Drinks interview: Maxim Schulte, manager of Kol restaurant’s Mezcaleria bar

Maxim Schulte, manager of Kol restaurant’s Mezcaleria bar, talks about pairing mezcal with food and how to incorporate agave spirits into your cocktails

 

What drew you to the agave category?

 

I had a very bad experience with tequila when I was young and I tried to avoid the category when I could. But slowly I thought, “I can’t be an all-round bartender if I don’t try”, so I got a bit more into it. I tried some amazing tequilas and, as I always liked peated whiskies, mezcal agreed with me very early on.

 

In retrospect, before I went to Kol, I didn’t really know anything, so when I accepted the role I had a lot of research to do. I bought five books, read them all and started trying and learning and reading even more.

 

How do you build a bar concept mainly around one category?

 

Our menu is not just mezcal – 50% of our cocktails feature an agave spirit, the other 50% are spirits from all over the world. We also have Mexican whisky, Mexican rum – we want to highlight the diversity of Mexican spirit production.

 

I do, however, find it easy to work with mezcal because it is such a versatile spirit – it has so many flavours, unlike tequila, which has a simpler structure. Mezcal is like wine: it has a sense of terroir, there are over 50 types of agave you can make it from. We really want to have the most versatile and curated selection, trying to have as many varieties as possible to give guests the best experience.

 

How does mezcal work with food?

 

Fantastically – especially with the food we do in the restaurant and on the bar’s Antojitos (‘little cravings’) menu. Mezcals have different levels of dryness and alcohol sharpness and all the flavour notes are very versatile, so it’s easy to pair and people love it. You can pair mezcal like you pair wine and that’s exactly what we do in the restaurant, where we have a full pairing menu with mezcal.

 

Tell me more about the cocktails at the Mezcaleria

 

Our tequila martini is really popular and, in fact, we haven’t removed that from the menu since the reopening because it was so popular – it’s made with Blanco tequila but with freshness of cucumbers and Douglas Fir pine.

 

Another one is our Batanga with our own fig-leaf mezcal, which has been really popular. Soon we’re going to be launching a Mezcaleria Classics selection, so without ignoring seasonality we can have them on the menu for a full year.

 

We’ve invested the time to do a lot of pine distillate and a lot of fig-leaf mezcal, so we have enough to run these drinks for a whole year. Otherwise, some drinks disappear really swiftly – last year one of the drinks was only on for 10 days because the bad weather meant we ran out of the ingredients.

 

How did making your own Kol-branded mezcals come about?

 

The idea was to have something ‘Kol’ that is ours, so we selected four different agave varieties for four mezcals to have a nice selection of different tastes. We then bought entire batches of it, got it imported in massive jerry cans and then we bottle and label it here – the branding is based on a Mexican card game.

 

How can restaurants use mezcal spirits cleverly in their drinks menu?

 

There are a lot of tequila cocktails that are really popular: margaritas, palomas and some which are a bit less known, like a toreador. Try these drinks with mezcal and you can see how different it is. I think you find a different complexity in the drink; a different layer added to it.

 

You can also replace the gin in a lot of cocktails, which works really well – you could even try it in a pornstar martini!

 

Seasonal food and drink pairing Simonnet-Febre Cremant de Bourgogne Brut P100 Blanc de Noir and scallops

 

This beautiful crémant from the north of Burgundy is made using 100% Pinot Noir and shows lovely fresh citrus notes on the nose before moving into something more rich with excellent structure. Its light bubbles and sharp grapefruit notes will match perfectly with some buttery, sweet scallops.