In the months spent at home during the pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns, there are people who have been using coffee grounds as fertiliser, watching reels on Instagram about making banana-peel bacon and learning how to waste less when it comes to food. This ethos has continued, for the most part, once pandemic restrictions were lifted, with bars across India working with food waste to add flavour, colour or even make entire spirits from scratch.
Internationally, Nicaraguan rum brand Flor de Caña made August as Zero Waste Cocktail Month, with bars from Santiago to Singapore and Milan to Mumbai participating. At Mumbai’s ingredient-driven restaurant Ekaa, for example, guests could sample the R3, made with the rum, lime cordial, leftover lacto-fermented lime, leftover kafir stem soda and leftover eucalyptus powder. Elsewhere in the city, menus comprised cocktails made with coconut husk vermouth and lacto-fermented lemon peel. Each takes kitchen waste that would otherwise be thoughtlessly discarded, and turns it into distinct elements for their cocktail bar.
A personal favourite of Rob Scott’s–the brand ambassador of Flor de Caña–is “one I named Earth & Flower in reference to Flor de Caña, flower of the cane. The drink uses spent cacao nibs and lavender petals that have fallen or been shaken off the buds, for garnishes. With this, a floral cacao water is made and added to Flor de Caña 12-year rum, along with honey that is spiced with the shards of broken cinnamon sticks. A hint of saline helps to enrich both the cacao and spice. The garnish is an aromatic rim of the cacao and lavender that has been dehydrated and ground into a powder.”
Across bars and hotels in India, there’s a boom in making cordials and tinctures, syrups and bitters in house. Oftentimes, they are made with kitchen offcuts, as bars are gradually looking towards sustainability. At Mumbai’s Americano, bar director Darren Crawford explains that while sometimes it is a necessity, it is also because of the fact that the Indian liquor market doesn’t have a lot of aperitifs and liquors available abroad. As a result, he says, “We want to try and create those ingredients, just to introduce new flavours, of course.” As a result, they’ve concocted a homemade Cynar, made with artichoke offcuts from the kitchen. The bar is also repurposing burrata water and mixing it with aquafaba for a vegetarian foamer and substitute for egg whites. In the works is a drink made with corn stock, which will probably be used in a tequila cocktail.
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, Sidecar–which features on both the World’s and Asia’s 50 Best Bar lists–was started “to make as less wastage as possible, not just from the kitchen but also from the bar,” explains Yangdup Lama, co-founder. He cites the example of herbs, where the leaves are used but the stems are not. “The stem still has a lot of flavour”, he says, “and that can be used to create cordials and syrups that help in flavouring the drink.”
This jives with an overall shift not only at both restaurants and bars big and small, but also at liquor brands looking into sustainability and wanting to reduce their carbon emissions in the long run. xplains Scott, “Flor de Caña is sustainably produced, from field to bottle, and the only spirit in the world to be both carbon-neutral and Fair Trade-certified. The rum is distilled with 100 per cent renewable energy for over 10 years and the brand has planted 50,000 trees annually since 2005.” Similarly, EcoSpirits, which aims to cut down on carbon emissions by creating a closed-loop shipping and delivery programme for alcohol, is being launched in India by Third Eye Distillery. By cutting down on single-use glass bottles, the goal is to reduce carbon emissions from the distillery to the drinker.
Elsewhere, alcohol labels are working to decarbonise, as Remy Martin has been doing with its brands The Botanist and Bruichladdich, both of which are produced on Islay. The shared distillery has been awarded a B Corp certification. Similarly, Telmont, a champagne company where Leonardo DiCaprio is a shareholder, is going the organic way with its vineyards, uses renewable energy and is packaged in glass that is 100 per cent recyclable.
With sustainability slowly gaining more momentum, expect more bars to look at using ingredients better. At Copitas, the bar at Four Seasons Bengaluru, the ‘Greener Future’ menu is designed to use every part of a plant, from seed to fruit. Even though it uses different greens for each cocktail, the bar ensures that waste is minimised. For diners, it’s the chance to see how things that are simply discarded can be repurposed without compromising on taste. As Lama says, “From the consumer side, there’s a lot of consciousness,” and so spirit brands are forging a path ahead.