How to collab with the world’s number one bar

Bar Leone x Never Never
Bar Leone, the world’s best bar of 2025 partners with Never Never to bring their exceptional cocktails and world class hospitality to Latteria in South Australia. Expect amazing drinks, signature snacks and limited edition merch, all celebrating the relaunch of Never Never’s x Bar Leone collaboration Coffee and Cacao Gin.

Where: Latteria, 185 Hutt Street, Adelaide
RSVP: join the waitlist here.

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Bartenders’ Weekender is shaping up to be a big three days, with a number of events already sold out and with waitlists in effect — much like this one from the folks at Never Never.

This year Never Never celebrate their 10th anniversary, and to do so they’ve partnered with Lorenzo Antinori — the bartender behind the number one bar in the world, Bar Leone — and are re-releasing their 2023 collab Coffee & Cacao Gin to mark the occasion.

And they’re going large at Bartenders’ Weekender, with Adelaide’s own Italian-inspired cocktail bar, Latteria, hosting the Bar Leone team.

“Bar Leone and Latteria connect on a lot of levels, starting with who both venues are at their core,” says Latteria co-owner and bartender Luca Baioni. “Both draw from very specific Italian references: Bar Leone from the Roman
popolare, Latteria from the Milanese neighbourhood, each grounded in community, everyday charm, and a version of Italian that moves beyond clichés and into something more lived-in and authentic.

“That carries through, I think, to our approach to hospitality,” he says. “There’s a shared warmth and joyfulness in service, attention to detail in the space, and an easy, unpretentious way of making people feel welcome.”

The collaboration between Never Never and Bar Leone is one of many collab bottlings the SA distillery has released over the last decade, as co-founder Sean Baxter tells us in the interview below. And all these collabs got us thinking: why do they do it? What’s the benefit in partnering with bars and creating new spirits?

And — importantly — what is it that Sean and the team look for when approaching a new collaboration?

Below, we have the specs for the Leone Negroni; Sean also talks us through the celebration with Latteria in Adelaide, how the collaboration with Lorenzo and Bar Leone first came about (and why they’ve re-upped again), and what these efforts have taught them across the last 10 years.

The re-released Never Never collab with Bar Leone. Photo: Riley Williams/Supplied

BOOTHBY: What can we expect at the Bar Leone x Never Never event during Bartenders’ Weekender next week?

It’s going to be a great party, which is appropriate given it’s the kick off of our 10th anniversary celebrations. Expect some outrageous cocktails featuring Never Never products created by the Bar Leone team. The highlight will be the fact we’ve brought back our Bar Leone Coffee & Cacao Gin to support Bar Leone’s new venue in Shanghai. There’s also going to be some signature snacks from the venue (who doesn’t love snacks and martinis?), limited edition merch and also a massive tiramisu. Plus Latteria will also be adding their own flair to the event with signature cocktails, food and music. Tickets are gone so if you want to come along you will need to steal Sam Bygrave’s media pass.

BOOTHBY: How did the collaboration first come about with Lorenzo, and why have you brought it back?

Originally we released Coffee & Cacao to support the launch of Bar Leone back in 2023. We had previously worked with Lorenzo when he was heading up ARGO at Four Seasons and we built him what we like to consider one of our finest martini gins. This time around Lorenzo wanted something a little less serious, so we put together a gin that we feel creates some absolutely stonking Negroni riffs. Who doesn’t love a Negroni riff? We wanted to build a gin whose purpose was to create delicious coffee and chocolate-forward Negronis and work with the dark earthy flavours found in Italian sweet vermouth.

BOOTHBY: How is it made? How should we drink it?

The re-release uses the same ingredients as the original, using flavours such as roasted coffee bean, cacao nib, cacao butter, coconut cream and bergamot peel. Cacao butter is washed into the gin to give a rich and decadent mouthfeel. The added palate weight allows the earthy tones of coffee and chocolate to linger and extend into darker spices and soft vanilla notes. Distilled coconut cream is also added to amplify the mouthfeel. Washing spirit with fats is definitely something very prevalent within bars however it’s still largely something that doesn’t occur often as a production technique within gin.

Negroni riffs and fat washing? It’s like our 10th anniversary is celebrating 10 year old trends.

BOOTHBY: What’s the role collaboration has played for Neve Never over the last 10 years?

From the very beginning we’ve always sought to work with people we admire. Our first collaboration was with MC at PS40 and our Stockholm Syndrome Aquavit. I still remember Tim’s face when I told him we were making an Aquavit for one of Sydney’s best bars. He had barely got used to making gin before he was mucking about with fennel seed and dill.

From there it was Marionette (Fancy Fruit Cup), Black Pearl (Black Juniper Amaro), Chalk Hill (Ginache), ARGO Four Seasons (ARGO Gin), Society (Oyster Shell Gin), Maybe Sammy (Beeswax & Olive Gin), and Hains & CO (Pink Pepper Gin) just to name a handful. Some of those products are still with us, and some won’t see the light of day again.

However every single one of those collaborations taught us something new, each had their own innovative process woven into the production, whether it was technique or ingredient. That creativity is important because it speaks to who we are as a business and exemplifies our passion, bringing more people to our brand and more support behind our core products. That’s always been the key role that collaboration has provided, bringing more attention to who we are and the core gins that we make (not just the fancy, hard-find, nordic-inspired spirits that most people don’t understand).

BOOTHBY: How do you identify who to collaborate with and what to work on? What makes for a great collab?

Most of the time, those people tend to find us which is very convenient. Sometimes it happens over the bar on a night out or during a trade show (Fancy Fruit came about when Shaun Byrne and Nick Tesar hit me up at a gin show in Perth). Sometimes they are there to solve a supply problem like Aquavit or Absinthe, and other times they present a cool opportunity to try something totally outrageous like using Oyster Shells.

I think the one thing they all have in common is that they genuinely push the boundaries of flavour and drive innovation in new directions. Whenever we’re building a new product, we always have to ask ourselves “does this thing need to exist, what role is it playing by sitting on our shelf, is it doing something differently than everything else out there?” If the answer is affirmative, then away we go.

Great collabs are built with great creatives who really buy into the process and really support the product once it’s live. The best collabs we have that are still going strong are passionately supported by both partners in the collaboration.