grapefruit Hydrosol
• carbonated at 55PSI
• Float ~ 15ml Sous Vide Strawberry Leaf Aperol per drink

For the cocktail:
Combine all ingredients except for Aperol & put into bottle and chill in ice bath.
Carbonate 3 times to 55PSI and chill in ice bath again.
For the group serve, 495ml into serving jug with 3 Collins glasses topped with crushed ice, fresh grapefruit and mint sprig. Dust with grapefruit & lemon myrtle dust.

For the Lemon Myrtle Honey:
200g Honey 
50ml Water
10g Maldon salt
10g Lemon Myrtle

Place in vac sealed bag. Sous vide at 35° for 2 hours.

For the Ginger & Grapefruit Hydrosol:
2000ML Ruby Grapefruit Juice
150g Grapefruit Peel
300g Ginger

Clean ginger and blend with grapefruit juice. Add grapefruit peel. Rotovap @ 40°, 20 speed and -5° glycol. (Alternative options of centrifuge or upside down iced lid in a pot too).

For the acidulated Ginger & Grapefruit Hydrosol:
1000ML Ginger & Grapefruit Hydrosol 
8g Citric Acid
16g Malic Acid
8g Tartaric Acid

For the Sous Vide Strawberry Leaf Aperol:
80g Strawberry Tops with Leaf
500ml Aperol

Sous vide @ 40° for 4 hours, Strain.