The next time you visit a bar, ask the steward what’s cooking behind the scenes. It’s likely that dropper bottles of cordials and tinctures made from seasonal fruits, herbs and veggies; a new batch of flavoured infusions with base spirits; offbeat liqueurs or an in-house replication of flavour profiles essential ingredients such as vermouth, triple sec and Campari replicas are in the midst of being made. It is an exciting time to be a mixologist in Mumbai as bar menus are aiming high with DIY.

Last month, when Sachin Yadav consulted at Eve in Powai, he created an in-house gin using a small distiller. “To make gin, you need a neutral spirit such as vodka. To this, I’ve added over 10 botanicals such as chamomile, cinnamon, almond, warm wood and liquorice. The mixture is added to a distiller that you plug in and heat the contents. A fan on top of the equipment cools the vapour into liquid. I diluted the mixture with a juniper-flavoured hydrosol [flavoured water],” he explains with the precision of a chemist.