Signature exploration · 5 directions
Smoked Carrot
One mother ingredient, five cocktails, three ways to solve the colour.
Roasted-carrot cordial · Mezcal (Koch Elemental) · Gin · Basil · Lemon
The brief: a Gin Basil Smash with carrot and mezcal. The right question wasn't whether carrot and mezcal work together, but what you have to do to the carrot so it speaks the language of agave. The answer: roast it. Agave is cooked in an earth oven; a caramelised carrot shares that burnt sugar. Raw, it's a collision; roasted, it's a continuation.
The real problem wasn't flavour — it was colour. The Basil Smash is iconic for its green, and green chlorophyll plus orange carotene gives brown. Exhausting the honest exits from that problem — strip the carrot's colour, bring it in through its green tops, or abandon the green on purpose — produced five directions.
They all share one mother ingredient: the roasted-carrot cordial. A single production — one afternoon of oven and blender — unlocks three cocktails. Produce once, serve three times.
Method
The roasted-carrot cordial — carrot caramelised at 180°, blended, 1:1 sugar, citric acid and toasted cumin — replaces the syrup. On top of it, five directions that solve the colour three different ways.
Roasted-carrot cordial — one production, five outputs.
