Get the first issue of Bottled — only in print
Bottled is a new mag that celebrates the difference in the way we drink around the world.
The TL;DR: We’ve published a magazine! There’s over 100 pages of stories about drinks and the people who make them from around the globe. It‘s called Bottled, and you can get your copy from bottledmag.com now. I can't wait for you to read it.
Want to know more? Read on.
I’ve written a bit about the same-sameification of drinks; how the drinks you get in bars are starting to look the same, whether you’re in London or Melbourne or Auckland. The Milk Punch, that great cocktail leveller, has won. Every bar has hard block ice, minimalist glassware, lemon peel discs.
But I’ve been wondering lately whether I think that because it’s true, or because I’ve been lazy in where I’m looking.
The fact is that so much of what I perceive as sameness isn’t being uncovered or discovered by me — it’s being served up by Big Algorithm. So much of the inspiration or ideas or culture, really, is put in front of me, on my phone, by whichever tech platform I’m drowning in.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. You’ve probably been served something strikingly similar. That is just how social media works.
But of course — obviously — there is more out there. Thankfully, I’ve been at this a while now and have been fortunate enough to meet likeminded and passionate people around the world, who — if you ask them — will gladly talk about the people and places they love, the good stuff to drink you may not have seen just yet. That’s what Bottled — a brand new print magazine — is all about.
It’s filled with these sorts of stories — and you can get it now at bottledmag.com. We’ll print two issues a year, for now — just enough to keep things current, but far enough removed from the daily churn of things to take a breath and dive into the stories. And that also means we have time to make something good, a magazine you can sit with a while and want to keep. We’ve got a small print run of 1,000 for the first issue because we’re not for everyone, we’re for those of you who are curious and genuinely care about the big wide world of drinks and the people in it. I hope the stories spark your imagination, and put light on places and people we don’t always see.
So, in this very first issue, we speak to drinks communicator and consultant, Priyanka Blah, about her home town of Bangalore and how it is entering its ‘golden era’; we hear from London bar impresario Ryan Chetiyawardana about the work he does through Mr Lyan Studio, and get his outsider’s insider guide to Amsterdam. We drop by Singapore and talk to Samuel Ng about why now is the right time to open a bar in the Lion City; and we speak to the awarded and engaging Lorenzo Antinori about the design and thinking behind Bar Leone, his Hong Kong love letter to the bars of Rome and his youth. There’s a pictorial look at how the Sydney bar world lets off steam when they’re not on shift, courtesy of Joffy Rhodes and his Sondr project, and we profile five Brisbane bartenders writing a bright future for that city; there’s a look at The Waratah and a Hunter Valley-inspired cocktail on their new list; and we round second base with Japan’s Tokyo Confidential and dive into the thinking behind their newest list.
The first issue features some smart contributors, too.
I’m very pleased to have Cara Devine in our pages, in the Neighbourhoods section exploring Fitzroy from open to close; wine writer and sommelier Samantha Payne asks whether the marketing lives up to the hype in the wine and spirits world; and we’ve got the jet-setting Philip Duff — he of the Old Duff genever brand and career as a spirits communicator and educator — with a dispatch from Yerevan Cocktail Week in Armenia at the same time there were 50,000 people in the streets protesting. And a long-time collaborator of mine, Christopher Pearce, shares his photos and talks about how he tells the stories of drinks.
There’s all that and recommendations (and inspirations) aplenty — proof that the world isn’t just what we see through the 9x16 screen of our phones, proof that, actually, if you know who to ask, you’ll find that there is a lot more to the world than Milk Punch.
Did I say you can get your copy at bottledmag.com yet? For the price of a cocktail in a fancy bar, you get something that lasts a lot longer. You can also give us a follow on @bottledmag to keep up to date should you so desire.
