The Hindu Business Line : Shake a peg...

How do you like your high spirits? Shaken or stirred? That doesn't seem an eccentric question when you come face to face with Cornwall-born Grant Collins, the brand ambassador for Belvedere luxury vodka for Australia, New Zealand, and South East Asia.

Over lunch at the Taj Residency in Bangalore, gearing up for a session with industry pros, unusual aspects of this high-flying mixologist (read uber-bartender) surface. What, one wonders, is a mixologist?

With a huge grin, Collins replies, "Two friends of mine set up the Met Bar at The Metropolitan at Park Lane, London, in 1993. It was a cool cocktail bar, where each private member was charged 10,000 sterling. It became the haunt of the rich and the famous, including Madonna. Its cocktails were created by mixologists. Now, the term has spread to the rest of the world."

Sip by sip, we gather that mixologists like Collins are a special breed. They do not serve up a pint of ale at a pub. Nor do they wax eloquent about the virtues of wine.

"A good cocktail is all about balance," declares Collins, who originally trained for the fitness industry before discovering the joys of creative cocktails. He proves it with his lec-dem at the hotel's Jockey Bar. In easy steps, we learn that Belvedere luxury vodka is made from Dankowskie Golden Rye in Poland, following a 600-year-old tradition. It is distilled four times over.

With flair, Collins shakes Indian flavours into a chilled cocktail glass with caramelised pineapple and crushed cardamom. Or even saffron, curry powder and curry leaves, blended just right to convert sceptics.

"I had the advantage of starting out at the very bottom as a California bartender, by sweeping floors and washing glasses. On my travels, I try to introduce local flavours and ingredients into my cocktails," says Collins.

He shot to fame past other 999 contestants by thinking on his feet during a 2000 contest for UK Barman of the Year, when he invented a Sapphire Martini with ten ingredients, including gin and lime cordial. Collins has since concluded that fewer ingredients make for a superior cocktail.

His hip Zander Bar won him the UK Bar Manager of the Year title the same year. Charmed by Australia, he took over the Water Bar at the W Hotel in Wolloomooloo in 2001, winning the Sydney Morning Herald's Bar of the Year within five months.

Chosen for the Australian liquor industry's Bar Manager of the Year award in 2002, his Water Bar was awarded the best cocktail list for 2003. As a slew of professional recognitions came his way, Collins set up his international Bar Solutions consultancy. Today, his clients include luxury liquor brands like Moet-Hennessy, who brought Belvedere to India.

Australia's premier industry consultant, a citizen of the world, Collins takes on most questions with disarming brio. What's the difference between the cocktail culture in the UK and the US? "The cocktail culture in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and other British cities is far ahead of that in the US. There are at least 30 to 40 high-end cocktail bars in London," he says. "In the US, creativity has fallen off because most bartenders don't get paid. They work only for tips. So, they're really thirsty for dollars."

As Collins takes his Bangalore audience through a crash course on cocktails, we encounter a brave new world. Of Molecular Mixology, for one, taking off from the Molecular Gastronomy trend set by Michelin-starred restaurants like Berkshire's Fat Duck, which serves oysters and passion-fruit jelly, tobacco sorbet, or spice bread ice-cream and crab syrup, all based on scientific principles.

How does this extend to cocktails? Collins serves up an array of options, based on kitchen principles. Such as vanilla air foam based on egg whites and gelatine on a pineapple or passion-fruit cocktail. Or a whisky sour topped with passion-fruit foam. Or gin and tonic lozenges. Or even liquid nitrogen martinis that flow straight into the blood system.

What's a perfect cocktail bar experience about? Collins evokes it vividly. The ambience should be perfect, the lighting just right. The cocktails should be consistently creative, tailor-made to the individual customer. And there should be a positive, friendly interface between the mixologist and the drinker.

What else does the master mixologist have up his sleeve? On behalf of Belvedere, he lays on a humour-laced Power point presentation. We savvy up to vodka wisdom. That vodka is 70 per cent purest artesian water. That the original formula used in Poland in the 10th century or so was more fit for scouring pots and pans than for mixing cocktails with. That the average Pole consumes a litre of vodka daily, which led to thousands of deaths by cirrhosis a century ago.

A swirl, a sniff, a sip later, we can distinguish the lemon-lime notes in the Belvedere Cytrus vodka, and the notes of Moroccan orange, mandarin and orange blossom in Belvedere Pomarancza. We even learn to tell these macerated vodkas from merely flavoured ones.

After the lec-dem, Collins deftly mixes a gimlet, a Cosmopolitan, and a series of invented cocktails in a jiffy. While shaking it all to perfection, he shares lore about their origins, the secrets of a good cocktail, and how to lend a local dash to mixing drinks. Such as sake-based cocktails in Japan. Or how barbecued tomatoes with celery salt can add flair to a Bloody Mary.

Will the cocktail circuit ever light up in India? Collins has no doubt it will, for "when I went to Australia in 2001, all they drank was beer, rum and frozen cocktails. Today, I'd rate it second to the UK."

Until Indian bartenders opt to be mixologists, it seems safe to leave cocktail creativity to Grant Collins. Shake me a Tom Collins, please!

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