Stuart Bale delves into the structure of taste and suggests ways in which it can be levered to improve the quality of a drink. 

Flavour is aroma and character, what the thing is. Taste is the structure underneath it, the five tastes your tongue recognises: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami (we could talk about minerality too, but that’s for a different day). Get that structure wrong and the drink feels hollow, harsh, flabby or just fine in a way that vanishes from memory. 

We already covered the sugar/acid balancing act, so this is the follow up for the three tastes people ignore until the last minute, then wonder why the drink still doesn’t feel finished: salt, bitter and umami. 

Salt 

For a long time the presence of salt was reduced to a question of whether or not it was on the rim. Thankfully these days it’s a much more conscious decision. The goal is not to taste salt, it’s to make the drink taste more like itself. A tiny amount can lift fruit and botanicals, smooth harsh bitterness and make sweetness feel less childish without adding more acid. 

The classic sign that you need salt is when the drink tastes thin, vague or like the parts aren’t  
talking to each other. Use a saline solution so you  
can dose consistently: a 20% saline (200g salt, 800g water) is a solid house standard. Add it like bitters,  
in drops. As rough guidance, you’re usually in the 1-2ml drop range for most drinks, although on the lower side for stirred brown spirit drinks where salt can go soupy fast. 

Salt shines in citrus and agave drinks, tropical fruit, long drinks and alongside savoury herbs. It can backfire in delicate florals, or when the drink already has a strong mineral character. The other danger is salting just in case, which flattens everything. 

Bitter 

Bitterness gives a drink bones without relying on more acid. It also lives in the finish, which is where people decide if they want another. The issue is that bitterness stacks quietly, then suddenly you’ve got something that really tastes offensive. 

Bitterness can come from bitters, amaro, tonic/quinine, tea, coffee, cacao, grapefruit pith and over-expressed peel oils. Even within bitterness there are a few different ways it can hit you: front-bitter can feel aggressive, mid-palate bitter can feel supportive, back-bitter can be seductive or punitive. The theory is this is related to evolution and we are hardwired to responding to bitter. 

Sugar carries bitterness, but too much sugar  
makes bitter feel medicinal, too little makes it  
austere and drying. Salt can soften bitterness, but don’t use salt to hide it – you’ll end up with something muted and weird. Measure bitter additions and taste as the drink warms up – bitterness reveals itself with temperature. 

Umami 

Umami isn’t about making it taste like noodles, it’s savoury depth that makes a drink feel integrated and moreish. It’s especially useful in low/no drinks, where alcohol isn’t there to provide weight. 

What’s actually going on is a little bit of chemistry that bartenders accidentally rediscover every time they add a touch of something savoury and the whole drink suddenly behaves. There are three main umami builders: glutamates (glutamic acid, MSG, soy, tomatoes), inosinate (often meat or fish adjacent, dashi, bonito), and guanylate (mushrooms, especially dried). On their own each one can read a bit flat, but together they amplify each other massively. That’s why mushroom plus soy, or miso plus dashi, can feel 10 times more delicious than either ingredient alone. 

Miso and soy are the obvious tools, but tomato, mushroom, seaweed/dashi notes, whey/cheese-adjacent techniques, yeasty notes and MSG can all add umami. 

The simple workflow is to balance sweet and sour first, then add a touch of salt. Decide if the drink wants bitterness, and where. If it still feels thin or disconnected, add a bit of umami, then re-check the salt.