Meet the Mocktail masters

From ponche de creme to black cake, Trinis like to drink, and eat, alcohol at events, while liming, or relaxing at home.

But you don’t need alcohol to enjoy Christmas. Some people have been forced to recognise this as, at the moment, restaurants are not allowed to serve alcoholic beverages in-house.

In solidarity with the masses, Sunday Newsday contacted the owners of the bar service company, Verve Creations, to explain mocktails, or non-alcoholic cocktails, and give readers a few to try.

Brothers Clinton and Neal Ramdhan have both won local and international beverage competitions over the years and have created a variety of cocktails and mocktails. Clinton, 31, a chef trained at the TT Hospitality and Tourism Institute (TTHTI), has an associate degree in culinary management, and a diploma in food and beverage supervision. He has used his culinary background to inspire his drink creations as he blends new flavours.

He said in secondary school he excelled in food and nutrition classes and dreamed of being a nutritionist and dietician.

“I wanted to use the ‘hotel school’ to get into UWI but after delving into hospitality I guess it loved me and I loved it back. It became my passion.”

For the fun of it, he started competing but that drew him into bartending. So much so that in 2010, the year he graduated, he won the TTHTI Bartender of the Year award.

In 2011 and 2012 he was a bronze and silver medallist respectively in the local leg of the Taste of the Caribbean competition. However, in 2013 he won Bartender of the Year, best vodka cocktail, and best classical cocktail as well as a chance to represent TT as part of the national culinary team in the Taste of the Caribbean competition in Miami, Florida.

There, he won a gold medal and best vodka cocktail.

In 2015, he came second to Neal in the local leg of the Angostura Global Cocktail Competition. And in 2016 he again represented TT as a bartender in Taste of the Caribbean, where he won a silver medal, and won the local leg of the Marie Brizard International Bartending Competition.

Neal, on the other hand, always wanted to be an accountant. When his father, the breadwinner of the family, died when he was 12, he decided to help with the finances and so, at that age, he started a car wash business and eventually moved on to other sources of income.

However, when he started school at the University of the West Indies (UWI), he found that books were expensive and needed another job. He got into bartending at a mobile bar company through Clinton who was already part of the hospitality industry.

“It was something fun, to get out of the house, go to events, parties, have a drink or two and make cash on top of that.”

By that point, Clinton had started competing in bartending competitions. Clinton’s accomplishments motivated him to start competing as well since he had grown to love bartending.

He did not place in his first few competitions but he did not let that deter him. He continued and eventually won his first competition, the local leg of the Marie Brizard International Bartending Competition, in 2014. He then went on to represent TT in Bordeaux, France at the main competition.

In 2015, he won the local leg of the Angostura Global Cocktail Competition and won the international competition in 2016, which made him the Angostura Global Brand Ambassador for 2016 to 2018.

Between competitions, work and school, in 2014 the brothers started Verve Creations which provides bar tending services for events, bar consulting, brand marketing, and hosts bartender training workshops.

“We decided to start our own bar service as opposed to just working as an employee for other companies. I was still in UWI at the time and Clinton was working full-time so we didn’t have much time to focus on the business, but after I graduated from UWI we decided it was time to push the business forward,” said Neal who graduated with a degree in accounting in 2015.

By the time Neal finished school, both men were more experienced and recognised in the industry. They started taking more jobs and the business grew every years as they worked with various distributors.

Two months ago, the brothers even started making bottled cocktails which will soon be available at Aioli Marketplace and Bottlestop. The cocktails include 25/8, a cream-based cocktail with hints of coffee; Crazy Cosmo, a vodka-based twist on the classic cosmo; and On the Peach, a fruity rum-based drink.

They are also planning to create bottled mocktails that will be available upon request.

Neal explained that it takes more thought to achieve a balanced mocktail.

“It’s a bit more challenging because regular cocktails have liquor and liqueurs to work with that would give your drink body, texture, strength and all these things. But when you’re dealing with a mocktail, it’s more juices, spices, cordials so your whole approach has to be different while still making it interesting because you don’t want to just mix some juices and call it a mocktail.”

Clinton stressed that in any drink, using fresh ingredients is always best, and concentrate or packaged ingredients should be avoided as much as possible. He said fresh made the drinks more crisp on the palate, blend better, more refreshing, and healthier.

Neal agreed noting there were such things as low-calorie mocktails, no added sugars. Some sugars, preferably natural ones such as fructose, were necessary as sugars bind flavours together, as well as bring out the flavour in a product. That is why most cocktails or mocktails had some sweet element.

Still, Clinton said, it was necessary for the bartender or mixologist to understand how flavours work on the palate, the finish of the drink, its roundness, and even something as simple as how much to shake it so the drink would not be too diluted.

“For example in 2017 when I went to Taste of the Caribbean, I replicated some of the cocktails of the bartenders who were supposed to go but couldn’t make it because of issues with their US visas. They did a drink with mauby, beetroot, Angostura orange bitters, a clove syrup and lemongrass tea and it was something magical with no alcohol in it.”

Neal said every year they usually created something new for an event, usually based on the client’s request. This year’s mocktail was the a non-alcoholic sorrel sangria.

Clinton pointed out that mocktails have been around for decades, but the hope was to make them something more.

“As time goes by, everything is being elevated. In terms of building layers of flavour, and creating something new out of something basic. That is what we try to achieve when it comes to mocktails.”