It’s dark, mysterious and luscious. The espresso martini has moved up to the top spot in the cocktail classics and with a little bit of help from an outstanding local craft distiller that produces Nusantara Cold Brew, you’ll easily create an espresso martini to rival your favorite cocktail bar.
Vying for attention is the time-honoured negroni, the Italian cocktail that is a sophisticated favourite.
Create the perfect espresso cocktails with one very special ingredient.
Nusantara Cold Brew is a coffee liqueur combining the best coffee beans from Indonesia’s spice islands with modern cold brewing techniques, to deliver a unique rich bodied coffee liqueur unlike any other.
Nusantara is the old Javanese term for Indonesia, a vast archipelago renowned for the quality of its spices and coffee beans. A talented team have created a craft liqueur and coffee company that combines the best beans from Indonesia’s most famous coffee-growing regions to create a deep, rich cold brew coffee liqueur that has ten times the coffee of commercial brands.
Created by Spice Islands Distilling company, located in Keramas, Bali, the company is the first craft distiller in Indonesia, using high-quality ingredients, time-honoured production techniques and a world of passion and experience.
Working together with one of the most talented Indonesian bartenders in the industry, Spice Island’s brand ambassador, Darren Defretes, defines the perfect cocktail as “dimensional, balanced, simple but with character”.
The rich flavour of Nusantara Cold brew creates an espresso martini that resonates with unrivalled flavour and spice overtones that make it distinctively Indonesian. More surprising still is Darren’s unique take on the Negroni, created with a coffee base. You may never feel the same way about negronis again.
Darren’s recipe for the perfect espresso martini is superbly simple to execute, making it even more important that every element is of the very best quality. “A cocktail is the sum of its parts and every part should be perfectly constructed to achieve the perfect balance,” explains Darren.
NUSANTARA COLD BREWTINI
Ingredients:
30 ml Nusantara Cold Brew coffee liqueur
30 ml Vodka
30 ml espresso
Method:
Shake everything together, and you get a caffeinated drink that is surprisingly balanced, with just the right ratio of booze, coffee and sugar. Garnish with a few coffee beans, and it’s picture-perfect.
NUSANTARA NEGRONI
Ingredients:
30 ml Nusantara Cold Brew coffee liqueur
30 ml Gin
30 ml Italian bitter
Method:
- Add Nusantara Cold Brew coffee liqueur, Italian bitter and Gin to a mixing glass filled with ice, and stir until well-chilled.
- Strain into a rocks glass filled with large ice cubes.
- Garnish with an orange peel.
ABOUT DARREN DEFRETES
Arguably one of the most talented young Indonesian bartenders in the industry today and Spice Island Distilling Co’s Brand Ambassador, Darren Defretes in the past few years has won himself an impressive number of bartending competition titles. Winning the Grand Champion International Bartender Associates and Top 10 Asia Pacific International Bartender (IBA Competition) is also known as a fantastic & friendly host
To those who want to explore the rich flavours of the spice islands through the finest handcrafted cocktails. Using Indonesian spices traded in the past, like nutmeg, cloves and lemongrass, combined with select spirits from around the world, Darren is always passionate to create bespoke and well-executed cocktails, successfully accomplishing a celebration of Indonesian flavours in every drop.
He has also defined an ideal cocktail as one that is “dimensional in taste, balanced, simple but has character and is suitable for the occasion or time of day.”
