Never underestimate the power of a well crafted cocktail.
A well crafted cocktail has the ability to transform. It calls on the 5 senses to play a vital role into an intermittent shift. Shift of thought, mood, and focus.
Building a cocktail comes with intent. It's not just about the booze, but the experience. Intent brings the experience together. A blended melody to calm the beast and awaken these senses.
Sight...
Colors, patterns bring everything to life. It gives soul behind the obvious. Shedding light into dark corners creating a palette of intrigue. Sight creates the interest, the spark to ignite the intent. We are all visual creatures, thriving through the canvas.
A cocktail starts with the vessel. As simple as it sounds, there are reasons for different glasses for different drinks. It all starts with sight. It shows off the cubes, ingredients, sweat on the glass, lastly the garnish. The glass is simple, yet powerful. The case around the trophy.
Sound...
Yes a well crafted cocktail includes a sound. The sound is attached to sight, the catalyst to the next, without it’s not complete. The cubes hitting the glass. Nothing quite like that sound, it holds space all on its own. That sound calls you to a place that’s familiar, that’s home. The bottle pour, the glug, chug working in tandem as the glass accepts its truth. The other ingredients following, then the shake, the fizz, the plop of the garnish. The gentle stir is a calming voice, putting the day at ease.
Taste...
The fucking rocket ship to the soul. The intent is now realized and sends you to a place of simpler times. In that moment of the first taste everything before now becomes right with the world, your world. A calm washes over you, cleanses places that you thought no longer existed. This one moment is the calm in your storm. Savor, get lost, dream, it’s in those seconds of taste that brings you back to start.
Smell...
You can’t taste without smell. The twins of the senses. Smell creates memories, brings back familiar surroundings, emotions in kind. The smell is the fresh baked bread in the kitchen, the incense burning in the tray, the cut hay in the field, the spent leaves in the fall. It’s the key element that brings everything into concert.
Touch...
The final sense. It’s closure to the experience. It makes it real, attainable, solid. Grasping the chill of the glass, condensation amist your prints. The slide of the finger, smooth, everlasting. Brushing the rim, liquid pressing your lips, allowing the waves to crash over your tongue. The culmination of the intent brought to a place where the rubber meets the road. A perfect chord lightly strummed on a guitar, everything is now in true perspective. A start and finish. Taking nothing in between for granted.
That’s intent.
This experience I speak of can be grounding if you pay attention. Letting yourself get consumed by the act and intent itself is transforming, however you must allow your mind to break free of the chains. Let it flow, bleed, adapt. The experience I speak of was based on a cocktail I had a couple weeks ago, in company with my wife Tina, and two very close friends. The cocktail you ask? It was called THE SMOKING MANHATTAN. It brought all my senses to light.
Never underestimate the power of a well crafted cocktail.
Catalyst Patrick H. Kreger
1.29.18