From one bottle, three landscape-inspired cocktails

In partnership with Bombay Sapphire

On Thursday 5 February, Singapore bar The Elephant Room is bringing their unique take on drinks and hospitality — inspired by the Little India neighbourhood of Singapore — to Pleasure Club in Newtown, presented by Bombay Sapphire.

What: The Elephant Room (SG) takeover
Where: Pleasure Club, Newtown
When: 7pm — 10pm, Thursday 5 February

Learn more

Where do good ideas for drinks come from? Inspiration can strike from anywhere — it might be a song, an ingredient, or a desire to smash two classic cocktails together. Less often, though, is a landscape drawn on to create a drink.

But that’s just what Jordan Blackman and Dominic Pacitto have done for Bombay Sapphire’s Hidden Jewels project.

Blackman, who is the group beverage manager for Odd Culture Group, has created two recipes — one for Odd Culture Newtown, inspired by the Blue Mountains, and one for The Old Fitz, which draws on falling jacaranda flowers on Cathedral Street near the pub.

Pleasure Club’s bar manager, Dominic Pacitto, took his cues from the Glow Worm Tunnel in Helensburgh, which is inside a disused train tunnel, for his take on the brief.

Below, both Blackman and Pacitto share their thinking behind the drinks, how they come together in the glass, their recipes and more.

Katoomba Gold

Jordan Blackman, Odd Culture Newtown

BOOTHBY: Talk us through the inspiration for this drink.

JORDAN BLACKMAN: So what we have here is our Hidden Jewels drink for Odd Culture Newtown. We do this yearly trip to the Blue Mountains or Katoomba. When I thought of places of natural beauty and striking landscapes the Blue Mountains came to mind pretty automatically. We just kind do a bit of a bushwalk thing around the mountains, which is good fun.

BOOTHBY: It sounds quite wholesome!

JORDAN BLACKMAN: Yeah, it is. It’s a really nice trip just to get out of the city, breathe in some fresh air and take in the natural beauty of the Blue Mountains. So I was inspired by that yearly trip there.

BOOTHBY: Can you walk us through how the drink comes together?

JORDAN BLACKMAN: So starting off with Bombay Sapphire, we do a little beeswax wash — similar to [London’s] White Lyan and their beeswax bourbon. So we sous vide some beeswax for about two-ish hours at 70 degrees, so that it melts through — essentially just a little fat wash, so it retains the the DNA of Bombay Sapphire and you can still actually taste that it’s a gin first and foremost. If anything, it gives more of a texture and mouthfeel. It does impart a tiny little bit of flavour, but rather than that super sweet cloying honey, you get more of that bright, aromatic, complex beeswax character. And a bit of that texture for the mouthfeel as well.

Get the full recipe and more advice from Blackman.

Nocturnal Desire

Dominic Pacitto, Pleasure Club

BOOTHBY: Tell us about your drink, Nocturnal Desire, and what it’s inspired by?

DOMINIC PACITTO: With Bombay Hidden Jewels, we’re going for that kind of blue theme. A bit too boring to go for the ocean. I think that could be a common theme around here. Instead, we’ve got the Glow Worm Tunnel in Helensburgh.

BOOTHBY: A little bit different. Tell us all about that.

DOMINIC PACITTO: It’s something I hadn’t heard of either, a beautiful old closed train tunnel. You’ve got all these bioluminescent worms in the ceiling. It looks crazy. My partner grew up around there, so I heard about that and it links in with the unusual theme we’ve got going on around here as well.

BOOTHBY: Talk about Pleasure Club. How would you describe it if people haven’t been here yet?

DOMINIC PACITTO: It’s odd. We get all kinds of different kind of artists, music. We’ve got that late night feel, but in the early night you can come and enjoy some jazz — we’ve got a little bit of everything for everyone. A nice bit of variation for Newtown as well, I think. There’s not too many people that do it quite like we do here.

Get the full recipe and more advice from Pacitto, here.

Cathedral In Bloom

Jordan Blackman, The Old Fitz

BOOTHBY: Talk us through the inspiration for this drink.

JORDAN BLACKMAN: Cathedral in Bloom is our drink for Hidden Jewels at The Old Fitz, our little pub in Woolloomooloo. I don’t know if you’ve been to The Old Fitz before, but Cathedral Street, one of the streets on the side of it, every summer, lovely jacaranda trees bloom. It’s a nice little indication that summer’s here. It’s obviously quite striking and beautiful in its own right. They’re not Australian trees, but it’s a very iconic Sydney thing. I was inspired by the colours, and the visually striking jacaranda trees in bloom.

Dragon fruit gives that nice pop of colour, obviously based on the almighty Bombay Sapphire. We make a little in-house strawberry gum distillate. This time we are using green jasmine liqueur. It’s a nice little pop of florals and tea.

Put that all together with a little bit of citrus and Aquafab to give it that nice, frothy, fluffy texture. And a little bit of matcha dusting on there, we’re trying to really emulate that striking image of Cathedral Street when the Jacarandas are out to play.

BOOTHBY: Tell us about the Old Fitz.

JORDAN BLACKMAN: It’s one of our lovely pubs in the Odd Culture Group. It’s been there for 185 years. We’ve had the pub for maybe four odd years now. It is pretty iconic for the area, and has a uniquely strong hold on the community. It’s a very big locals pub, the same locals and regulars who have been going for years and years and years. It’s got a great community spirit. I don’t think there’s another pub quite like it.

Get the recipe and learn more, here.