Age: 38
Originally from: Cornwall
Profession: Bartender
At: London
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The co-owner of two of London's hottest cocktail bars, Purl and the Worship Street Whistling Shop, Tristan Stephenson talks about the future of drinks, his lab-based cocktail creativity and how to win competitions.
'It's not enough anymore to serve a drink and just to say that it tastes nice,' says Tristan Stephenson. 'Bartenders are going to start thinking more about triggering sensory perceptions in drinkers.'
Perched on the edge of a stool, he's animated and talks without pausing for thought. 'It's about asking whether a drink is complementary to your surroundings or the food you're eating. It's how you can adapt those surroundings to influence people's appreciation of what they are drinking.
'If you serve a drink in a heavy Old Fashioned glass, the thickness affects how you taste it. But choose a really light glass and its lightness changes the way you perceive the same drink. It's understanding that a garnish can trigger nostalgia because of the way it smells, it's asking whether you use a scented coaster rather than just a bev-nap. It's saying: what is it doing to your mind?'
treasure trove
It's a strategy he used to great effect as part of 2011's CLASS Bartender of the Year competition. In The Facundo cocktail he mixed Bacardi with sherry, coconut water, chocolate bitters and homemade grenadine. Not only did it articulate his approach of using homemade ingredients in cocktails, but every part of the drink contributed to a story, and he even pumped in the smell of Cuba. The idea: not to just serve up a drink but to transport the drinker to another place.
'You have to have a story. For The Facundo I thought very carefully about the ingredients and every part linked back to [Bacardi founder] Don Facundo. He planted a coconut tree at the distillery (which died when the family left Cuba); Sherry is obviously Spanish and so was Bacardi, and sherry and coconut happen to go well together. Chocolate bitters because Bacardi's original business partner was a French/Cuban confectioner. The idea was that you sip, then smell tobacco, floral and polished wood aromas then take another sip. It's one of the hardest drinks that I've ever had to get the balance right in. The sherry in particular can either overwhelm or is lost in the drink.'
It's also an approach he has taken commercial with the launch of the Emporium at Worship Street. Consumers pay for a three-hour romp through food and drink history brought to life through Tristan and co dressing up in costume, playing sounds and pumping in smells to influence the way guests experience what they are eating and drinking.
'Customers come out saying it was amazing. That's the idea. We want them to feel it's the most involving drinking experience they've ever had. I liken it to going to the theatre. There's so much going on.'
In some ways it's simply applying a little scientific rationale to what is an already tacitly understood concept - after all, that wine you bought on holiday never tastes the same back home: it's as much about the experience and your surroundings as the product. Keynote and pages and numbers. 'A few blowfish and fishing nets never did tiki bars any harm,' he says. At £95 per person, the emporium is also turning into a nice little earner.
Tristan Stephenson Libri
The psychological approach to the flavour of cocktails and how they are served demonstrates how fast the cocktail scene, and consumers' understanding of it, is moving on. It's at a tipping point, says Tristan, where the mysticism that surrounds cocktails, what they're made of and how they're made, is disappearing and giving way - at the top end, at least - to a new comprehension of how cocktails fit into a modern epicurean diet.
'You can see the creative direction that bartending is moving in and the food industry finally seems to be embracing the drinks industry. Cocktail culture is at a point where it is going to become more aligned with the mainstream. People are far more aware of what goes into drinks, with things like Mad Men bringing historical culture of cocktails into the public domain. People love travel, experimental stuff, how things are made, and if you have a personality there to spearhead it, you have something to latch on to it. There's a massive untapped treasure trove that can be released on TV: how cocktails have evolved.'
Could Tristan be the face of a TV series, the drinking world equivalent to Heston Blumenthal or Jamie Oliver? He admits he's been talking to some TV producers but nothing's written in stone yet. But the comparison with Heston and Jamie has some merit: Tristan is certainly articulate and passionate and seems to possess that innate confidence required in TV personalities. Perhaps more importantly, both chefs have featured in and helped shape Tristan's career, directly and indirectly.
heston's heir?
First, he spent two years at Jamie's groundbreaking restaurant Fifteen in Cornwall, where he shook up the south west by introducing them to seasonal cocktails. 'At Fifteen I probably only met Jamie about half a dozen times in total but he knew me to talk to and was interested in it. The whole project inspired me. This was back when seasonality was not a really big thing. It has become more standard now. Jamie's passion and enthusiasm for good products and simpl cooking was the inspiration.
'The cocktail list I wrote for Fifteen was ambitious at the time. To be honest any cocktail list down there would have been ambitious. I was using spirits such as tequila in cocktails, mixing it with quality liqueurs and Cornish cider in cocktails. I created my own vermouth for the Fifteen Martini. The cocktail list was changing four times a year.
'I did feel like I was being a mini Jamie Oliver. The kitchen got pissed off as they were not expecting such good drinks. The head chef asked why we were pushing the drinks and not the food. I said we're not pushing them, we're just making them.'
As for the Heston link, he's struck up a friendship with Professor Tony Blake ('the Fat Duck's science guy', he explains), who he says has provided the most inspiration to him in his career, and he continues to brainstorm with Heston's development kitchen chefs Jockey Petrie and Stefan Cosser. 'I first came across Tony when he was doing these vodka talks and he was talking about perception of flavour. I heard the talk probably 10 times and always had different questions. And he was forthcoming, really giving - and he used to give me chemistry lessons. He lives in Geneva but we would talk drinks, service and how to affect every single sense possible.'
That science manifests itself in the drinks available at Purl and, more so, Worship Street Whistling Shop. The latter's cocktail menu is largely the product of concoctions brought to life in the in-bar lab. From where we're sitting, the glass-walled room-in-a-room, with its conical flasks, rotavaps and magnetic stirrers, is visible. It evokes a futuristic world of drinks - one of high pressure hydrosols, 'removed' cream, irradiated cocktails, homemade 'seasonal preservation liqueurs' and chip-pan and chlorophyll bitters.
Dell n5050 wifi driver for windows 7. 'With Purl the drinks are more visually impressive, served with dry ice, or smoking in a bottle, whereas at Worship Street it's about preparation techniques and the drinks are less showy. The lab is just different tools really, an extended preparation area of the bar.'
healthy competition
Having such a lab draws inevitable comparisons with Tony Conigliaro, owner of 69 Colebrooke Row. Regarded as one of the world's most innovative bartenders, he set up his bar with a lab upstairs and similarly occupies a world of low pressure distillations, tinctures and aged cocktails. Tony is, like Tristan, equally driven by the whole 'sensory' approach to cocktail-making - he summed it up during a talk during London Cocktail Week earlier this month.
'There's a fair comparison between what we do,' says Tristan. 'Especially the drinks - simply executed cocktails where a lot of the preparation has gone on behind the scenes. I would not be against working with Tony.'
Tristan and co are completely transparent about most of their techniques. Ask about any one drink and they'll practically drag you in to the lab to demonstrate how they arrived at it. Transparent, that is, with the exception of one cocktail - the Radiation Aged Cocktail. 'It's [head bartender] Ryan [Chetiyawardana]'s idea and he would kill me. It's the only one we don't reveal. A lot of intrigue has been built up around it. It's quite simple though.'
Mark Stephenson Facebook
I glance in the lab for the secret to how they irradiate a cocktail (there's no microwave oven in sight, in case you're wondering). 'I love what Ryan does - he comes up with new ideas that we never would have thought about doing.'
Having dropped out of university after only nine months, the lab seems to provide a more fitting forum for Tristan's creativity and sense of drama. It's that creativity which drove him back behind the bar, having taken the almost inevitable step (these days) to become a brand ambassador a few years ago. After having learned cocktail making at a north Cornish restaurant, now closed, called the Blue Tomato, and then spending that time at Fifteen, he accepted a field job for Diageo Reserve. 'I had been at Fifteen for two years. Most bartenders say that's enough in one place. I wanted to get out of Cornwall and they also gave me a car. The pay was pretty good so it seemed like a great opportunity. It definitely opened more doors and I wouldn't talk anyone out of it if they asked.
'But, as with any 9-5 job, you are fairly restrained, though because I was field-based if I wanted to slack off for the day, well I could. But I'm a very creative person and you don't necessarily get that in that sort of job. I knew what I was doing was good and that I could probably be charging for it independently.'
Mini-empire
Through Diageo he had met future business partner Tom Aske. 'We were both quite ambitious, always looking for the next step.' Together with Matt Whiley and Bryan Pietersen, the cricketer Kevin's brother, they formed bar consultancy Fluid Movement. Their first major piece of consulting was for some sort of oligarch in Azerbaijan. 'The client was an oil billionaire who owned every franchise of McDonalds and got a cut out of every cigarette sold in the country.'
The job gave them the capital to break out on their own. In fact, it paid enough that they didn't need to borrow cash to set up Purl, though opening it was on a shoestring. 'With the exception of the electrics we designed it and did all the work. Ordered all the furniture. Did the plumbing. Laid the floors. I design and manage our websites and logos. I guess we could have done some consultancy that paid more than we would have paid a plumber but I think sometimes it's better to do something yourself.' Tristan still works at least one shift a week at Purl.
At 28, Tristan is still young to be helping lead a fast-growing mini-empire. He attributes his success to his partners and colleagues. 'We have an amazing way of bouncing off each other when we are talking. It means we work four times faster than if we were alone. I'll come up with a crazy idea, Matt will work out a crazy way of doing it, Tom will suggest it's flawed, Bryan will say why it is flawed, and then we collectively work out a happy medium.'
Tristan Stephenson Whisky
Tristan's now on the hunt for a third site for the group. He promises something 'totally different' from both existing concepts, though we assume it will even more fully epitomise the sensory approach to cocktail making. And perhaps he'll be popping on a TV screen near you too.