In June, Espolon Tequila gathered 11 likeminded and creative bartenders together in Hobart to attend Dark Mofo, the winter festival of arts and culture known for being a little subversive and provocative. They discussed creativity, swapped ideas, and found inspiration in the depths of winter — and now they’re sharing what they found with bartenders in their cities.

Nance Liong might not have a lot of time spent behind the bar, but has been in the hospo business a while and at a high level — Nance’s resume features restaurants like Momofuku Seiobo. These days you can find the talented bartender behind the stick at the award-winning PS40, and below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Nance talks through the — sometimes loopy — creative process that results in some delicious drinks, imposter syndrome, and plenty more.

BOOTHBY: What do you do here, and what’s the name of your drink?

NANCE LIONG: I’m one of the bartenders here at PS40. And the drink that I made for the Espolon Afterlife Underground is called Where The Lines Overlap. And it’s a fun little stirred down situation, it’s basically a deep dive into what my mind feels like when I’m making a drink.

That’s a nice name for a cocktail. How did this drink come together? When it comes to creating drinks, where do you get your ideas for drinks from?

I get pretty fixated on ingredients. Especially here at PS40, we have a very culinary focus on a lot of cocktails. So chef techniques behind, how you make a sauce, how you sous vide something, where something’s a perfect temperature. I got pretty fixated on this little waste product that we had from a persimmon syrup that we had. It’s basically a persimmon pulp.

To figure out how to make it drinkable — because persimmons have a lot of astringency once you add alcohol to it and it’s basically just fuzz city — I was hyper fixated on making this persimmon thing work and then, after tasting multiple different batches of the base, I came up with just blitzing down the persimmon flesh with some agave and sugar to make a jam. And that kind of brought out a bit more of the fruit sweetness into it. And basically playing off that, plus also the brief that we got given for Afterlife, trying to make it a bit more harmonious, but then also represent how I felt when I was in Hobart, because it was very cold and as a Southeast Asian child I really really hate the cold. I thrive in the sunshine. It was bitterly cold, but then because my senses aren’t used to being that cold and freezing, everything felt lke super heightened: I could smell things a lot better and clearer. I couldn’t see for shit because it was really dark and I’m very blind but other than that for me it was sensory in terms of smell and feel. So that’s what I tried to tie into the drink.

How would you describe that experience of Dark Mofo? How did it feel?

It felt almost like an out of body experience. I felt like I was in third person POV in a video game. How am I, a restaurant brat, sitting here with some of the best bartenders in the country?

What is my life? It felt like really weird. And even now sitting here, I’m like — the imposter syndrome...

But everyone else is also an imposter, right?

I’m just like, yeah, that’s why I’m hiding behind the black clothes and the big hoops and the eyeliner and just... the armour.

Do you have that feeling when you’re creating drinks though?Because you make some pretty tasty things...

It sounds a bit weird, I only feel it as a bartender and saying that I am a bartender. It’s a weird one because I’ve done this now for nine months, 10 months. And I should be more comfortable with it. And I have worked bars back in the day, but it was mostly just helping out with dispense and then running the drinks upstairs to the bistro. So yeah, it’s a weird one to just kind of come to terms with because there’s something about having alcohol added into a drink where all of a sudden, my knowledge from non-alcoholics gets thrown to the side and I’m just like, you’re cheating.

Well, you put liquids in a cup so you’re a bartender. Have you always thought of yourself as a creative person?

I suppose so. I never really defined it because growing up, I was always drawing, always singing, always dancing. It’s a weird one because I think I do think very creatively in terms of how I problem solve a lot of things. I only learned when I was in uni that it’s called a design mindset, where form follows function and aesthetics can be something that you think of as an afterthought. I think my thought processes are a little bit linear but then also loopy, if that makes sense.

Tell us what’s in your drink?

So the base of the drink is the Espolon Reposado. I chose this as the base spirit because it has a really lovely caramel quality and a slight smoke characteristic that you get in this. Some Cinzano, the one that I have is really old because I inherited it from a friend who just never drank vermouth, so it’s aged as all hell. A little bit of Cynar because I love bitter things. I’ve also made a lapsang salted honey syrup. There’s a small amount of that in just to of balance out all the underlying bitter characters. That persimmon jam, agave situation thing that I made that I spoke about earlier, that goes in. I’ve also got a little bit of macadamia liqueur just to round out the weird grassy astringency that you get with the persimmon. And then a touch of verjuice and also a little bit of lemon just to bring out some of the fruit without it being too overwhelmingly smoky because lapsang does that — as much as I love it, sometimes it’s a punch in the face. Especially when people over-steep it. I’m looking at you, down the barrel right now. Don’t over-steep your teas.

Nance Liong’s Where The Lines Overlap recipe

• 30ml Espolon Reposado
• 15ml Cinzano Bianco
• 10ml Cynar
• 10ml Brookies Macadamia Liqueur 
• 15ml verjus
• 15ml persimmon eau de vie jam
• 10ml Lapsang Souchong salted honey syrup
• 7.5ml lemon juice
• Bergamot, honey & cinnamon pickled water chestnut for garnish

Combine all ingredients in a stirring tin with ice and stir down. Pour through a fine sieve into a rocks glass with a large ice cube. Garnish with pickled water chestnut.