Clif Travers’ [SWEET] Stuff

Clif
Travers is in the airy kitchen of his Dorchester home.
Wielding a ridged muddler, he shows no mercy toward a lime
wedge in a glass. An assortment of liquor bottles sits on
the nearby table. A quartet of elegant, sleek square bottles
stand out from the collection like stilettos amid a mass of
Timberlands. He reaches behind him for one of the angular
bottles filled with a slightly gold-hued fluid and adds a
few dashes to a concoction of Cazadores tequila and Ron
Matusalem rum. What would generally have been a
straightforward drink suddenly has a surprisingly
multi-dimensional character.

That’s precisely the effect
Clif was aiming for with [SWEET], (pronounced
“sweet”) a line of all-natural cocktail syrups he’s been
developing over the past three years. The boutique brand is
launching with four flavors – Honey Brown, Green Apple Mint,
Lemongrass Ginger and Thai Basil Geranium – plus a premium
grenadine. As of press time, the products were in the final
six weeks of testing in a food lab while he was talking to
distributors.

Lest [SWEET] be
thought of as just another basic flavoring agent – cloyingly
sugary stuff best suited for the tribe of flavored vodka
devotees – these more refined syrups are positioned to
occupy a different place behind the bar. In essence, they’re
the sum of Clif’s decades-long career, fully informed by his
experiences at various bars and lounges where he spent time
behind the bar. He was also influenced by the sundry
restaurants, bars and clubs where he’s consulted on cocktail
lists. The concept came about, he says, because he had long
had trouble finding any all-natural American-made grenadine.
Every aspect of the products is designed to make things easy
on bartenders – from the attention to the precise elements
used in the formulas (ie: organic limes, bay leaf, ginger
oil) to the user-friendly, display-worthy design of the
bottle. (It comes topped with a cork, but comes with a pour
spout.)

Clif wanted to launch with
flavor combinations that are attention-grabbing but, above
all, versatile. Most can be used with the basic range of
spirits – vodka, gin, bourbon, tequila. But Clif will be the
first to tell you that he’s not out to revolutionize the
cocktail world, just to ensure that bartenders serving in
even the most high volume establishments can have access to
a premium product that will make a standard cocktail a
little less, well, standard. “It’s specifically designed for
a bar. There’s a lot out there designed for desserts or
coffee, but I come at it from a bartender’s point of view,”
he says. (He’s quick to add that that’s not to imply it
doesn’t also go well with other things, especially dessert
items.) “These are flavors that will take a drink up a step.
I’m not breaking new ground. I wanted to do something just
for bartenders so that they can be more
creative.”

Of course, to say
“bartenders” these days is like using a broad term like
“physicians”. Everyone has their own specialties and one’s
location dictates a great deal about the volume of service.
Nobody expects a tool that’s integral to a cardiologist to
be even vaguely relevant to an ophthalmologist. Clif
acknowledges that the product isn’t going to be as much a
staple in every bar as, say, martini glasses. He’s
essentially targeting the wide swath of bars in the middle
range – a notch up from the dime-a-dozen beer and shot
watering holes and perhaps a little less cocktail-centric
than a restaurant that does all its daily prep work with
ingredients and equipment from the kitchen. “The level of
restaurant we’re going for is kind of in the middle because
higher level places prep this kind of stuff themselves and
the lower end ones don’t care. This is for the mid-range
restaurant that wants to be more interesting and competitive
and doesn’t have anyone on staff to pull it off or the money
to have someone do the prep work or someone on staff with a
flavor background who knows how to put this kind of stuff
together,” he says. “They can take a basic gimlet, old
fashioned, mint julep, or whatever else and add one of the
syrups and essentially change the list. Even with the
fluffier drinks, like a cosmo or lemon drop – adding this
adds aroma and changes the whole profile.”

Indeed, the Honey Brown can
imbue a margarita or a daiquiri with a depth that evokes
luscious island flavors; the Thai Basil Geranium lends a
floral dimension to any white liquor; there’s a zing to the
Lemongrass Ginger that nicely enhances drinks with exotic
Asian elements – especially sake; and the Green Apple Mint
has a cool refreshing spearmint essence that imparts a bit
of kick to gins, silver tequilas, white rums and vodka, and
some lesser-used Scandinavian and Latin American
spirits.

The idea for the syrups
took shape during his stint at Om Restaurant and Lounge in
Harvard Square, which began when the restaurant opened in
2OO5. For the four years prior to that, he was lead
bartender and mixologist at Cuchi Cuchi, an intimate but
busy Cambridge restaurant that specializes in international
small plates. There he developed a list that was heavy on
muddling. Om was a bit more high volume, and around the time
he started there he didn’t have to hand sell muddled drinks.
The mojito and caipirinha craze was beginning to take on
Beatlemania-like proportions. Om had a bustling late-night
crowd. While attending to swarms ordering those drinks, he
was also concentrating on other intricately constructed
drinks with multi-sensory appeal, a challenge due to the
labor-intensive task of muddling for the much-demanded
mojitos. It was at Om that he started experimenting with
herbs that he didn’t have access to before, like geranium
leaf. That’s also where he began cultivating a fascination
with essential oils in the syrups and using them in
cocktails in a spray. Om’s executive chef, Rachel Klein, had
worked with a California-based friend, Julie Weinberg, on a
food & wine feature for which they developed food and
cocktails for Chanukah. Playing on the fact that Chanukah is
a celebration of light and the miraculously long-lasting
oil, they incorporated an essential oil into the drink
recipe. The cocktail list he came up with based on that idea
included mixed drinks enhanced with ginger, lemongrass,
rose, and lavender essential oils.

Clif points out that no
matter how artisanal his or any other similar product may
be, [SWEET] is more an accessory than a centerpiece.
It isn’t intended as a replacement for the genuine article.
“I don’t recommend substituting mint syrup for muddled mint
because there’s something about releasing oils when you
muddle. You could make a gimlet and add mint syrup, but I
discovered I couldn’t cross certain lines. I wouldn’t use it
as base, and I wouldn’t use it in a mojito. The mojito has
strong feelings around it,” he says. In other words, though
the syrups were, in part, inspired by the effect of
muddling, they aren’t designed to take its place. “I wanted
to make syrups that make cocktails that were interesting,
and offer different experience.”

Also, when he was
experimenting with flavors and aromatics of the oils at Om,
he started tinkering with cordials, wines and fortified
wines in cocktails. “I was doing all the stuff that’s the
base of what I like to do now. I got to explore,” he
says.

Indeed, that stint proved
useful to the consulting work he’s done over the past few
years in various restaurants throughout Boston, but he’ll be
limiting – though not entirely cutting out – the consulting
work quite soon. As of press time, he was getting ready to
move to Brooklyn to work in the New York cocktail scene.
Cocktail consulting and the attendant staff training
involved has long been a tactic often employed by major
chains to give a national – or international – corporate
establishment consistency. But in the past few years, it’s
grown in popularity among smaller restaurant groups and
individual establishments. In 2OO7, Clif devised lists for
the Beehive in the South End, the Aquitaine Group’s South
End French eatery, Gaslight, and Mission Hill’s gritty-chic
nightspot, the Savant Project. He draws from those years of
“experimenting” when working with clients who approach him
with simply a general concept of the list. “I find out what
the chef is doing, what the [food] concept is, and
whether there are vendor restrictions. Then I start playing
with the list and while doing that, keep in mind what to
plan on as far as clientele and volume. That works into
list. I’ll put together a basic list of 15 to 2O drinks and
have a few tastings. And when [the client] has
figured out what they want, there should be a cocktail for
every person that walks in the door. You don’t have to
please everybody with every cocktail, but you should please
everybody with at least one cocktail. A scotch drinker who
never drinks cocktails should find something on that list.
The way to have credibility is to have one thing for that
one discerning customer. A list has to be well-rounded and
have variety.”

The challenge is to develop
variety that stays within the confines of the concept
devised by the restaurant’s owners. The Beehive, for
instance, wanted “old-school kitsch”, while Gaslight wanted
to play on the Parisian theme and play up pastis and
absinthe drinks. The Savant Project, meanwhile, posed a
greater challenge, as they opened with a beer, wine and
cordials license, but wanted a range of innovative signature
cocktails with an Asian bend.

Each new client poses its
own individual challenges, but the business of consulting in
general comes with an inherent roster of complexities,
particularly when it comes to training the staff. Often, not
only are they learning recipes for new, sometimes
complicated drinks, but they also have to be taught how to
make specialized ingredients from scratch. Clif trains them,
but the nature of the job dictates that he doesn’t have
on-going oversight capacity. Nor is he there to train any
future hires. “I’ll show people how to use the jigger and do
a dash, but I’m usually training staffs where I’m not going
to be a few weeks later. It’s definitely important to get
everyone on a level playing field.”

Syrups aren’t the easiest
product to make from scratch, so at least he can
leave in the inventory,
almost as a way to ensure his personal stamp isn’t wiped
away when he leaves.