Interview: Myatt's Fields Cocktails
Cyrus and Clemency are partners in life and co-founders of Myatt’s Fields Cocktails, an aged cocktail boutique from South East London set up in 2017.
Built on their passion for drinking and serving quality alcohol, the company currently offers a growing range of aged cocktails – Baby Otis, Desert Negroni, Espresso Martini, Manhattan, Negroni, Pisco Martini, Rum Old Fashioned, Vesper Martini and the Trident.
Once the indulgence of picnickers or festival-goers, premixed cocktails are now infusing new life in bars and restaurants across the country. They allow those mixologists with the time and patience these concoctions require, to work away from the long queues and the high-pressure environment of the bar, to deliver proper, well-rounded drinks. According to Master of Malt, an online spirits retailer in the UK, pre-mixed cocktail sales have increased by 31.6% in 2018.
Apurv Gupta from The Drunk Diplomat spoke with Cyrus and Clemency to discuss this expanding cocktail culture, and the launch of Myatt’s Field Cocktails.
Apurv: Cyrus, Clemency – thank you taking out the time. How did you both come up with the idea of bottled cocktails?
Cyrus: Ours is a love story – we wanted to serve cocktails at our wedding but were hesitant of having a hundred fifty guests queuing and waiting at the bar. We then looked at pre-mixes available in the market, but sadly none caught our attention or liking. Eventually, Clemency and I decided we were better off bottling our own cocktails; a six-month long journey we then embarked upon until our wedding. On the day, we didn’t have a bar, but swathes of waiters serving glasses of four kinds of cocktails for every guest to savour and enjoy. While honeymooning in Latin America, we received many positive messages from friends and family – which at first, were entertaining but later sowed the seeds of starting a bottled cocktail business.
Apurv: Myatt’s Field Cocktails launched in 2017 - how have you found the company’s reception into the market?
Cyrus: The market needed to be educated on the concept and benefit of aged bottled cocktails – how drinks containing vermouth or sherry oxidise over time, rounding flavours and adding depth and smokiness - so we invested time and energy in that by writing about our discoveries. However, I think the best way into the market was to ensure people tasted the product. It was also important for us not to be labelled in the pre-mix category you often see in retail stores, which are lined with sparkly, sugary drinks as there is a lot of science, testing and quality alcohol that goes into our cocktails.
Clemency: We faced another resistance in our discussions with restaurants: some buyers preferred that we use specific brands of spirits if they were to serve our bottled cocktails. However, from our extensive testing we have found that some of our flavours work better with spirits than others. Flavour not fashion has to be the most important factor in any decision about ingredients. For example, we tried close to fifty different kinds of gin to peg the perfect botanicals used in its distillation process for some of our cocktails.
Apurv: You currently have a selection of nine cocktails - how did you narrow down to these and can you tell us more about their flavours?
Cyrus: Our newest launch has been the Desert Negroni, which replaces the traditional gin with tequila, mixed with sweet vermouth and Campari, and one of our top sellers is the Limoncello – which uses ten times more lemons and half the sugar called for in the classic recipe. We made this infusion as a special birthday gift for one of our dearest friends and now we can hardly keep it in stock. Ever batch sells out almost immediately. I guess our objective has always been to cover the base spirits with quality and true flavours, ours is not a company that will one day have a range of hundred different cocktails – our mission is very much to reclaim the age of cocktails with class and panache.
The launch of our Vesper Martini – imagined by Sir Ian Fleming and drank by James Bond – is perhaps a testament to our mission. This drink was a challenge to recreate as along with three measures of Gin and one of vodka, it requires half a measure of Kina Lillet; a drink that since 1986 transformed into the Lillet Blanc, removing most of the quinine and making it less bitter. However, we recreated this stiff martini by infusing our vodka with cinchona bark that contains quinine – possibly making this the driest of dry martinis.
Apurv: We always hear that part of enjoying a cocktail is watching it being made - do you think bottled cocktails removes that element of theatre?
Clemency: I think it really boils down to time and context for enjoying that element of theatre from a cocktail. For example, if I am at an extremely luxurious venue such as The Dorchester Hotel in London, I would love to watch a fresh-ingredient cocktail being made by a skilled bartender before me. However, at a less glamorous venue, where the objective is to get your drink and return to your table, I would prefer a cocktail in good time, and one that does not compromise on its depth and flavour.
Apurv: Being a young professional myself - I can attest that my demographic loves to binge drink cheap alcohol, how do you navigate this British culture?
Cyrus: In all honesty, I just don’t see us in that market as our price points are higher (and we are not beer!). We are very much a movement to reclaim the golden age of cocktails; an era when people enjoyed quality alcohol that was flavoursome and strong. Our cocktails are on average 20-40% ABV – so it could be that young professionals do begin to recognise value in drinking smaller volume, but better drinks.
Apurv: Would you like to give any personal message to our readers and followers?
Clemency: Keeping in mind that The Drunk Diplomat is followed by people aged between 25-35: I would say that going to a party or dinner party with a bottle of cocktails is brilliant fun and always well received. It has the potential to stir conversations and there is so much rich history about each drink that can help people explore and learn more about cocktails.
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