Move over, game birds, big-antlered stags, coats of arms, fleurs-de-lis, and all that other usual liquor-bottle iconography. Thereโs a new booze in town, and the label says it all: Patricia, a 22.7ย percentย ABV liqueur made with coffee from Lot Sixty One. At Amsterdam cocktail bars, where Patricia debuted earlier this year, the bottle is easy to spotโits logo is a pinball-machine maze of lines on a backdrop the color of persimmon.
Patriciaโs alcohol base is jenever, the 16th-century Dutch invention traditionally distilled with juniper berries that begat what the English called โgin.โ Its coffee component is FIVR, a Brazilian espresso from Amsterdamโs most venerable Australian-run roaster. And notย coincidentally, the person behind Patricia is also Australian.
Peter Ong is best known in the Dutch capital for heading handmade sweets supplier Baked in Amsterdam. Nowadays, that company and Patricia are headquartered in the cityโs culinary startup incubator Kitchen Republic. A fewย years ago, however, Ongโas a newcomer needing an ovenโbegan baking his famous banana bread at Lot Sixty One.
More recently, itsย Kinkerstraat cafe served as his liqueur laboratory and its co-founder, Adam Craig, as his test subject. โAdam was sitting there tasting it and he was saying, โThis is a really good idea.ย You should go for it,โโ says Ong.
The choice was for a young (rather than old) jenever because it was more neutral, allowing the espressoโs chocolate and orange notes to come through. Unlike other popular coffee liqueurs, Patricia is vanilla-free, which is intentional: Ong says that keeps it from beingย โunfailingly restricted to the dessert side.โ
At Lottiโs inย the Hoxton hotel, head bartender Paolo Banfi recommends Patricia as an apรฉritif or a digestif. For a cocktail, he mixes it with Sipsmith gin, Cocchi vermouth, Merlet Lune DโAbricot liqueur, and dashes of orange bitters. โBoozy,โ Banfi says.
โItโs lovely,โ says Ray Luca, Lottiโs head barista, who also works atย Lot Sixty One. โCompared withย Kahlรบa, [Patricia] is really more flexible.โ
Flexible is an appropriate word to describeย Ong as well. Back in his native Melbourne, he was an employment lawyer before realizing that wasnโt the best job for him.ย He pursued that career partly to appease hisย Asian parents, though he explains (more seriously) that his parentsย moved to Australia as refugees after the Vietnam War. Ong eventually emigrated to study pastry in Paris. His on-the-job training as a chef at Emperor Norton was formidableโclearly influencing hisย approach to Patriciaย today as well.
โI really, really want to focus on getting the pros in the cocktail world, giving them a new ingredient to get excited about,โ he says. โThe best butter in the world is butter from Jean-Yves Bordier, from Brittany in France. If someone gives me butter like that, Iโmย like, โOh, goodie goodie!โ โ
Living inย France also helped Ong to understandย how many regions in and around the country have a signature alcohol: an Alpine offering proved particularly memorable.
โAfter a day of hiking, they pour you a shot of gรฉnรฉpi,โ he recalls. โThis is really exciting:ย Itโs so local, it has so much of the character of the place. And so when I think about it, as a description of a spirit, itโs not just โspiritโ in terms of strong alcohol, but itโs alsoย the spirit of the place. So I wanted to do something similar here.โ
As for Patriciaโs neon-inspired bottle label, Ong explains: โI am a kid of the โ80s.โ The name of the product came fromย a woman with whom he shared a couple days. When speaking of Patricia the person rather than the beverage, his usual precision gives way to poetics.
โWhen youโre traveling and you meet someone, itโs magic,โ he says. โYou sort of preserve a really perfect memory and a bit of a perfect mystique.โ
After cracking himself up, he says: โI actually also do think that if I meet her again and Iโm like, โBy the way, I named a business after you,โ she might be like,ย โAh, excuse me, what? Get away from me, you creep!โ โ
His John Hughes-ianย self-awareness isย bittersweet though encouragingโto be here and now, taking in what Patriciaโs cork seal identifies as โAmsterdam coffeeโ and โAmsterdam spirit.โ
Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read moreย Karina Hof on Sprudge