Kratena, Berg and Caporale ‘redefine’ liqueurs Bartending luminaries Alex Kratena, Monica Berg and Simone Caporale have teamed up with Dutch drinks firm De Kuyper to launch a new liqueurs range. Alex Kratena ' The world is a book, and those who don't travel read only one page'.
Giulia Sgarbi - 28/11/2019
Bartender, entrepreneur, industry leader and agent of change: Monica Berg is a woman of many talents. Get to know the winner of the Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award at The World’s 50 Best Bars 2019 and go behind the scenes at one of London’s most exciting new bars, Tayēr + Elementary
At Tayēr + Elementary, the most unique and expensive glassware – an intricate, unique piece handmade in Czech Republic and modelled after the bark of a tree – is used to serve water. This speaks volumes about the attention to detail that characterises Monica Berg and Alex Kratena’s new London bar, as well as their fervent passion to make drinks accessible and egalitarian.
As the couple’s first own bar nears its six-month birthday, Berg is celebrating winning the Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award, an accolade voted by her peers who head up the venues in The World’s 50 Best Bars list. This year, Tayēr + Elementary debuted at No.52 in the ranking, making it the highest new entry in the extended 51-100 list.
The bar industry’s favourite bartender started her career in Oslo, where she gathered up experience at a variety of venues – from dive bars to nightclubs – before she took over the H.Butlers Bartending School in her early twenties. Always a high-achiever, she followed her early successes by honing her skills at London’s Pollen Street Social, then at Oslo’s award-winning bar Himkok. In recent years, she launched her own liqueur, Muyu, and co-founded P(our), a non-profit and educational symposium for the bar industry.
Since its inception in 2016, P(our) has held events around themes such as ‘the modern bartender’, gender and ‘perfection’. “We want to be a platform and a symposium that is worthy of the industry we belong to, that celebrates it and helps make changes from within. We want people to understand that they're not just bartenders, they can change things – it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from,” she explains.
Get to know the bar industry luminary through six quotes that define her new venue, her drinks philosophy and her life behind the bar.
Berg receives the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award at The World's 50 Best Bars 2019
The bar – “Tayēr means workshop, because nothing here is ever finished”
After four years in the works, Tayēr + Elementary opened in June 2019 in London’s Old Street neighbourhood as two venues in one. Elementary is the bar at the front that overlooks the busy street, an open-all-day concept with a drinks list rooted in classics, but also showcasing some lesser-known ingredients. Here, you can taste cocktails mixed with neroli oil-flavoured soda (a floral essential oil) or vetiver, a type of bunchgrass native to India. Crossing over to the room in the back, you find yourself in Berg and Kratena’s playground proper: Tayēr.
“At Tayēr, we want to celebrate ingredients that may be common but underappreciated, like a really good apple at the peak of its season,” says Berg. “We want to show people that cocktails, and even food, are not necessarily about the expensive or exclusive ingredients. Elementary is your neighbourhood bar where you go to have fun and drink your favourite cocktail. Tayēr is where you go to try something new.”
The menu is in constant evolution – it changes two to four times a week, based on which products are in season, the team’s inspiration and their latest experiments. “Tayēr comes from Spanish and means workshop,” explains Berg. “It represents the fact that nothing here is ever finished. Just because a cocktail is on the menu, doesn't mean that it can't be improved.” As well as the ever-changing cocktail list, the bar also offers a hand-picked selection of beers and wines.
Berg and Kratena have one more ace up their sleeves. In between Tayēr and Elementary is a narrow kitchen where chefs from Ta Ta Eatery – a celebrated Asian-European concept – prepare the bespoke menu served at the ‘Kitchen Counter’ in the evening. “When we started dreaming of this bar, we knew food had to be part of it. The setting is different when food and drinks are combined – it's not just going out and getting drunk, it's not just sitting down and eating to get nourishment, it's about the enjoyment the two can bring together,” says Berg.
Despite its high level of development, Tayēr + Elementary is still a very young venue, less than six months old – a fact that Berg never forgets. “It still feels slightly unreal,” she notes. “Every morning, I come in here and think 'Wow, this is my bar'. It's the result of the last four years, but also of the previous 20 years working in the industry. I don't think I've ever been happier.”
Tayer's cocktail with aquavit, rhubarb and Muyu Jasmine Verte
The creative process – “Hierarchies don’t work. Here, everyone is equal”
Berg defines Tayēr + Elementary’s cocktail creation process “a bit unusual”: each drink is the result of the team’s collective effort and nothing goes on the menu unless everyone has tasted it and agreed it’s ready. “We only separate between kitchen and bar in the team,” she explains. “There is no hierarchy, because in my experience, hierarchies often don't work. It's a very comfortable way of passing blame onto other people. Here, everyone is equal.”
To demonstrate how the creative process works, Berg takes the example of a drink she started working on earlier this year. “I really enjoy working with fermentation, so this summer, I got a nice batch of redcurrants and did a non-alcoholic fermentation,” she says. “After three and a half weeks, I tasted it – it was probably one of the best fermentations I’d ever done. I had this idea to make a drink that would taste as much like redcurrant as humanly possible.”
Alex Kratena Paragon
Soon after, however, Berg left on a business trip – only to come back and discover her redcurrant drink was almost finalised. “It was a completely different drink than I would have ever imagined,” recalls Berg. “At first, I was slightly disappointed, because I wasn't able to make the drink I had in my mind. Then, I tasted the drink and it was amazing – it was so popular that we ran out within a week.
“When no one creates a single cocktail, but every cocktail is a product of the team, the drinks are so much better for it. But you have to be willing not to take the credit.”
Tayēr + Elementary's team, including Berg and Kratena (right)
The test – “Would you serve it to your mother?”
The cocktails on Tayēr’s menu all share one characteristic – Berg wants them to be accessible to anyone. “We want people to become more familiar with drinks and the processes behind them, so that they can understand them. Unless you understand something, it's very difficult to appreciate it to the full extent,” she argues.
For this reason, before a drink can make it on Tayēr + Elementary’s menu, it has to pass an important test. “We always ask: 'Would you serve this to your mother?',” says Berg. “For most people, their mother is the benchmark. If you wouldn't serve it to your mother, why would you serve it to anyone else? Doesn't everyone deserve the same kind of respect and care?
Alex Kratena
“Then, we ask: ‘Would your mother understand this cocktail?’”. The idea of making drinks more accessible is very close to Berg’s heart, as the bartender is determined to remove the barriers that can sometimes put people off from wandering into cocktail bars that are considered “innovative” or “a bit out there”.
“We become so specialised in what we do that we forget there is a whole group of people out there who are still novice at drinking,” she says. “Drinking should be fun. You shouldn't go to a bar and be scared to order. Sometimes, people come in and say: 'I would really like a beer, I'm really sorry'. I ask them: why are you apologising? I'm not one to judge what you drink – as long as you're happy, I'm happy.”
The Kitchen Counter's Iberian Pork Sando
The drinks – “You only have one sip to convey all the different flavour layers”
The cocktails on Tayēr’s menu are often unique – while they sometimes take inspiration from classics, they’re also not afraid of being different. “As a bartender, at some point you have to make the choice of whether it's more important to you that your cocktails be historically correct or delicious. For us, deliciousness is the priority. Spirits have changed, ingredients have changed, people have changed, so it's only natural that cocktails evolve.”
The main challenge for Berg is to convey the different layers of flavour into a single sip. “When you think of a peach, what makes it so delicious are all the nuances. The texture when you bit into it, the sweetness, the little hint of acidity – that’s the complexity of its flavour. You can't just make a peach syrup or an infusion – if you truly want to capture the flavour of the ingredient, you need to use different techniques to get each layer,” she explains.
Berg and the team used this technique to come up with the recipe for Tayēr’s black truffle Martini. The bar’s house gin, which comes from a small distillery in the north of England, is fat washed in truffle-infused oil, a process that allows it to acquire the truffle’s aromatic properties. The cocktail also mixes some distilled truffle, “because that’s where the flavour sits”, and a sweet-style vermouth with vanilla tones to ground the truffle aroma.
“With food, you have textures and you have the luxury of taking several bites. In a drink, it's one sip and all the flavours have to be there,” says Berg. “The black truffle Martini is representative of Tayēr’s style, because it's simple, but very effective. Using the right techniques in the right places, you can create very good drinks without having to work too hard.”
Tayēr's cocktail with bourbon, amber, aquavit, fino sherry and caroob
Sustainability – “Even if fish aren’t cute and fuzzy, they’re alive”
Berg grew up in Norway, where she and her family lived in close contact with nature, often going on fishing and hunting trips. “Since I was nine, one of my responsibilities at home was to keep the sourdough starter alive,” she recalls. “Then, every Sunday, I would go into the forest and pick mushrooms, or catch and smoke different types of fish.
“At the time, I didn’t understand how lucky I was, but those experiences led me to understand that even if fish aren’t cute and fuzzy, they’re alive. I learnt to respect life. They gave me the right values – if you're going to kill an animal, at least use the whole animal, otherwise it's wasteful. Flavour is not always pretty, but it’s the most important thing,” she says.
Following her unique upbringing, Berg wanted Tayēr + Elementary to be an example of a sustainable bar in all facets. “You have to look at the true cost of your dish, your drink or your bar. Where does the wood come from? The bricks? You can always make choices,” she says. “Sometimes, we forget that there are multiple facets to sustainability. We focus on the environmental and we forget the financial or the social side of it.
“It's very important to me that people are happy. This is why there is no back of house here – there is nowhere you can yell at anyone. I also feel the responsibility of having 10 people working with me. It's fulfilling to create a new cocktail or make the guests happy, but at the end of the day, you need to make sure that you make the right choices so that you can deliver to the people who work with you and your suppliers.”
Group picture at P(our) symposium
Gender – “For the first 10 years of my career, I was a bartender. Then, I became a female bartender”
Over her career in the bar industry, Berg noticed one key change. Around the 10-year mark, when she started to be considered successful, people stopped referring to her as a 'bartender' and bestowed upon her the new role of ‘female bartender’. “In the beginning, I had very conflicting feelings about it. I didn't understand why everyone kept asking me: 'How does it feel to be a female bartender?' I don't know, because I don't know any other way of being a bartender,” she says.
“For a long time, I dismissed it. Then, I started to travel more, and I understood that privilege is ironic, because if you're privileged, you don't know that you are.” Realising that in other countries women in the bar industry faced different challenges pushed Berg to reconsider her position.
“You start to understand that once you get to a point where you have a voice that other people will listen to, you have to use it for good,” she says. “For me, [being a woman] hasn't necessarily been a struggle, but for other people it is. I understand that I have to speak up when I feel that something is wrong, and sometimes it's uncomfortable because people will come for you, especially on social media, but I have to.”
At the same time, Berg is keen to move the conversation beyond gender. “We have to adapt the conversation to the time we live in. I would love to come to a place, not only in our industry but in society in general, where it's a conversation about individuals rather than gender,” she says.
A recent example comes to mind – soon after winning the Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award, Berg took part in an exchange that surprised her. “Someone said to me: ‘Congratulations on being the best female bartender’. Alex [Kratena] was like: ‘No, it's just bartender’. And I was like oh yeah, actually, it is. It's not a gendered award, and if you look at the bigger picture, that is a great example of how the industry is already changing.”
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With the coronavirus pandemic having shaped many of the food and drink trends that emerged last year, we bring you our top 10 trend predictions for 2021.
The hard seltzer category exploded in the UK last year and we predict that the spiked seltzer trend will gather momentum in 2021. While the category continues to be lead by US brands like White Claw and Truly, a slew of British-backed brands emerged on the scene last year, in a trend set to mushroom in 2021. Among the UK-based new players are Bodega Bay, the brainchild of former Asahi UK strategist Charlie Markland, and DRTY Hard Seltzer, founded by entrepreneur Matija Pisk, who got the idea for the brand, which is targeted at sugar shunning calorie counters, during a trip to the US in 2018.
Herefordshire-based Chase distillery also entered the hard seltzer party last summer with the launch of a trio of flavoured gin seltzers: Seville Orange, Pink Grapefruit, and London Dry & Lemon, made with sparkling water sourced from the family farm. Distillery director James Chase decided to develop the range after seeing how popular hard seltzers were while living in the US then clocking the wellness boom back in the UK. “Consumers are becoming increasingly health-conscious, and for those seeking a low-calorie alternative to wine, beer and cider, chase’s Gin Seltzers are ideal,” he said.
Rosé continues to enjoy its moment in the sun and savvy celebrities are latching onto its pulling power, aware of rosé’s ability to sell an aspirational lifestyle in a similar way to fragrance. With Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie having kicked off the celebrity rosé trend back in 2011 when they bought the 500ha Château Miraval in Côtes de Provence for a reported US$60m, last year a clutch of stars brought out their own pale pink rosé brands.
Coinciding the release with her birthday, last May pop princess Kylie Minogue launched her eponymous wine brand with a Vin de France rosé made from a blend of 80% Carignan and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon from the southern French coast. A collaborative project with Benchmark Drinks, a few months later she followed up with a Côtes de Provence pink crafted from 50% Grenache, 40% Cinsault and 10% Rolle at Château des Anglades near St Tropez.
Also diving into the pink wine trend was Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker, who added a southern French rosé to her Invivo X wine range, made in collaboration with New Zealand-based Invivo & Co, last summer. “Blending the rosé was an experience I never thought I would be participating in and was not only great fun but informative, surprising and wonderfully satisfying,” Parker said.
Proving real men drink pink, American rapper Post Malone also has skin in the game, launching his own southern French rosé brand, Maison No. 9 last year, which became an instant hit. We think the trend has legs and expect to see more celebrity-backed rosé brands this year.
When the UK was plunged into its first national lockdown last March, restaurateurs up and down the country had to think on their feet and find a way to keep the cash coming in while their sites were shuttered. Allowed to offer a takeaway and delivery service, a number of venues developed a side hustle dedicated to making meal kits and boxed food to go.
While the summer offered a brief hiatus from lockdown, with restaurants benefitting from Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out initiative in August, by November the UK was back in lockdown, leading to a mushrooming of the meal kit trend. With Boris Johnson having just announced the news of lockdown 3.0, we see the trend gathering momentum this year as people opt to treat themselves to top-end food from the comfort of their sofa.
While we’re all keen to see restaurants reopen, adding the delivery string to their bows is a move many venues will want to maintain long after lockdown has ended. Among the big name chefs to have pivoted to takeaways are foraging fiends Simon Rogan and Tommy Banks, and seafood specialist Rick Stein, who launched a series of meal kit boxes available for delivery across the UK last year filled with high end dishes, from coq au Riesling to Indonesian curry.
Adam Handling was one of the first chefs in London to launch an operation for UK-wide delivery. Called Hame, the food arrives chilled and fully prepared, ready for cooking and plating, complete with recipes and video instructions. Among the decadent dishes on offer are Handling’s famed chicken butter and cheese doughnuts; beef wellington with clotted cream mash; fried chicken; lobster tagliatelle and truffle-stuffed roast chicken.
Having once been sniffed at, canned wines are now big business. Volume sales of canned wines in the US have doubled in the last two years alone, from US$42m in 2018 to US$86m in 2020. The growth of the category has been even more pronounced in the UK, albeit from a smaller base. Canned wine volume sales have quadrupled in the UK since 2018, from £2.5m to £10.7m in 2020, according to Nielsen. Recyclable, portable and providing Covid-safe single serves, canned wines are suited to our times and look set to make an even bigger splash this year.
In the last five years canned wine sales have really taken off, with a slew of new can-only wine brands entering the market, from London-based French fancy ‘Nice’ to tongue-in-cheek newcomer ‘Hun’. Last summer Babe, the popular canned wine brand founded by Instagram influencer Josh Ostrovsky, made its UK debut, with 200ml cans of its sparkling rosé going on sale at Sainsbury’s priced at £2.15 a pop.
The convenience of the format is also proving a big sales driver for California wine giant E&J Gallo, which sells both Gallo and Barefoot-branded canned wines. One of the newest players in the canned wine game – the vegan-friendly and Fair Trade accredited Hun – was founded by young entrepreneur Mark Woollard in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and is now on sale nationwide at Tesco.
Helping to take the canned wine category upmarket is British-backed Provence producer Mirabeau, which launched its Prêt-à-Porter rosé at Waitrose in 2019 in an elegant, “fashion forward” can in varying shades of pastel pink. Meanwhile, English wine brand The Uncommon doubled its production to 200,000 cans in 2020, leading its founders to plant an additional 10 hectares of vines in Kent to keep up with consumer demand.
It’s not only chefs who have been pivoting to takeaways – some of London’s top bartenders spend 2020 creating bottled cocktail collections that can be delivered to your door. The founders of three of London’s top drinking dens – Nightjar, Swift and Oriole – launched a nationwide bottled cocktail delivery service called Speakeasy At Home, offering sophisticated sips in 220ml pouches (2 servings) and 500ml bottles (5 servings), with prices starting at £6 per cocktail.
Meanwhile, dynamic duo Alex Kratena and Monica Berg launched their own range of bottled cocktails from their east London bar Tayēr + Elementary in collaboration with Cask Liquid Marketing. The collection includes popular Tayēr serves like the Palo Santo Gimlet, Sandalwood Martini and Bergamot Margarita. Housed in Tayēr’s medicine-like brown bottles, each recipe has been kept the same to fully replicate the experience of drinking it at the bar.
Also in on the act is small steakhouse chain Hawksmoor, which launched its Hawksmoor at Home service last year, offering nationwide delivery within the UK. The cocktail collection takes inspiration from legendary bartender Jerry Thomas, who, all the way back in 1862, said that bottled cocktails were well suited to “fishing and other sporting parties, although some patients insist on them in the morning as a tonic”. We expect to see more bars bottling their wares for home delivery this year.
In the few months when we were able to eat out last year, diners tended to stick to their local neighbourhood restaurants rather than venturing further afield for their food fix. Helping to support their local businesses during a tough time, venues in residential neighbourhoods were buoyed by the trend, while sites in central London and business districts like Canary Wharf suffered.
With the coronavirus continuing to impact our lives this year, we predict that the eating local trend is here to stay, as diners take advantage of the growing number of restaurants now offering their dishes to go on the likes of Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Dovetailing with the convenience trend, eating locally has become the norm, with diners more likely to save splash out meals outside of their neighbourhood for special occasions.
With the clean drinking trend showing no sign of slowing, no and low alcohol drinks will continue to gain traction in the UK, particularly this month as consumers who overindulged over Christmas seek to redress the balance by taking part in Dry January. Expect to see a slew of new no and low alcohol beers, wines and spirits this year, alongside nolo ciders, RTDs and seltzers.
As the category evolves, ever more curious and inventive brands will enter the market. Among one of last year’s most interesting new additions to the nolo stable was Fungtn, which bills itself as the UK’s first ‘medicinal’ mushroom beer. Founded by mindful drinking consultant Zoe Henderson, the 0.5% ABV vegan and gluten free beer brand includes an IPA brewed with Lion’s Mane mushrooms; a Citra Beer brewed with Reishi mushrooms; and a lager brewed with Chaga mushrooms.
Tapping into the wellness trend, Fungtn is aimed at mindful drinkers seeking low ABV sips that both mimic the taste of alcohol and deliver functional benefits. According to Henderson, medicinal mushrooms, called myco adaptogens, are known for helping the body adapt to psychological stresses, restoring homeostasis and supporting the immune system and endocrine system.
Meanwhile, Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews’ nolo brand, CleanCo, is going great guns. Matthews added a 0.5% ABV RTD gin and tonic, and rum and cola, to his range last autumn and recently rebranded his packaging to an Art Deco aesthetic.
Having long been derided, boxed wine emerged as a lockdown favourite last year due to its convenience of the format, allowing at-home workers to enjoy a midweek glass of wine after they clock off for the evening, without having to open a whole bottle. Along with rosé, boxed wine was one of the top performing wine categories at Sainsbury’s last year. In its Plate of the Nation report, the retailer revealed that 6.8m customers had bought bag-in-box wine at the store during lockdown. The affordable format is proving particularly popular with younger consumers, with 28% of those aged 25-34 buying BiB.
“A new generation of customers are discovering bag-in-box wines for the first time. The quality has come on leaps and bounds and we expect to see many new BiB brands appear in the next year or so to meet rising customer demand,” said Sainsbury’s wine expert, Helena Nicklin. Last August, year on year sales of boxed wine were up by 41% at Sainsbury’s. “Lockdown gave bag-in-box wine an opportunity to shine. Shoppers could get the same great taste in a larger container that kept their wine fresh for six weeks from opening, which meant fewer trips to the shops,” added wine buyer, Hugh Browne.
Among the newcomers to the category are Domaine Bousquet, which launched the first organic boxed wine from South America – Natural Origins – last April. Also in on the act is trend-setter Mirabeau, which launched its Belle Année Provence pink in a 2.25l bag-in-box format at Waitrose last November, priced at £25.99.
In times of hardship, we seek out foods that comfort and console, so expect to see a rise in popularity for carb-laden comfort foods like mac and cheese and shepherd’s pie this year as diners go back to basics in their culinary tastes. From a steaming bowl of soothing soup to a creamy mountain of mash, 2021 will see a rise in comforting home cooked dishes that help to make the UK’s third national lockdown more bearable.
Comfort needn’t mean unsophisticated – one of the dishes to have generated a buzz from Nigella Lawson’s new tome Cook, Eat, Repeat, is her crab mac and cheese, made with Gruyère and conchiglie rigati pasta, which is both comforting in the extreme and an elegant dish you could serve someone you want to impress. With restaurants and entertainment venues closed for the foreseeable, consumers will be consoling themselves with edible treats, perhaps leading to a spike in sales of sugar-laden cakes and sweets that offer momentary joy amid the mayhem.
While the success of English sparkling wine has been bubbling away for years now, 2021 will usher in a slew of new homegrown drops that dare to be different. Spearheaded by the likes of Ben Walgate at Tillingham in East Sussex, who makes a Chardonnay aged in two qvevri, one with 10% skins, the other without, expect to see a host of funky English bottlings hit the shelves this year.
Surrey-based Litmus makes an orange wine from Bacchus aged in five-year-old French barriques for nine months, which is on sale at Waitrose, while In London, the likes of Renegade, Blackbook and Vagabond are championing hipster-friendly Pet Nat sparklers. Renegade’s is made from Herefordshire-grown Bacchus, which is left unfiltered and unfined and has no added sugar, sulphur or riddling agents, while Vagabond’s effort is cleverly called ‘Pet-Not’.
Also breaking the mould is English canned wine brand The Uncommon, which launched in 2018 with a sparkling Bacchus using grapes grown in Surrey. It subsequently released a canned sparkling rosé from Pinot Noir, and recently launched a white and pink wine spritz, blending wine, water and botanicals. Over at Hush Heath in Kent, among its recently released still wines is This Septered Isle, made from the seven grape varieties permitted in Champagne: Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Petit Meslier, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Meunier and Arbanne.
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