- 04/06/2025
Scotsman food and drink editor Rosalind Erskine talks to Michele Mariotti, Head of Bars at Gleneagles about the American Bar's new drinks menu, the Rose Compendium, and we find out how to make a perfect Rob Roy - and why the sweet and dry versions don't contain whisky.
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00:00Hi, my name is Michele Mariotti and I'm the head of bars here at the Glenigos Hotel.
00:04In the process of the menu itself, the Rose Compendium started a while back, actually.
00:10We created our first conceptualized menu here at the American bar called the Book of Berries.
00:16The idea was to bring to life very much the best that Perthshire has to offer, like this room.
00:22I don't know if you could see it.
00:24The words are covered in cashmere, which is tinted with lavender from Perthshire.
00:28And a lot of the little bits of artwork that we have here represent flora that is local to us.
00:33So, when we tasked ourselves with the idea of putting together a menu, we thought, what is it that we can champion, right?
00:40This region is well known for strawberries and raspberries, so we thought, why don't we make a book about berries?
00:45Halfway through the process, we realized that actually strawberries and raspberries are not berries,
00:51are composite fruits instead.
00:53So, we ended up making a menu with cucumbers, pumpkins and squashes and so on.
00:58So, with the Rose Compendium, we sort of looked back a little bit and thought,
01:02okay, what is a strawberry, actually?
01:04And it turns out it's a member of the Rose family.
01:06So, we just looked at ways to make it a little bit more interesting and quirky.
01:10And so, we digged around to see what sort of books about roses we could find.
01:15And then it turns out that there was something called the National Rose Association here in the UK,
01:22which essentially is a group of nerds who meet once a year to talk about everything that's rose-related.
01:27And they've been doing so since 1887.
01:29And at the end of each year, they release a book called The Rose Annuals, where they talk about all the latest trends about roses.
01:36So, once a year, they release a little booklet called The Rose Annuals, where they discuss all about the latest trends about roses,
01:43how to care for them, how to look after them.
01:45So, when we couldn't resist the temptation to sort of recreate it under like a modern light
01:50and talk about nine of the members of the Rose family, the extended Rosace family,
01:55which includes things like strawberries, of course, but then we have peaches, almonds, and so on and so forth.
02:02The Rose Compendium itself features nine members of the Rose family, and each page is dedicated to one of them.
02:10I can show you here.
02:12And then, generally speaking, we tend to have an illustration which we pinched from a vintage encyclopedia on one side,
02:20and then on the opposite side, we have some illustrations of how the drinks will look like, more or less.
02:25And each rose features two different iterations of a drink.
02:29You'll see that on one side, we have drinks that come from what we like to refer to as the Glenigos ecosystem,
02:37meaning that these are roses that we already have in the hotel.
02:40But rather than using primary ingredients, such as the flesh, in most cases, we use skins, seeds, or goods that are derived from these roses.
02:50So, it could be like baked goods or like marzipan, that sort of thing.
02:55While on the opposite side, we have what we like to refer to as our hyperlocal roses.
03:01This means that these are ingredients that we have produced in collaboration with some producers around us, essentially.
03:09Predominantly from Perthshire, but from a little bit around all over Scotland.
03:14Some examples, for instance, feature a marzipan that we source from a local bakery,
03:20a pear jam that we developed a guy called Alan, very passionate about his jams,
03:26and then, yeah, vermouth, wines, it really depends.
03:30So, essentially, when we found ingredients such as like peach, right?
03:34There's no such thing as peaches in Scotland.
03:36We looked at people who work with peaches here locally,
03:38so they can supply us with something that is sort of like authentic and real.
03:43I'll give you an example, for instance, for peaches.
03:45It's a peach yogurt that we co-developed with a small farm around us.
03:51The process of development takes a long time.
03:54I think the menu itself, usually, like the choice of materials, the illustrations, the page, the font.
04:01So, all the mechanical bits of the menu take a lot of sampling.
04:05So, that's something that takes quite a long time.
04:07But the actual thing that takes the longest is the external collaborations.
04:12So, whenever we design a glass from the ground up or we design an ingredient with the producer,
04:18it usually can take quite some time and there's a lot of back and forth.
04:23So, you know, just the process of identifying the correct partners and then co-developing these ingredients
04:28can take up to a year and a half, almost two years in some cases.
04:31So, yeah, there are some bits that we're working on, for instance, for the new menu.
04:35And then, sometimes, if we really, really like something, we find a way to work it into the next concept,
04:40even if it's not 100% related to whatever we're going to do.
04:46Simply because the process starts so early that it's quite difficult for us to always be able to have a full cohesive 100% offering on some of the ingredients.
04:55So, we just have to work our way around some of the bits, really.
04:58I think that's quite close to my heart.
05:00It is the…
05:01So, there is a drink that's quite close to my heart.
05:04It's called a Rob Roy.
05:05It's a very, very classic cocktail based on scotch and vermouth.
05:09I would say it's probably the most iconic scotch whiskey cocktail out there.
05:15And so, when we looked at it, we thought, okay, generally speaking, it comes in three iterations.
05:22A sweet, a dry, and a perfect iteration that includes elements of both, like the sweet one and the dry one.
05:29And the differentiating factor is always being the vermouth.
05:33So, and this is something that I sort of struggled to reconcile because I thought, why is it in a whiskey drink that we're championing the vermouth, which is a secondary ingredient.
05:44And so, we decided to flip this.
05:46This process took a very long time.
05:48And then, yeah, so we have developed dry, sweet, and a perfect whiskey with Glyn Tourette, which is a distillery nearby, close to us.
05:58And then, we have designed a vermouth made 100% from Scottish ingredients that is sort of like neutral.
06:04So, this allows us to have the whiskey sort of delivering the differentiating factor.
06:09And because the whiskey making process and all this started quite a while ago, we found a way to work roses in separately halfway through the process.
06:18So, the vermouth, for instance, that we use in this case uses rosehip.
06:22It is actually the only drink in the menu that uses actual roses rather than members of the extended family.
06:28The barley probably, the one I discussed was quite a good one.
06:32I think one of the cool bits was the fact that we have, we thought about the whole experience, not only the drink itself.
06:38So, the liquid was quite important, of course.
06:40But then, we went on and designed a glass that allowed us to sort of like still retain this classic DNA that the American bar has, but sort of like have an element of playfulness to it.
06:52I'd be delighted to show it to you.
06:54Blueberry.
06:55So, essentially, she has all the little speckles of like blueberries.
06:59So, when you pick blueberries yourself, they're never like quite perfect like you get them in a shop.
07:04They always have like different colors to it.
07:06And so, she brought them to life like those little dots.
07:09So, essentially, what she did is just look at ways to bring these ingredients to life.
07:14So, there is always a visual correlation in between the drink that you order, the berry that you, sorry, the rose that you order from and the actual rose that you get.
07:22So, it'd be quite weird if you order something peachy and it's like quite not peach color.
07:27So, that was the thought process.
07:29Lastly, so these are custom glasses, meaning that we get them, two small changes and send them out.
07:34The whole process is done in-house.
07:36So, she uses a ceramic-based paint, then bake the glasses in-house.
07:40This means that we can be quite nimble and flexible and we can like change the glassware based on our needs.
07:49And then, there's like fully bespoke glassware.
07:52So, bespoke glassware has been more complicated because this is made by someone,
07:56external to us.
07:57So, usually the process requires design, sampling, which nowadays is actually quite quick because we can 3D print samples.
08:05So, we get multiple chances of testing it.
08:09And then, we get to the final glass here in my hands.
08:14So, we get the chance to sort of like design everything from the ground up.
08:18We never do this for the sake of doing it.
08:21There always has to be sort of like an end goal, something that we're trying to achieve that is not possible to achieve in another way.
08:27So, for this one, the main goal was, first of all, because the drink that goes in this glass is a twist on a Rob Roy.
08:40So, we wanted one of the most iconic cocktail glasses out there, which is a cocktail coupet.
08:44So, the first half of the glass reminds us of a coupet.
08:47And the second half reminds us of a Glencairn, which is a very well-known glass for serious whiskey drinkers.
08:54So, that was the first step.
08:57The second step, we wanted to go from what we consider a static drinking experience, which is what happens with most cocktails.
09:04We literally just grab the glass, have a sip, put it back to a more dynamic one, which is what you have with like a spirit or a wine.
09:11And so, essentially what we did, we've designed this little indentation on the side of the glass.
09:17So, whenever we put the garnish, which is a cherry, it fits in the side, it falls to the side, and it encourages guests to swirl it like a roulette.
09:24So, to have this sort of like cherry rolling around the glass and sort of like making the drinking experience a little bit more dynamic and interesting for us.
09:34So, they can just grab it and play around with it.
09:37We are a very classic cocktail bar.
09:39So, we look at modern ways to sort of like bring this sort of like idea of a classic cocktail bar to a more contemporary audience.
09:49And that's why we decided to sort of like look at different ways to work with glassware.
09:54So, it could be like the way we paint it or design it from the ground up.
09:59A lot of bars, a lot of our competitors actually are moving away from glassware towards like ceramics and 3D printed ingredients.
10:06But I do think that in a classic bar, you sort of need this like elegant touch that glass can bring, you know.
10:13Just from like the beauty of it, you know, the way that it catches light, I just love glassware in general.
10:19But also to the fact that, you know, I think there's a unique feel to glass that you can't replicate with other materials that are a little bit more modern.
10:27So, for instance, like 3D printed glass or ceramic in my view always has sort of like almost like a non-organic feel to it.
10:37You know, like almost like a synthetic feel to it, for lack of a better word.
10:41And sort of like I think it disconnects the drinking experience from like what a classic bar should stand for in my view.
10:48We, when we brought the Book of Berries to life, the main idea was to bring something that this bar needs, you know.
10:58So, I believe that in our segment, which is like luxury hospitality, when it comes to like our price point is clearly different from a street bar.
11:09And so, this puts some degree of pressure on us to make sure that despite the fact that the price point is different, the value for money has to be there, right.
11:18And so, for instance, while a bar, perhaps like a street bar is looking at giving the best liquid to people, right, in the best glassware possible for the most reasonable price possible.
11:32We have sort of like a similar ethos, but our threshold for how much we can charge is a little bit higher.
11:38So, this means that we do have to take care of a lot of different elements of a drinking experience.
11:43So, we felt that the Rose Compendium was that, you know.
11:47It was just delivering to guests the ultimate like value for money and was the same with the Book of Berries, right.
11:54The awards came secondary.
11:56Obviously, it was a great thing for us because I think, especially from the team standpoint, they put so much work into it.
12:03And to see that they get recognized for something that it's like recognized as being the best in the world is something that really means a lot to our team members.
12:11Especially because unlike city hotels, a lot of our people live and were born and raised within a driving distance from the hotel.
12:20So, this really represents the best that the region has to offer.
12:24So, there's an element of pride in there that we wouldn't necessarily get in a city hotel.
12:28So, whenever we get such a big award, it means the world to them, you know.
12:32And to me too, of course, you know. It's been such a long journey.
12:35I can tell you like the link in between the Book of Berries and the Rose Compendium was a quite interesting one.
12:43Because like we wanted sort of to have a continuity between menus.
12:48And so, the first iteration of like the Rose Compendium was simply called the Book of Roses.
12:54And then when we looked at them side by side, it just looked like we repackaged the same thing.
12:58We were very unhappy with it. And then we sort of like, instead of like doing another book in the series,
13:04we took a step back and we looked at what is it that, like if the Book of Berries was an actual book,
13:11which in some ways it is, right? And it would sit on a bookshelf of someone.
13:16What other book would this person own? And that's why we thought about different bits and the Rose Compendium came to life.
13:24And it sort of had this beautiful organic feel to it, right?
13:27Because we were still sort of continuing this research on a specific category in botany.
13:34But instead of like having like a very almost boring continuation to what we were doing,
13:41we took a step back that allows us to sort of like have a much wider approach.
13:46So now every time we look at one of our collateral, it could be our whiskey list or future menus or inserts for our menus.
13:53We take it, we look at it from the botanist standpoint, which is the botanist is this fictional character that we've created
14:00that sort of owns this very eclectic bookshelf with a lot of different Rose bits in it.
14:05The first time that we brought it to life, actually, it's in this menu here with a lot of little handwritten notes in here,
14:12because we wanted this to feel like an organic booklet.
14:15And so we wanted this to feel like it's something that that someone owns and uses on a daily basis and scribbles on it.
14:22So a lot of work went into it to make sure that it just didn't necessarily fit the box neatly or didn't follow the lines or to have like different size.
14:31You know, like handwritten depending on how the bottom is feeling.
14:35So in here, for instance, it missed the box quite a bit, which was quite a, quite a fun thing to do to task a designer with.
14:42So our design team sort of struggled with it.
14:45So we actually had to help them out, making sure that it wasn't neat.
14:49So for a designer, I think it was quite, quite, quite kryptonite.
14:53Like to have to deal with something that doesn't fit within a box, you know.
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