Episode 149: You Should Be Drinking in Spain, With François Monti

François Monti is a Madrid-based author and journalist, and a regular contributor to Imbibe. For this episode, we join François for a drink at the Madrid cocktail bar Momus to talk about the state of the Spanish cocktail, great bars in Barcelona and Madrid, and some of the special aspects of Spanish drinking culture.

Radio Imbibe is the audio home of Imbibe magazine. In each episode, we dive into liquid culture, exploring the people, places, and flavors of the drinkscape through conversations about cocktails, coffee, beer, spirits, and wine. Keep up with us on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. And if you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you join us—click here to subscribe. 

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Paul Clarke

Hey everybody, welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe Magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe‘s Editor-in-Chief, and we’re going to be trying something a little bit different today. Because right now, as this episode is coming out, I will be on the road and will have been for a couple of weeks already. And during those travels, my first stop was in Barcelona, where, in addition to drinking some amazing cocktails and eating lots and lots of amazing food, I spent time at the Barcelona Cocktail Fest. 

The Barcelona Cocktail Fest is a relatively young event, having started off as the Paradiso Sustainability Summit. But in its short time around, it’s already earned a reputation for having engaging conversations with bar personalities from around the world, and for highlighting the work of bars and bartenders to focus on long-term sustainability for the industry. 

Now, if you’re in Spain and you’re at any kind of cocktail event, then chances are very good that you will run into François Monti. François is a writer and an author and an academy chair for World’s 50 Best, and he’s also an occasional contributor to Imbibe. François lives in Madrid, and among the pieces he’s written for Imbibe over the years are a cover feature on Barcelona cocktail bars that we ran back in 2017, along with stories explaining Spain’s rich vermouth culture and heritage. So for this episode, I’m pulling François aside to talk to us a little bit about what we should know about drinking in Spain, and about some of the directions worth exploring the next time you’re heading to the Iberian Peninsula. 

[music]

Paul Clarke

François, welcome back to Radio Imbibe. 

François Monti

Thanks to you for having me once more. 

Paul Clarke

Absolutely. And, you know, I’m really excited to have this conversation, because we don’t do many in-person interviews on the podcast, and we are having this interview in person, and we’re just coming out of the Barcelona Cocktail Fest, which is a now annual event in Barcelona, celebrating not only great cocktails and great cocktail bars, but also an event that pushes the topic of sustainability in the bar industry, which is a really encouraging thing to see. You’ve written for Imbibe several times over the years. You’ve covered Barcelona’s cocktail culture, the vermouth culture in Spain, and sherry-based vermouth stories, among other topics.

And I want to take this opportunity, while we’re both in Spain together, to tap your brain a little bit and to get some of your feedback on drinking in Spain, because this is where you live, and it is what you do. So we’re now having this conversation in Madrid, in Momus, a cocktail bar in Madrid. We had an opportunity to have a few cocktails in Barcelona together, and now we’re having cocktails in Madrid. And I want to start with a big sweeping question, just when we’re looking at Spain and Spanish cocktail bars, and what is the state of the cocktail today in Spain and Spanish bars? 

François Monti

Well, it’s probably better than it’s ever been. Actually, we had a big, what we call Golden Age, when most of Europe had a Golden Age, which is the 1920s and 1930s. Obviously, the civil war in Spain, which went from 1936 to 1939, sort of ended that. And then the cocktail retreated, well, the same way it happened all across Europe, after World War II. The cocktail retreated in hotel bars. There was nothing really happening until 15 years ago, right? With the cocktail renaissance, a few bars starting to pop up, and now we have a very, very healthy scene with a bar like Paradiso in Barcelona, or Salmon Guru here in Madrid, celebrating over the last six months their 10-year anniversary, which is obviously a huge landmark. 

We know that hospitality is a very, very tough business. I think that the fact that those two bars are celebrating 10 years, and we have a couple more bars in Madrid, like Angelita, which is also very much well-known across the globe right now, also celebrating 10 years. And it’s not only a testament to the business sense of the owners, it also is a sign that, you know, cocktails have become something, and even almost forward-looking, the biggest and greatest cocktail have become something viable in a country such as Spain.

And to me, the nicest development of the last few years is that I’m seeing neighborhood cocktail bars and a much more wider acceptation of cocktail as part of the everyday drinking culture, and also the fact that we’re seeing bars that are based on technique, on rituals, on experiences, but also bars that are very, very happy to just deliver a perfectly made Margarita. So, yeah, going back to what I was saying at the beginning, it’s a golden age, I think, truly for the diversity of the offer and for the amount of people drinking cocktails on a regular basis. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. You mentioned a few different directions there, and I want to touch upon each of them separately. And then starting off with you, you mentioned Paradiso and how it’s become a fixture in the Barcelona cocktail world and the Spanish cocktail world over the years. And one thing about Spanish cocktail bars is it seems like there is a certain kind of fertile terrain here for experiential cocktails and for kind of the high experience, the kind of the high prestige cocktails in some way. 

François Monti

Performance, right? 

Paul Clarke

Exactly, it’s performance cocktails. Why is that? Why is this such fertile terrain for that? 

François Monti

So I think there are various things to consider. First, I don’t think it’s an exclusively Spanish phenomenon. It’s true that a place like Paradiso 10 years ago, Sips, when they opened five or six years ago, really were trying to encourage us to think about cocktails in a different way that were, you know, customary in the big bars in London or the big bars in New York. But in London they had a place like Nightjar, and I would argue that now in the U.S. you also have bars like this, I mean, what is Double Chicken Please if not a performative… 

Paul Clarke

This is true.

François Monti

 …a performance-laid place, right? So maybe we are influencing now, uh, you know, the United States. And when you travel around the world you see a lot of bars doing that. So one of the specificities in Spain maybe is the link to fine dining. This is the home of Ferran Adrià, he was one of the, apart from being an amazing cook, a trickster in a way, and I think that has a big influence. I think a lot of bartenders in Spain and in Europe are looking more at what chefs are doing than what bartenders are doing, which is not always great too great results but that’s what they’re doing.

I also think, and this is a discussion I had a few years ago with a colleague of ours, Hamish Smith from Drinks International, who was asking me why uh, well, why in London the trend was minimalism, uh, in Spain the trend seemed to be maximalism. And I think that to me it’s, it’s because, you know, when you are in markets that I would call not mature, where, where cocktail is not part of, of everyday culture like it is in the U.S. and to a certain extent a certain extent in London, uh, you need to convince people to spend their hard-earned money on something and it’s not gonna happen if you just said that I’m mixing, uh, gin and vermouth. You have to give them something.

And once you’ve created that demand, man, those people, some of them are just happy to come once a year and others, you know, maybe they’re getting getting into the cocktail and then they’re, they’re getting ready to something a bit more pared down, a bit more accessible, really, and easy to understand. And that’s when the, uh, the bar that we were mentioning earlier, where the diversity of bars, bars that are happy to do a perfectly fine Margarita, and, you know, make that their business model, are starting to thrive. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. 

François Monti

So I think it’s also part of a, part of an, uh, an evolution. But that’s an answer I gave him, like, seven years ago, maybe. And now I’m thinking it’s just that once the cocktail scene has matured, you need a bit of everything. Maybe also, that’s why we’re seeing a bit more of that in the U.S. right now, because you have to justify $30 for cocktail. And also because, you know, people are looking for different stuff at different times. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. You mentioned how this is kind of broadening out in, in Spain and how there are many different bars in many different directions kind of evolving. When you look at creative cocktail bars, not necessarily the, the experiential bars, like Sips or Paradiso, but places that are doing creative cocktails, expressive cocktails, and very contemporary cocktails, are there certain examples that come to mind? I’d like to start with Barcelona, if we could, because you wrote that for us several years ago in Barcelona Cocktail Bars. So just to bring us up to speed and bring us up to date, what are a few places that a cocktail cocktail tourist, if you will, should have on their radar when they visit Barcelona? 

François Monti

I think if we’re, uh, staying mainly on, on creative cocktails, so we’re not talking about bars doing the classics or twist on classics, but just going a bit, uh, maybe deeper in the creative process. I think we’re still pretty much where we were when when I wrote that piece, which was 10 years ago. Well, Sips is a more recent inclusion, but I guess a lot of your readership will have heard at least of, of Sips. Having it, you know, one of “the Best Bars in the World,” according to 50 Best Bars, being led, among others, by Simone Caporale, of Artesian fame. “Paradiso,” of course.

I think another one that was about to open when when we did the piece was Dr. Stravinsky, which which is based on a lot of homemade products of a lot of ferments. They made a big splash when they opened, and then things slow down a bit, and I think the last couple of years they’re really picked up again, and it’s a place where, you know, they do drinks that are interesting, which is a very loaded world in the cocktail industry, I believe, but interesting, but also good. 

A more recent bar would be a place called Foco, which was opened by two guys from the UK. Foco is short for foreign correspondent. All their cocktails are named after classic, but they’re not really interested in the classic. They complete reinvention of the stuff, very elegant, very flavorful, and maybe the last one would be Aldea, which opened a few months ago, which is, I wouldn’t know how to define it, it’s just very nice flavorful cocktails, but with quite a bit of imagination behind them. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. And, and moving on to Madrid, looking in that same kind of direction, we’ll explore the classic cocktail bars here in just a moment, but we’re thinking about some of the contemporary bars that are really kind of perfecting the art of the contemporary cocktail. What are a few places that come to mind? 

François Monti

So Salmon Guru, obviously, which opened a few months after Paradiso and sort of came through at the same time, you know, as a leading force, you know, on the global scene, like the ambassador of cocktails in Madrid with the out there, glassware, uh, excellent service, but also, you know, you finish drink at the table, like a bit of showing off techniques and stuff like that. Salmon Guru has been there, done that, still around.

I think one of the most interesting would be right now, Angelita, uh, 90% of, what they use in their drinks is produced that the parents of the owner are growing on their small farm three hours from, uh, from Madrid, which obviously lead them to create drinks that are hard to classify. Uh, sometimes. But I think it’s been capturing the imagination of a lot of, of traveling bartenders and riders. It’s also a wine bar, so it helps, you know, you can have a bit of, uh, of everything.

Momus where we are recording this, which I think is, it strikes a fine balance into knowledge of classics, but then transforming them into something else. We’re drinking, uh, air, air, air mock, right? Air quotes here, around the Sazerac, yeah. Sazerac, which is with pistachio butter and, and cognac, which is very nice with probably if I would serve that to …

Paul Clarke

It’s fantastic. Yeah. 

François Monti

If I’d serve that to you with mentioning it was Sazerac, this is not what would come to your mind, right? 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. It’s a great drink. I can see the relationship. I can see how, how, how it’s within that larger Sazerac kind of family, but no, it’s not a classic Sazerac, but it is very fun, very engaging. 

François Monti

Yeah. And the last one I would mention would probably be Isa, which is the cocktail bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, which really followed the line of a lot of Four Season bars internationally of rotovap drinks, uh, forward thinking sort of formulas, low on alcohol. But big on one or two very distinctive flavors. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. Now, we mentioned classic cocktails a moment ago, and I wanted to come back to that for a couple of reasons. First off, I love classic cocktails and I know you love classic cocktails. And there are a number of bars in Spain that have a certain kind of respect, and reverence, and love for classic cocktails as well, and really kind of hold them near and dear. When we look at the classic cocktail and the places that do them well, and that maybe think about them in a fresh way, what are some of the bars that come to mind when you’re thinking of classic cocktails in Spain? 

François Monti

Well, the first thing I want to say is one of the things for me is two things are very distinctive in terms of classics. Spain has probably, I think we have the highest quantity of a 100-year-old bars in Europe that’s still in operation. In Barcelona, you have, for example, Boadas and Ideal, both of them over 90 years old. Here we have Cock, which has been open for more than 100 years. We have Chicote, 90-95 years. So, I think that’s pretty unique.

The other thing is I would argue that any big Spanish city has at least one bar that makes dry Martinis, which is not common anywhere else in Europe. And I’m not talking about cocktail bars, but just bars where mostly old folks, unfortunately, go for a dry Martini at lunch, before lunch. And that probably only happens in the U.S. You still maybe have those venues, but in Spain there is a very big concentration.

There’s probably five or seven here in Madrid, the same amount in Barcelona. So, you see that there is a deep relationship of the classic. And I would say, I recently wrote a book about these three of cocktails in Madrid. And for me, the two cocktails that sort of stand out in Madrid are the dry Martini and the Gin Fist. Those two are cocktails for, that tells you that we’re about the classics.

Now, coming back to 2026, there are a few bars in Madrid. a few bars doing amazing things around classic. Obviously, in Barcelona, you have Boadas, which was already a pilgrimage site a few years ago, and then it was taken over by Simone Caporale of Sips and Artesian fame. People were very worried about that. I actually think the bar is the best it’s been in years or decades. It’s certainly the best I’ve seen it. Deep respect for the classic, a lot of formulas that are theirs but that could have been invented one of the years ago. Amazing atmosphere, the whole, you know, amazing bar. It’s one of, for me, one of the best bars in the world.

But you also have newcomers in the same city with a bar called 14 de la Rosa, 14 de la Rosa because it’s on street, Martinez de la Rosa number 14, which is led by the owner. The owner is English, used to work in private clubs in London, came to Barcelona to open Soho House and then opened his bar. And that’s like such a deep knowledge of how the classic works and how you can make them just that little bit different while still respecting the essence.

For me, the question is always would I get this drink or would I get the classic? So, for example, he has a celery Gimlet with a bit of celery juice. I would say I’d have that celery Gimlet over a classic Gimlet anytime. So, and obviously it’s one of my favorite bars. Boadas and 14 de la Rosa are two of my favorite bars in Spain for sure. In Madrid, the classics are a bit less well represented. We have those old-school bars, old men’s bars, that still do the dry Martini, the gin fizz, and Tom Collins. But most of the more recent bars have been more focused on the innovation.

Of course, we have a standard that a lot of American tourists already go to when they visit, one of the first port-of-calls in the city, which they call: 1862 Dry Bar, I don’t have to explain to you where the 1862 come from. It’s actually also the, the date the building was built. So it’s a great coincidence. There, Alberto, the owner, and his team focus on classic. They have a few of their cocktails, but really, when you go there, you should have an Adonis, which they make with a Vorce, a very old sherry, which is probably, well, it’s always been top two, top two cocktails in Madrid for me for the, for the last 10 years, probably.

Yeah. There’s a few bars now. I think there’s a, there’s a few, like, small bars opening up where you see a bit more of a knowledge and respect. Well, knowledge, all the other bars have the knowledge, but a bit more like, let’s look back at the classic, let’s work with the classic. That’s probably where, where we’re heading next. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. Now, when you mentioned the enduring classic cocktails in Madrid, you mentioned the dry Martini and the gin fizz. And of course, you know, one of my first interactions with cocktails in Barcelona, several years ago on my first visit was the gin tonic. The thing that all of these have in common, of course, is gin. What is it about gin? I mean, you know, when you look at Spanish bars, and especially the embrace of classics, gin seems to have a certain place of honor or a certain place of respect. Why is that? 

François Monti

It’s a complicated question, really. Actually, Actually, in spite of the gin tonic boom, which I know even reached the Spanish-style gin and tonic, which sort of reached the U.S. in 2017, in 2017, 2018 more or less, with balloon glass or whatever. Before that, in the ’80s, gin was considered an old man’s drink. And actually, you know, even at the height of the gin and tonic boom in Spain, whiskey was still the No. 1 category. The thing is, gin managed to sort of “premise” and convince Spaniards to spend more money on gin, which never happened with whiskey.

There is a very long tradition of gin making in Spain, especially, actually, I think, one of the things that a lot of people who have written about gin and gin tonic in Spain have missed is that the civil war ended in 1939. Right a few months later, there’s the World War II that followed up. Of course, Franco, the dictator in Spain and the winner of the civil war, was on the wrong side of history, being pals with the Nazis.

And after the war, there was sort of a cutoff of international trade. And so the country was destroyed and was very poor. So it was very difficult to get, like, import spirits, whiskey and stuff. And so a lot of distilleries launched their own gin, which was very fast to make and very inexpensive. Just the same way a lot of new whiskey distilleries start with gin.

And if you look at the cocktail books from 1940s in Spain, you’d see a Daiquiri made with gin: half rum half gin. So you use gin to make it longer, right? I think there is that thing where gin has been produced in Spain for a long time. So that was there, although it becomes sort of all man’s drink, it was still somewhere there. That played a part, I think, in the boom. also think, like, the gin and tonic was a perfectly, like, very refreshing of all the eyeballs that are popular in Spain, which is the rum and Coke, the whiskey coke, and the gin tonic. I think the gin tonic is the most refreshing of the three by a long shot. So it was all perfectly suited to the Spanish climate.

As to its propriety in cocktail, as I was saying, there is still a strong connection. Although many people don’t realize that, and even the consumers don’t realize that, between Spanish bar culture and the old-time bar culture and gin was always the number one spirit for mixing drinks. So I think if you put all of that together, you might have some sort of an explanation. So the vodka martini never was a thing here. 

Paul Clarke

This is an outlier.  That’s fantastic! 

François Monti

Actually, if I can’t interrupt you, on the Spanish market, I think, if I’m not wrong, vodka is not residual, but you have whiskey, gin, rum, and brandy all in front of it in terms of volume. 

Paul Clarke

Yeah. Wow. Wow. What a world! Now, we can’t talk about drinking culture and drinking in Spain without talking about vermouth. And you’ve written about vermouth a couple of times for Imbibe over the years. And vermouth has a very, very special kind of culture of its own here in Spain. For folks who have not yet encountered that or are still unfamiliar with it, why does vermouth have such a special kind of relationship with Spain and what kind of role does it continue to play in Spanish drinking culture? 

François Monti

Well, first, Spain is a country where vermouth is drunk mostly straight. You have some part of the country where they tend to do it mixed, but slightly mixed. Always soda water, but it’s drunk straight. While the other two historical markets, which are France and Italy, always drink it mixed. Italian producers are desperate. They see that they can’t sell the stuff, neat, because people want to mix them in Americano and Negroni, which are obviously perfectly fine.

But, you know, that’s one thing that sets Spain apart from many other markets in the vermouth world. And the vermouth, the growth of the vermouth market that we’ve seen the last 15 years in all countries, including the U.S., is very different here, because in the rest of the world, it’s really driven by cocktail culture. And yeah, not really. People are still drinking vermouth the way their grandparents used to drink.

Now, vermouth in Spain comes a bit later than it does in, uh, than it does in Italy and France. In Italy it would be late 18th century, France it would be early 19th century. And in Spain it really start booming late 19th century, and when it starts booming, it’s really seen as a modern drink, a drink for the the new bourgeoisie, right. And it’s got that image of modernity that helps it proper for the next 60 years, and keep it in mind of, most people. Until the point that in the 1950s, when the Spanish economy starts opening up a little bit, and working-class working-class people finally start to get some money, they adopt vermouth as their drink of choice, because it was a drink that rich people used to drink before.

So obviously rich people give up on it, and start drinking something else. But that’s when vermouth really gets huge in Spain, which is when vermouth starts to go down. goes down in other markets. So when in France and Italy, vermouth starts going down, because we’re always talking about Italy Dolce Vita. Italy Dolce Vita, like vermouth is not what it used to be 30 years before in terms of public awareness, and, you know, It’s not talking about volume, I’m being a desirable product.

In Spain it is, so when the vermouth push comes back in the 2010, it’s still there in their mind. It was a product that their parents gave up on, but it was a product their grandparents had a lot of, and you know what they say about generations. Like, you don’t want to do what your parents are doing, you want to do what the grandparents were doing, right? And so I think that connection, that connection between the vermouth tradition, is deeper here than it is, because in some ways it’s younger, and it was interrupted for less for less time.

Also something that favored the reemergence of vermouth in Spain, with the economical crisis of the late 2000s, early early 2010s, people were like, “Well, gin tonic, 12 euros, spend the night out, get four or five.” Or, three vermouth at 2.50 or 3.50 euros at lunch and then I’m back home for a nap. You know, it sort of made more sense, but also, you know, in times of crisis, you’re also always looking inwards and saying, like, “I want to have something like comfort food.” Like, comfort food or comfort drinks. 

Paul Clarke

Something familiar. Yeah, yeah, something that makes me happy, yeah. 

François Monti

Beyond the context, what makes vermouth culture in Spain unique, I think is that people don’t go for aperitif or aperitivo, or whatever, they go for a vermouth, and they say, “We’re going to do the vermouth, especially in north of Spain,” like Catalonia, Basque Country, etc. “We’re going to have a vermouth, and it means we’re going to have a drink at the bar at 1 pm.” And maybe you’re not going to have vermouth, maybe you’re going to have beer, maybe you’re going to have wine, but you’re still going to say your friends, let’s meet for vermouth, right?

I think that sort of shows how important it is. I also think, and Italians will hopefully appara on me, but but I also think the food you get at the aperitivo time in Spain is more suited to vermouth drinking than anywhere else. There’s a lot of culture around vinegar-cured mussels, or anchovies, or the olives. All those go very well with the herbiness and the sweetness of Vermouth. They go hand in hand, the acidity breaks through the sweetness, the sweetness helps bring you back in on your palate. That’s it.

Paul Clarke

Yeah, absolutely. For folks who wanted to experience that, if they’re looking for, “Where can I try this for myself?” Are there a couple of places that you would just say, “These are great directions to start?” 

François Monti

Oh yes, there is everywhere, in almost every Spanish city. Even in big cities in the south where vermouth was never huge, huge. You have them. Any bar in the Basque Country will do you what they call the Marianito, which is 95% vermouth. A touch of something bitter, a touch of gin, maybe a touch of orange liqueur, served probably in a Martini glass. So you don’t even need to know the names of the bars. They do it everywhere. 

Paul Clarke

And I should point out, for folks who want to experience that drink themselves, and are not yet in Spain, we have that recipe for you at imbibemagazine.com. Please, go ahead. 

François Monti

Of course you do. In Barcelona, there’s a lot of vermuteria, from the old-school ones like Quimet Quimet. Or more modern ones like Senyor Vermut, Morro Fi, etc. It’s not here in Madrid, you still have one every neighborhood. Maybe it’s more of the modern style in Barcelona than there is in Madrid for one very simple reason. The city of Barcelona changed completely after the 1992 Olympics, and everything had to be modern, so it lost a lot of those old-school places, where Madrid got modern very late, so it kept a lot of those old-school places.

Now, we have something a bit more modern, which is a few venues in Madrid called Hermanos Vinagre, which is really a very good image of what modern aperitivo ritual could be, and I think it’s a type of place that if you have a bit of money and you want to open something like this in the U.S. could be very interesting.

But not very far from where we are sitting right now, there’s a place called Taberna Angel Sierra. Have also Viva Madrid, which is the same owner as Salmon Guru, but it’s a bar that’s been standing there for 160 years, where you have amazing vermouth and media combination, which is a vermouth-based cocktail. So, when I was saying earlier that when the working classes started getting into vermouth, the more respectable classes moved away from the vermouth.

What they moved away too was a drink called medea Combination, which is basically the official cocktail of Madrid and Barcelona bourgeoisie. The recipe will sound very familiar, but the drink when you try it is not. It’s two-parts red-sweet vermouth, one-point gin, maybe a dash or two of Angostura, and a bath spoon of Curaçao, served on the rocks. And that’s still something you can find at a place like Viva Madrid.

I just encourage people who come to Spain, especially in Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián, just to walk around and see any place that looks sort of old school and order vermouth there. And the pro trick would be, one of my favorite places in the world is in Malaga, where you have one vermouth at €2. 50 from a barrel. And then if you ask with a drop of gin in it, it’s the same price, still €2.50 or something like And the fact that places like this are still surviving in big Spanish cities with a lot of tourists is one of the things that, you know, put joy in my everyday life. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. You’ve been covering Spanish bars and Spanish drink culture for a number of years now. When you look at the terrain now, and you kind of anticipate where things are going to go in the next five or ten years or so, how do you see this story continuing to develop in the next few years? 

François Monti

So the thing with Spain is I’ve seen go up and go down. So I’ve been living here for 17 years now. Around 2002, 2012, there was a boom in Barcelona, there was a boom in Madrid, and then the cocktails were going to be huge. And then within the space of six months, a few bars closed and it was gone like that. And so I’m always worried when I say like, oh, you know, now it’s going very well, there are so many bars, there’s so many people drinking in them bars. Maybe it’s over tomorrow. But I don’t think so.

I think now the fact that there are neighborhood bars opening, there’s like that second tier, which I’m not using in a pejorative way at all. I think the maturity of a cocktail scene, you don’t see it, it’s not something you measure looking at the 50 Best Bars or the James Beard Awards, you know, or the Tales of the Cocktail … When you see that on top of those bars that are like the media darlings and get the votes, that get the because you have a healthy scene behind that, of people just working every day, making great drinks and surviving a very difficult context.

And I feel that now we have enough of those bars to say that at least in Madrid and in Barcelona, cocktails are here to stay. And it’s only, hopefully, only going to grow from here. In terms of trends, I don’t know, it might mean me, like wishful thinking. Because that’s what I like. But I think that when you have that healthy, mature scene with those second tier bars, the natural step is to focus more on classics. Because one of the things that’s, alright, all those bars we discussed earlier, where everything is more experiential, everything is more of a show. It’s amazing to attract people, it’s difficult for them to come back time and again, plus all those bars, if they have a lot of awards, are getting very busy.

At the end of the day, I think it’s a bit like fine dining, you know, you enjoy your fine dining restaurant, but it’s not for every day, it’s not for every week, it’s for big moments in your life, maybe. And what do you have the most, we’re in Spain, a pincel de tortilla, a bit of tortilla or a Spanish omelet, right? And you’re looking forward to go to that place and make it very well. So for me, the next step is that in terms of cocktails and what is the tortilla of the cocktail is making perfectly balanced Margarita and a nice Mojito, right? And a great brine Martini, so I’m seeing this a bit more.

Uh, the thing that also is, is a bit challenging to predict is that a city like, uh, Madrid is attracting a lot of investment from South America, uh, which brings a different kind of public, a different kind of expectation and different kind of drinks and different kinds of venue. And so that will have an impact. What I don’t know is if a lot of those venues are here for the long haul. So maybe, you know, you can listen to this podcast in one year and half of them are gone. I don’t So maybe we’d have, we’ll have to, uh, book, book us another conversation. 

Paul Clarke

Well, I’ll need to come back next year and we can continue this conversation. 

François Monti

And I look forward to that. 

Paul Clarke

François, thanks again for coming back on the podcast and, and for, sharing this time with us. 

François Monti

Thanks a lot for having me. I’m happy to talk all things Spain with you anytime. 

[music]

Paul Clarke 

You can find François Monti on Instagram at François Monti. We’ve got that link for you in this episode’s notes, along with a link to find some of the articles he’s written over the years for us at Imbibe. And that’s it for this episode. Subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. We’ve got tons of recipes and articles for you online at our website, imbibemagazine.com. Keep up with us day to day on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Threads. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of Imbibe, then let’s get you on board in celebration of our 20th anniversary. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes and we’ll be happy to help you out. I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.