Think about you’re on a date at a cute, intimate cocktail bar. You’re dressed up, flirting, the chemistry is flowing, when all of a sudden your date picks up their cocktail and licks all the aspect of the glass. From the way in which some cocktails are being garnished, you possibly can hardly blame them for assuming that is what is anticipated. Cocktail rims, as soon as an apt title for a garnish confined to the lip of a glass, have slowly grow to be extra summary and outlandish, oozing over the edges and generally bottoms of glasses. Certain, it’s eye-catching, however who the hell is it for?
I’ll admit I’ve by no means been a lot of a fan of rims to start with, whether or not they’re salt, sugar or Pop Rocks, however I perceive that they’ll serve a operate. “There’s both a taste high quality or an fragrant high quality that’s going to convey one thing to the drink, to reinforce it indirectly,” says Sother Teague, beverage director at Overthrow Hospitality. Like a lemon or orange peel expressed over the floor of a cocktail, the rim largely serves to spice up the flavour and texture of the cocktail. Its aesthetic high quality is secondary, or at most equal, to its operate.
However with this new era of rims, the eyes drink first. And whereas they do require technical talent to tug off—critically, how do you get it to appear like black salt flames are taking pictures up from the underside of the glass?—they’re not often about enhancing the style of the drink. “It’s a design development,” says Teague. “This, I imagine, is an unlucky aspect impact of the Instagram world that we reside in, or TikTok. … This isn’t sensible. It’s not purposeful.” In different phrases, it appears to be like good, but it surely doesn’t exist to be in service of the drink.
There are many outlandish garnish tendencies within the cocktail world, from complete burgers on Bloody Marys to Micheladas topped with sweet. However there, a minimum of, it’s clear how the toppings needs to be eaten. The side-dipped rim, in distinction, is type of complicated. How, precisely, is one alleged to drink one thing like this? Do you lick it, and danger spilling a few of your drink onto your lap within the course of to achieve all the rim? Do you run your fingers up the edges after which lick them? Do you ask for a spoon to scrape it off so you’ll be able to stir it into the drink? There’s no elegant resolution.
However, like every development, it’s most likely going to worsen earlier than it will get higher. Having your eyes drink first, nonetheless, isn’t essentially a foul factor. Who hasn’t ordered a cocktail simply because it is available in a cool glass, or is about on hearth, or has another aesthetic high quality that made you say “sure” earlier than even contemplating when you’d like the way in which it tastes? Seeing an attractive cocktail throughout the bar, with a colourful rim dripping down the aspect, might encourage you to order one thing you by no means would have in any other case. And that’s not a foul factor. To avoid wasting everybody the embarrassment, perhaps we will all agree that you just don’t must lick the entire thing—you’ll be able to simply recognize the way it appears to be like.
