The World's Best Drink

By Gareth Evans

I’ve been working in the bar industry 20 years, and in that time the martinis got dirty and the chat got clean, or something clever like that. Yes, I realise it’s really annoying when people write in that way, but it’s important in setting the scene - you pique interests with an attention grabbing headline, then begin the article proper with an intro that is nothing to do with that headline, before just aimlessly mashing the keyboard with your sausage fingers for a thousand or so words until you finally meander round to the single sentence point your article was trying to make all along. Fuck off, Giles Coren does it all the time, and he’s a proper writer. Sort of. I guess he’s also an insufferably pompous bellend, but whatever, it’s happening. Are you sitting comfortably children? Then I’ll begin. 

So…what was I saying? Oh yeah. Twenty years. A score, two decades, my best years given to this industry. Twenty years, man and boy. A lot has changed in that time, oh boy let me tell you. I remember when all this were fields as far as the eye can see. By that of course I mean it was all ever so slightly different, but the core of it remains pretty much exactly the same in every single way. However, over that time lot of trends came and went; branded barblades, black shirts with red ties, Cusqueña, wicker Zacapa bottles, Funkin purees, password entry speakeasies where bartenders wear hats, regional Tuaca competitions, that cool thing where you stick the sippy straw to the side of a Z-stem martini glass with soda; all have disappeared like a Spirited Awards runner up’s tears in the New Orleans rain. But over that time there’s been one constant that has been there in good times and bad – the Jack Daniel’s and Coke.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are definitely finer, more refined, even tastier things to drink. The copper coloured elephant in the room is obviously screaming out that I work for a vodka brand, and those of you unfortunate enough to have had me sitting at your bar for any length of time will attest to the fact that between boorish rants about whatever topic I’ve convinced myself I’m an expert on that week, I basically drink only vodka martinis, but even I know there’s a wider world out there than the narrow constraints of the top cocktail bars. With this, as with so many things - context is king. 

My bitingly cold dry vodka martini with a twist is the perfect order for making candlelit googly eyes at my wife or drunkenly putting the world to rights with a friend in a dark moody cocktail bar at 1am, but it isn’t much of a tropical poolside flex. Some swear by a Pina Colada or Hurricane in hot weather, but you’re not day drinking that in London Fields, unless you’re some sort of unsavable tiki monster with a battery powered blender under their XXXL Wray & Nephew shirt. A G&T can be a thing of simple elegant beauty when served tall with plentiful ice, effervescent tonic and freshly cut citrus, but a shitty, unloved, tragically warm airline version is fit only for ditching directly in the sea, and while there are certainly those out there that yearn for a frosty Miller High Life and tepid half pint Jameson chaser, it’s a wholly different animal if you remove it from its spiritual home of the Alibi at 4am in July. You see, a great drink isn’t just great on its own, or because of the quality or temperature of the liquid, it needs a stage. It has a natural place, a home, a set of criteria that need to be met to ensure that it is as great as we all know it can be, but without those? Well, it’s as out of place as a TGI’s Ultimate Oreo Mudslide at the Ritz. 

These rules are hard to figure out, and are different for each drink, but are vitally important to pick up on, in fact understanding what drink fits where and when is the only thing of note I think I have learned as my age advances, my back aches ever more, and my stories becomes more outdated and boomer-esque. Personally, I don’t think I have learned a new classic that sticks in my head for maybe a decade, and certainly my actual practical bar skills have gone from average to just downright laughable. I have my repertoire, my skillset and it has served me pretty well. But learning to make drinks that suit the situation, rather than making the situation suit the drink? That’s a learned skill. There’s more knowledge, and certainly more nous, involved in busting out the savvy B and Sprite at a barbecue than there is trying to make everyone drink your second-rate mezcal Last Words instead. That half dead bag of Tesco ice isn’t making any decent cocktails and you know it, you’re not serving drinks, you’re serving ego, and let me tell you – it doesn’t taste very good.

The JD and Coke on the other hand transcends all of these boundaries, and effortlessly sidesteps the potential occasion-based faux pas like Jay Rayner swerving a Tom Collins. It’s the consummate all-rounder, the ultimate journeyman utility player, the archetypal character actor; it’s everything to everyone and doesn’t try to be anything more or less. There is no drinking situation where a JD and Coke isn’t appropriate. It’s as at home in the Savoy out of cut crystal with hand carved ice, as it is served British Summer temperature, barely even mixed, out of a disposable cup in a muddy field at Glastonbury. It is the one drink that goes with everything - It’s a slim fitting, black single-breasted suit, it’s blue jeans with converse and a white T shirt, it’s red lipstick, it’s the ultimate alcoholic LBD, and it’s all the better for it.

No ice? No problem. I have had this drink practically mulled in temperature at beach bars, and it holds up like a first press Led Zeppelin album. Ratios? JD don’t care ‘bout that. You can mix it so strong that it’s pretty much translucent, where it’s heading into coke flavoured whiskey territory, but its still tasty. It is the boozy social butterfly, comfortable everywhere, in all bars, in all restaurants, clubs, house parties, you name it. It’s fitting that musically it’s biggest exponents were just as varied in style - Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, and the only modern man to wear a top hat and not be gassed about fox hunting – Slash.

My 20 years of drinks making pales into comparison when talking about either side of this iconic partnership, with nearly 300 years of murky brown co-dependence, and they show no signs of slowing anytime soon. Long after the Rotovaps and Spinzalls and Flavour Blasters have gone the way of the aforementioned straw/soda/Z stem, Jack will still be partnering up with his old sidekick to leave that weird foamy scum on glasses the world over, from the duttiest of student halls to the fanciest Hollywood mansions, old and young, rich and poor, and everything and everyone in between.

So this is the point real writers would sign off with a pithy conclusion bringing the story full circle and rounding it off with a smart call back to the intro, leaving you thinking “wow this guy really does know what he’s talking about, how informative and yet hilarious” but that’s not me, and this isn’t that kinda movie I’m afraid. The one sentence point I talked about earlier? JD and Coke - name a more iconic duo.