Cocktail Classics get a Local Twist

A bold new band of mixologists is foraging across India from Ladakh to the Western Ghats, to reimagine classic cocktails through local ingredients, forgotten flavours and stories of place. Sourish Bhattacharyya dips into their cocktail shakers

When Jeet Rana and Chirag Pal travelled to Meghalaya recently, they weren’t scouting locations or promoting their bar. They were foraging.

The duo run Barbet & Pals in Delhi’s bustling M-Block Market, but like an increasing number of Indian bartenders, they are constantly searching for unfamiliar ingredients that can bring fresh character to familiar cocktails. Among their discoveries were sohiong berries from the Khasi Hills – sweet-tart fruit now known as a key botanical in Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin. The berries soon found their way into a new edition of Barbet & Pals’ Bird’s Eye menu.

A few months earlier, their mentor, celebrity mixologist Yangdup Lama, had been on a similar quest in Nagaland. While creating a special menu for The Brook, his Himalayan-themed Gurgaon bar, Lama immersed himself in the flavours and traditions celebrated during the state’s famous Hornbill Festival. Nagaland had already entered the national spotlight through the success of Paatal Lok 2, but Lama was interested in a different kind of storytelling – one told through cocktails.

The resulting menu, titled O Soneko (“O Beloved Ones”), after the popular song by the Tetseo Sisters, drew deeply from local food and drink traditions. One cocktail, Sekrenyi, named after the Angami tribe’s Sanctification Festival, combined Johnnie Walker Black Label with zutho, Nagaland’s sparkling rice beer, and toasted black sesame. Another, Tuluni – named after the rice wine traditionally served by the Sumi tribe during celebrations – paired whisky with rosella jam and balsamic vinegar. These drinks do more than showcase unusual ingredients. They carry stories of landscapes, communities and traditions. As Jeet Rana puts it, “Each cocktail becomes a journey across flavours and spaces.”

That philosophy is increasingly visible across India’s bar scene. At Delhi’s much-discussed Nadoo Restaurant, entrepreneur and South Indian cuisine expert Shri Bala and her partner Sahil Sambhi use cocktails to evoke familiar dishes and memories from across the southern states. One of their most distinctive creations is Sweet Silk, a rum-based dessert cocktail inspired by payasam. Palm jaggery, cashew, cardamom, vermicelli milk and edible camphor recreate the flavours of the beloved pudding in liquid form. For those seeking something more savoury, Pepper Saaru combines vodka with clarified tomato and tamarind water, pepper, citrus and curry leaf oil, echoing the flavours of rasam.

From Meghalaya and Nagaland to the southern coast, India’s regional pantry is finding its way into cocktail glasses with growing confidence. Ingredients once associated primarily with home kitchens and local food traditions are increasingly shaping contemporary drinks.

The trend is evident even in classics. The Gimlet, for example, has acquired a distinctly Indian accent in the form of the Totapuri Gimlet, where the mango variety commonly used in aamras lends the drink a bright, refreshing character.

Even internationally inspired menus are embracing local flavours. At Grammie, the Delhi restaurant launched by chef-entrepreneur Tanveer Kwatra and Ginny Kohli, a cocktail called Wild Canopy incorporates jamun into a playful reinterpretation inspired by Japanese kakigori and cola flavours.

“It is not just about drinking a cocktail; it is about experiencing it,” says Pankaj Balachandran, the mixologist behind Goa’s Quinta Cantina, Boilermaker and The Lab. Balachandran was speaking from Sri Lanka, where Quinta Cantina had collaborated with Ropewalk at Galle Fort Hotel in an exchange celebrating two regional spirits: Goa’s feni and Sri Lanka’s arrack.

“It is essentially two local spirit cultures coming together,” he says. The collaboration reflects a broader shift in the drinks world, where regional ingredients and indigenous spirits are increasingly earning recognition beyond their places of origin.

The same spirit of exploration lies behind Hapusa Himalayan Dry Gin’s Forager’s Championship, a bartending competition that challenges participants to create cocktails inspired by ingredients found in their own environments.

The finalists offered a glimpse into the diversity of India’s regional pantry. Jitesh Koli of Amelia One in Mumbai drew inspiration from solkadhi, working with foraged kokum and traditional fermentation techniques to create a drink rooted in Konkan culinary memory. Priya Mili of Terra Mayaa in Guwahati reinterpreted the Martini through a local lens, clarifying native tea and replacing the traditional olive garnish with jolphai, a wild regional olive.

For the winners, the reward was an expedition into Himachal Pradesh’s high-altitude landscapes, travelling through Manali to the valleys of Sissu and Miyar in Lahaul, where Hapusa’s wild Himalayan juniper grows naturally. Treks, camping and time spent with local communities were intended to deepen participants’ understanding of the landscapes that inspire their cocktails. The idea is simple: local ingredients are no longer an afterthought. Increasingly, they are leading the conversation.

Vikram Achanta, founder of Tulleeho. com, which has tracked India’s beverage industry since 2001, sees the movement as a reflection of growing confidence in indigenous flavours.“It is an expression of the greater confidence that we now have in our own backyard,” he says.

The trend also makes commercial sense. Drinkers often recognise local ingredients more readily than imported berries and flavoured syrups that once dominated cocktail menus. And as guest shifts and bar takeovers become more common, ideas travel quickly across the country.

One example that particularly impressed Achanta comes from Shillong’s Shad Skye, where local fermented beverages form the foundation of inventive cocktails.

K&T, a highball built around yiad krai – a slightly sour millet-based liquor traditionally consumed by Khasi and Jaintia communities – combines the spirit with cardamom and aromatic Napa basil from Nagaland.

Another standout is Bitchi Sour, which uses the mildly sweet, fermented rice drink consumed by the Garo community as its base, alongside whisky, citrus and foam, creating a drink reminiscent of a Whisky Sour but with a distinctly Meghalayan identity.“Our guests are always looking for something new – stories that feel different yet relatable,” says Lama.

His own search for such stories has taken him across the country. In Ladakh, he discovered a wild variety of mint; in Turtuk, a mulberry with a natural caramel flavour; and near Mysore, organically grown cacao and allspice leaves whose flavour profile resembles bay leaf.

Yet Lama cautions against chasing trends for their own sake. “Understand the trend first; don’t follow it blindly,” he says.

What he finds encouraging is the extent to which bartenders are willing to travel, learn and experiment in search of new ideas.

The movement has come a long way from the days when Lama was considered innovative simply for incorporating tamarind, sugarcane juice and jaggery into cocktails at Cocktails & Dreams Speakeasy in Gurgaon.

Around the same period, another pioneering bartender, Nitin Tiwari, was making his mark at Ek Bar in New Delhi, among India’s earliest modern Indian cocktail bars.

Tiwari moved beyond standard cocktail syrups and explored ingredients such as Kumaon’s hisalu berries and buransh flowers, Lakadong turmeric from Meghalaya, Bengal’s aam aada, gondhoraj lime peel and even toasted Gobindobhog rice fatwashed with Jharna ghee. These ingredients found their way into regional interpretations of classics such as the Old Fashioned, alongside seasonal creations like the Murabba Mule and the biryani-inspired City of the Nizams.

Although he admits he may have been ahead of his time, Tiwari recalls, “The ingredients created conversations around cocktails.” Ironically, it was the Covid pandemic that accelerated “The ingredients created conversations around cocktails,” Tiwari recalls, though he admits he may have been ahead of his time. Ironically, it was the Covid pandemic that accelerated the movement.

According to sommelier and educator, Gagan Sharma, long periods away from work encouraged many bartenders to return home and reconnect with ingredients, flavours and drinks that had been part of their upbringing. Many from Uttarakhand and the North-East began rediscovering local traditions and bringing those influences back into their professional lives.

Bar owners and beverage companies, meanwhile, were searching for fresh narratives to reconnect with customers after lockdowns. Local ingredients offered exactly that opportunity.

Today, the exploration extends beyond flavour alone. Sharma often incorporates scent as an additional layer of storytelling. For Tevar Kitchen & Bar in Hyderabad, he created Valley of Flowers, accompanied by a deodarscented attar that evokes the mountains of Uttarakhand. For Ourem in Goa, he commissioned a leather-scented attar for a cocktail named Leather, inspired by periods in Indian history when leather functioned as currency.

At CinCin in Dehradun, he sourced Kannauj’s famous gilli mitti attar to recreate the aroma of rainsoaked earthenware. The fragrance accompanies, Awadh, a cocktail that combines ghee-washed gin and toasted rice-infused amaro to evoke the experience of Lucknowi biryani.

Such experimentation has transformed the cocktail experience across India. Increasingly, a cocktail is no longer merely a drink. It is a story of place, memory and discovery – one that brings distant communities, overlooked ingredients and local traditions together in a single glass.