Australian drinks journalist Sam Bygrave brings us five domestic favourites that haven’t yet flown the nest.
Visit an Australian bar, pick up the cocktail list, and you’ll see just how creative the country’s bartenders are. Most menus change seasonally, if not more frequently. Native botanicals and fruits – the likes of which, thanks to our isolation, you won’t find elsewhere in the world – are sprinkled throughout the drinks. And the country’s climates – which span the tropics of Queensland’s north to the cold, fertile climate of Tasmania to the south – mean that our bartenders have access to all manner of produce all year round. This bounty inspires a produce-driven approach to cocktails, and endless experimentation. Drinks change often.
Yet some drinks stand the test of time. They are the cocktails you send your friends to the bar to drink, the must-haves on any given visit.
These drinks are the ones that can never leave the cocktail list, or if they do, they’re never too far away, getting called for by guests as off-menu specials. These drinks are Australian classics which ought to get a hearing elsewhere. They range from nascent modern versions like Chris Hysted-Adams’ Death Flip, to cocktails which have proven so popular they warrant their own T-shirt merch, like the Africola from Michael Chien at PS40 in Sydney. Others, like Darren Leaney’s Tiramisu Milk Punch, have recipes taken up by bartenders around the country and used as templates for their own creations.
Death Flip (credit: Sam Bygrave) and Tiramisu Milk Punch
#Death Flip
When the Death Flip cocktail was first listed on the drinks list at seminal Melbourne bar Black Pearl in 2010, it was done so as a drink you would not want to meet “in a dark alley”. That’s all the description guests would get – the ingredients were also kept a secret. This air of mystique – and the fact that the drink looks terrifying on paper while being actually wonderfully delicious – would see the Death Flip receiving national and international attention.
It’s also probably partly down to who its creator is: Chris Hysted-Adams. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more genial and generous bartender than him.
Inspired by the Bijou cocktail, Hysted-Adams wanted his riff to bring together three then-unpopular ingredients into one essentially delicious drink. He succeeded.
#Tiramisu Milk Punch
The Tiramisu Milk Punch at Capitano, in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, is the kind of drink that’s worth a trip to taste – and that’s what exactly what bartenders from around Australia did. They then took the drink and made it at their own bars; some listed it as the original, countless more have taken the recipe and adapted it for their own ends.
The Tiramisu Milk Punch has been on the Capitano list since 2019, despite its creator Darren Leaney moving on from the restaurant in 2021.
“[It is the] best application of milk-punching I’ve seen, perfect post-meal, everyone loves it, everyone knows it,” says award-winning Sydney bartender Evan Stroeve. “[It’s] as close to a modern classic that we’ve had in the last five years.”
#Sunnyboy
This cocktail at Brisbane bar The Gresham is one of those few cocktails that have outlasted bar managers and bartenders. The Sunnyboy was created by Mat Hewitt when he opened The Gresham in Brisbane as general manager in 2013.
“It was around the time that fat-washed Old Fashioneds were coming in,” says Hewitt. “I mainly wanted to have a very Queensland-style cocktail — it was either passion fruit or mango. The base was the start, I created the drink at home messing around with fat washes – I knew anything with oil or fat would stick to the alcohol. Butter and coconut worked really well, passion fruit and pineapple added length and enhanced the butter, then vanilla because, well, who doesn’t love vanilla? I used a sugar coconut rum.”
For anyone who grew up around the sugarcane and heat of South East Queensland in the 1980s and 1990s, those ingredients recall a frozen juice ice block that was a staple of summer school lunchtimes: the Sunnyboy. “I named it the Summer Time,” Hewitt says. “The directors loved the drink, and said it tasted like a Sunnyboy.” The drink is instantly familiar to generations of Australians, and still on the menu today.
Sunnyboy (credit Millie Tang) and Icebergs Sgroppino
#Africola
Sydney bar PS40 is known for its innovative approach to drinks, often pulling together unexpected flavour combinations in new and delicious ways. Before the pandemic, the bar team would change their menu regularly – owner and bartender Michael Chiem made the decision to slow that process down a bit. “We were just challenging ourselves to over-create,” he says.
One of the results of that drive to create is the Africola, with Mr Black, kola nut extract, warm coconut foam (photo top, credit Dexter Kim).
This drink has been on the list since 2020, but was offered as an off-menu treat to guests in the years before that. The drink is essentially an upside-down Irish Coffee, a mind-bending drink which plays with hot and cold temperatures, and has been named the country’s number one cocktail twice at the Boothby Drink of the Year awards.
“We get a shock when we drink hot then cold,” says Chiem. “It’s such a surprise for so many people.” That element of surprise has seen Africola-inspired drinks pop up in menus around the country.
#Icebergs Sgroppino
There are few places more iconically Australian than Bondi Beach, and sitting atop the cliffs overlooking the waves is an iconic Australian venue: Maurice Terzini’s Icebergs Dining Room & Bar. For more than 20 years the restaurant has played host to beautiful views both in and outside of the dining room. And in the bar, the Icebergs Sgroppino has taken on a life of its own.
Longtime bar manager Matty Opai has refined the Sgroppino serve and made it Icebergs’ own – the drink is made with tequila, fresh lime, Prosecco and lemon sorbet, but its icon status resides in how it’s delivered. Served table-side, Opai brings a bowl, Prosecco and sorbet, a large measure of tequila, and whips it up for guests to see. Its popularity has seen bartenders around Australia adapting the Sgroppino for their own frosty, delicious purposes. Who needs a Martini cart when you can have a Sgroppino made table-side?