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Interview
Neil Stokes - 4 June 2017 2.00 h

Shaken not stirred

Manel Vehí Every Monday, English Hour airs the interview series Going Native. This time Neil talks to Manel Vehí, bar owner, mixologist and champion cocktail bartender.
- Neil Stokes
What is a mixol­o­gist?
A mixol­o­gist is a bar­tender who cre­ates cock­tails.
Where did it all begin?
I used to work in the fam­ily bar in Cadaqués, called Bar Boia. Then one day some­one from El Bulli restau­rant came and asked me to work with them. So I worked there from 2008 to 2011. Then I went to Chicago to work in The Aviary, one of the best bars in the US, and there they taught me how to make sig­na­ture cock­tails and dif­fer­ent tech­niques, and this is how I started.
Now you also have a cock­tail bar in Barcelona?
Yes, it’s called Doble by Manel Vehí, on pas­seig de Gràcia. It’s dec­o­rated like the 1920s in the US, we have live music and the at­mos­phere is super-chilled.
How did you go from being a waiter in El Bulli to be­com­ing a top mixol­o­gist?
My cock­tail style is very gas­tro­nomic. I try to put the things I learnt in El Bulli into my cock­tails. So, we play with dif­fer­ent tex­tures, foams, tem­per­a­tures. And it is this that makes my team and I dif­fer­ent from other bar­tenders. Our menu has about 35 cock­tails but no clas­sic cock­tails, al­though if some­one asks for a clas­sic cock­tail we will do it.
What is the process of in­vent­ing a cock­tail?
I’m used to trav­el­ling a lot. For ex­am­ple, in the past five years I have lived in Costa Rica, Mex­ico, Brazil. And what I do is go to the dif­fer­ent mar­kets and try the fruit, and when I taste the fruit I imag­ine what kind of liquor could go with it. Or, for ex­am­ple, I might be walk­ing my dogs in Cadaqués and I smell laven­der and that gives me an idea, be­cause I also use prod­ucts from where I live. It’s an in­spi­ra­tion thing, and then ex­per­i­ment­ing. We try it out a few times and give it to our guests; if they like it we put it on the menu. In fact, some­times we don’t know what name to give it so we put it on In­sta­gram and Face­book and ask peo­ple to give it a name. The one who gets the most likes is the win­ner and they win a cock­tail.
Do new cock­tails have to be reg­is­tered?
With the clas­sic cock­tails every­thing is reg­is­tered. While you can do what you want in your own bar, nor­mally the clas­sic cock­tails should be done in the es­tab­lished way. With new cock­tails, we cat­a­logue them and put pho­tos on our web­site, but we don’t reg­is­ter them be­cause it is super ex­pen­sive. And any­way, it doesn’t mat­ter be­cause if the cock­tail has 50mg of vodka and 25mg of lemon, an­other bar­tender could just do the same recipe but use 30mg in­stead of 50mg and 15mg in­stead, then it’s no longer your cock­tail.
Do bar­tenders steal each other’s ideas?
Maybe some­one who comes to my bar steals my idea, but I don’t care be­cause we are al­ways try­ing to do some­thing new. You have to be imag­i­na­tive rather than copy. Gen­er­ally there is lit­tle ri­valry; all the bar­tenders in Barcelona know each other, from the com­pe­ti­tions and so on, and we’re friends. If you need some help, you can just call one of them. Also, every mixol­o­gist has his own style.
Do you ever go back and change a cock­tail recipe?
Once we put a cock­tail on our menu, we don’t change it. Imag­ine you came to Boia three years ago and tried the Zom­bie, for ex­am­ple. And then you come back to Cadaqués this sum­mer, look­ing for­ward to try­ing the same Zom­bie you had three years ago.
And you’re also a cock­tail cham­pion?
I won the Gin­Mare na­tional cock­tail com­pe­ti­tion in 2015 and then went to the in­ter­na­tional one, rep­re­sent­ing Spain, and I won it. It was in Ibiza; it was a great ex­pe­ri­ence and I met a lot of nice peo­ple. I had to make two sig­na­ture cock­tails and a gin and tonic. For ex­am­ple, the gin and tonic I did was a trib­ute to my Greek fam­ily, who were coral fish­er­men, so I used Gin­Mare with a lit­tle plank­ton, sea fen­nel from Cadaqués, tonic water and then oys­ter leaf, which comes from Ice­land and tastes like an oys­ter.
And some­times you don’t know what you will have to make be­fore­hand.
They just give you a black box and you have to make a cock­tail with what­ever prod­ucts are in­side . For ex­am­ple, the last one I did was the Ex­cel­lence Pro­ject in Madrid. There were 16 mixol­o­gists and 16 bar­tenders still at school to act as as­sis­tants. In our black box we had a Laphroaig whisky and shiso leaves from Japan, and we had 18 min­utes to do some­thing with this. Be­hind us was a lit­tle su­per­mar­ket, so the bar­tender was back and forth get­ting the prod­ucts I sent him out for. And we did a cock­tail with two tem­per­a­tures and two tex­tures. Three teams went to the final, and we won it.
Is there a cap­i­tal of cock­tails?
The best bars in the world are in Lon­don, and the US is also strong. But Spain is grow­ing and in Cat­alo­nia we are grow­ing very fast. Here we do dif­fer­ent things rather than the clas­sics. In Barcelona and Girona there are lots of places doing great cock­tails.
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