As my overladen cocktail trolley at home will attest, I'm an ardent fan of good gin and other spirits, and I particularly like to support Australian distillers in the small-batch liquor boom. Lately I've been experimenting a bit more with tonic syrups and different kinds of bitters, and was delighted to learn in February that two chaps in Fitzroy were about to launch Australia's first dedicated bitters company.
Mister Bitters is made by Melbourne bartenders Benny McKew and Jacob Taylor, in a partnership that includes Lily Blacks owner Lachlan McAllister. The flavours that they've launched so far are fig & cinnamon, pink grapefruit & agave (a bedmate for tequila if ever there was one - as it happens, it was developed with the guys from Tromba) and honeyed apricot & smoked hickory.
I was gifted a small sample of each at the Mister Bitters launch last week, and have been playing with them at home since then. Of the three flavours, I'd say fig & cinnamon is the most versatile (it tastes terrific in an Old Fashioned, or really any other old school cocktail that benefits from Christmassy spice) but my favourite is perhaps the honeyed apricot & smoked hickory, which gave my Negroni a smoky extra kick. You can purchase 100mL bottles of Mister Bitters bitters from Only Bitters, a Melbourne-based website that every cocktail aficionado should have bookmarked. I encourage you to do so!
mr-bitters.com
onlybitters.com
