Fruit

Fruit should come from a tree, not a bottle. If a bar doesn't have fresh fruit, order a whiskey or head on out (we've actually been known to pack our own fruit on occasion).

Bottled juices tend to be sweeter, and consequently, drinks with bottled juice are too sweet, especially if the recipe calls for simple syrup.

Before cutting fruit, roll it under your palm to draw more juice out of it. We prefer to use a hand squeezer [443k .mov] instead of a mechanical one. Hand squeezing introduces the slightest amount of oil to the cocktail and assures the utmost freshness. With a spinning mechanical squeezer, you run the risk of grinding in the pith (the white lining of the fruit), which makes the juice bitter and chunky.

We demand fresh fruit in our cocktails as a symbol of purity and honesty in our drinks and as a protest against the plasticity of today's culture. We want quality not quantity, and we collectively turn our back on establishments that favor those plastic lemons and limes containing chemically reproduced "fruit-flavored" liquid.