How a Simple Highball Set Bartender Tiffanie Barriere on Her Career Course

Editor’s note: For our print issues last year, we asked drink pros to reflect on the drinks that changed their lives and careers. This is the story of Atlanta-based bartender and educator Tiffanie Barriere.

The Seven & Seven changed my life. Hearing the order was enough. I mean, I would hear this order and be like, “What’s a Seven & Seven?” I thought it was pretty epic to hear people order it with such confidence. It sounded delicious; it seemed pretty easy; it had 7-Up, literally. That was what made me excited as a young drinker.

And I thought it was just such a quality drink. I heard it on the airplane, I heard it around my parents. We’d beat a family-casual spot, like Bennigan’s or some kind of buffet situation, and that was the drink of choice. One time, standing near the bar when my aunt ordered one, I saw the 7-Up. It came out of a gun, and my aunt put a cherry inside of the drink, so I connected it to a Shirley Temple—“This has got to be my drink!” That cherry was like the red dot on the 7-Up bottle. And seeing the comfort and casualness of that old ugly-ass Libbey glass they had, it just looked special—that’s what I thought a cocktail was.

The Seven & Seven was the standard cocktail that was going to be made all day.

Our family was between Houston and the Lafayette, Louisiana, area, about an hour and a half away—we’d call that crescent the Toilet Bowl or the Smile of the Bayou, depending on the day. On the weekends, there was this card table that was always pulled out for parties in the garage or out on the porch, and that table had a big handle of Seagram’s 7 Crown and a liter of 7-Up. There might be Jack Daniel’s and maybe a big old bottle of Seagram’s gin, along with Crown Royal for Mom only, but the Seven & Seven was the standard cocktail that was going to be made all day.

I did sip those drinks, early on. And when I got a chance at 21 to go to the club, that was my clubbing drink—a Seven & Seven or a gin and soda. It was a refreshing drink, and super fun. Once I got into the bartending world and started figuring things out, I was like, “Okay, this is a highball.” And it’s a different style of highball that had its moment in time, because everything back then was so convenient, and everything was so microwaved, and everything was so sweet. But it was still a go-to drink.

Then the craft movement started to happen. When you become that kind of a bartender, and you get your handlebar mustache and everything gets fancy, you can’t just pour a Seven & Seven at the bar. I was in Atlanta and was laughing with this bartender out in Buckhead one time about making drinks that reminded us of when we were kids, with all the sugar that was in these Cokes and Mountain Dews. That’s when I decided to elevate the Seven & Seven, making a 7-Up syrup and getting all bartender on it. “And now that I’m getting all crafty, I’m going to use Old Overholt.” And I did it, and it was great—it didn’t taste like I remembered because I reduced the soda to a syrup, and Overholt has more girth to it than Seagram’s did so I added a squeeze of lemon.

That was the beginning of me working on the nostalgia of an adult drink—how to convey it in a way that you remember.

But it didn’t taste like a Seven & Seven. There wasn’t much nostalgia to it, but it was fun. And that was the beginning of me working on the nostalgia of an adult drink—how to convey it in a way that you remember. Back in February, I was in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, as part of an activation with Pepsi where they promoted Black chefs. I was the first mixologist that got involved, and they wanted something elevated; they wanted real-deal cocktails. So I was making things like an Old Fashioned with a cherry soda syrup, a clarified Long Island Iced Tea with rhum agricole, and Pepsi pearls “caviar” to go into some drinks.

I think if I’d never understood how delicious a Seven & Seven was, if I had my nose turned up when I think of a drink with soda, I couldn’t have done that. I had to go back—I had to go back where the fun was with drinks. And if you haven’t had one in a while, it’s still really good.

—As told to Paul Clarke