Smirnoff - Bottled Cocktails

"The Spirit World" berichtete kürzlich über das, was Ende des 19 Jh. mit Heublein`s Bottled Cocktails begann und sich durch Jahrzehnt für Jahrzent schleppte und nun wiedereinmal allgegenwärtige Realität geworden ist. Der Fertigcocktail aus der Flasche. Diesmal von durchaus renommierter Seite konzipiert und beworben, bietet die Firma Smirnoff einen "Grand Cosmopolitan" und einen "Vodka Mojito" fertig gemixt, in stylischer Flasche, den Scharen der wahren Cocktailgenüssen Unkundigen zum Erwerb an.
Nachdem es in der Vergangenheit etliche fehlgeschlagene Versuche gab Cocktails fertig anzubieten, bleibt zu hoffen, dass der Kunde versteht, dass Cocktails mehr als die Summe seiner Zutaten darstellt.

Vor einiger Zeit hatte ich mit Robert Hess eine kleine Unterhaltung über dieses Thema und seine Worte diesbezüglich waren folgende:

"My overall feeling is that cocktails in general start out by taking a artisinal 'atomic' product. Specifically the "spirit", or other individual ingredients involved.

So... "Gin" is an atomic product. It "has" to be created by not only skilled craftsman, but also using large equiptment and processing. A bartender couldn't just take grain alcohol and add flavorings to it. Likewise Cointreau is an atomic product, and bitters, and lemon juice, and...

Ok, so you have all of these individual products, which need to have been the result of some "artist" (ok, in the case of the lemon juice I guess the artist is "god"...:-) in some far off location.

You then gather these ingredients together and hand them to another artist, the bartender, and he takes them and turns them into another artisinal product. The cocktail.

Chef's do the same thing. They take a wide variety of "atomic" products and use their craft to turn them into yet another artisinal product.

Or even take the painter/artist. They take the individual paints (atomic), paint brushes (atomic), canvas (atomic), each of them arguably an artisinal product themselves, and turn them into a work of art.

The Cocktail, The Stew, The Statue, The Painting... for any of these "composite" works of art to be "mass produced" in the form of a bottled cocktail, a canned soup, a molded statue, a poster... results in a far cheaper product, of (usually) far lesser quality.

...just my thoughts."

Dem ist wenig hinzuzufügen!