When developing a cocktail, most bartenders start from the inside and work out, building a drink around a base spirit, flavor or ratio. You could say Columbus, Ohio–based bartender David Yee works from the outside in.
“A lot of my process for making a drink is not necessarily imagining the drink, but imagining the atmosphere around the drink,” says Yee. “The drink has to be good enough to live up to the room, you know?” It’s an approach to cocktail creation that borrows from Yee’s literary, scene-setting imagination—he holds a master’s in fiction from Ohio State University, and when he’s not bartending, he’s usually writing.
From writing, he’s learned to chase inspiration until he hits a wall—which is often where the moment of breakthrough occurs. He remembers wanting to create a Daiquiri that would play off the vegetal notes of Wray & Nephew rum by pairing it with Pimm’s, but he kept running up against the rum’s overpowering presence. Taking a step back, he figured he could cut the overproof Wray & Nephew to a half-ounce, and supplement it with an aged rum. The drink fell into place.
Next on his docket? “It’s been a goal of mine to invent the next great trash shot,” he says. “I’m always chasing that drink that’s so obvious that no one’s discovered it yet. That kind of ‘aha!’ moment is the quest of a lot of art.”