[:it]Interview with Stefano Nincevich, journalist and writer[:]

[:en]Stefano, reading your resume we discover that you are a journalist, writer and even a musician. How do you define yourself?

Let's say that what you listed are all passions that over time I have put together as if they were the pieces of a puzzle. I define myself primarily as a journalist and for 17 years I have been working for Bargiornale, a magazine that embraces the world of quality drinking at 360°. Thus, the birth of Cocktail Safari happened almost as a consequence, when I felt the need to tell the story of cocktails and at the same time the trips I have made around the world to be able to taste them in their places of origin. It is a project that I created together with Andrea Fumagalli, "Andy", of Bluvertigo, who in addition to being a great musician is also an extraordinary artist. We owe him the illustrations of Cocktail Safari, which together with the stories that accompany them contribute to making the narration truly unique.

In a world where everyone talks about cooking, how come you chose to talk about mixology?

I have been passionate about the world of night clubs since I was very young. Consider that in the early 2000s there was still the tail end of the happy hour boom, especially in Milan, a formula thanks to which many new customers came into contact with the world of mixology that they had previously neither known nor taken into consideration. Until the mid-nineties, people went to the pub to drink a beer or at most a glass of wine. Nobody felt the need for cocktails. They were considered Pleistocene stuff. And if the latest generations of bartenders have had the opportunity to bring the great classics back to light, we also owe it to many former guys, once known as “the people of the abbufet” and to the bartenders.

What differences do you think there are between mixing today and mixing 10 years ago?

I believe that today's mixology follows a "Back to basic" trend that is divided into two trends: on one hand, there is the rediscovery of historic cocktails, which is the result of a movement that was born in the 90s, when the trend of recovering forgotten drinks and even those that in jargon we call "fossils", dating back to 1800 or even 1900, spread in the United States. The digital age has then allowed access to an infinite series of information that was previously much more difficult to find, so young bartenders have begun to study and propose techniques, cocktails and typical ingredients from past eras, effectively transforming bars from simple places where people drank to places of research where drinks became an experience in themselves, without the need for side elements such as music or shows. In Italy, it is a phenomenon that arrived much later and has exploded in particular in the last 10 years.

And the second trend?

I would say that it was born in the last four years and is still a branch of the “back to basic” all focused on the ingredient. The study that many bartenders today do of the raw material has given rise to a mixology that is in a certain sense transversal, that is, that embraces other knowledge such as physics, chemistry, herbalism and gastronomy. The cocktail thus becomes a total experience that begins and ends in the glass. Within this trend, the philosophy of the “liquid kitchen” was born, that is, the use of ingredients, techniques and work tools typical of the kitchen applied to the world of mixology. More and more often we hear about zero-mile cocktails, because the territory also has a great importance in this new movement, as does reuse, an ethical choice that gives rise to tastes never tried before.

What characteristics should a good bartender have today?

First of all, in my opinion, he must be an excellent communicator. The bar counter is a bit of a stage for every bartender, but we must not forget that the main actors are the customers. Good dialogue is fundamental because it is an integral part of hospitality, since ancient times. A bartender who does not know, or worse, does not want to dialogue and who hides behind a self-referentiality born of the times has lost sight of the objective: to make his customers drink. I am horrified by the unjustifiable positions taken by some bartenders such as the refusal to serve certain types of drinks. If you do not want to make spritz and a customer orders one, it is not the customer's fault but yours, because evidently you have not been able to communicate that in your bar you drink differently. No one would ever think of ordering a cheeseburger in a starred restaurant.

What's your favorite cocktail?

It doesn't exist, because there isn't just one. My favorite cocktails are the Ti' Punch that I drank that night in Martinique, they are the Margarita Frozen that I drank on that beach in Cancun, they are the Negroni Sbagliato that I drank while interviewing its inventor, Mirko Stocchetto, who unfortunately left us. My favorite cocktails are not cocktails but experiences in liquid form that cannot be taken out of context because they themselves are the context, its history and its characters.

 [:]