The Perfect Cocktail: Part 1 - Lucy's Flower Shop

Get the Vodka Soda, he says.

I think he’s fucking with me.

In normal circumstances I would have ignored him and ordered something more interesting. But this was no normal bar. After stumbling around Stockholm's Östermalm neighborhood I find myself inside the world-ranking tastefully-decorated Lucy's Flower Shop.

I've spent a lot of my life searching the world for The Perfect Cocktail. It's not that I like drinking. Drunkeness is unaesthetic. Hangovers are intolerable. This is why you'll never catch me mindlessly sipping Bud-anything, White Claw, or any of their mutant variants.

I don't like drinking, but I do love tasting, for flavor is one of many earthly portals to the divine. And it happens to be that many of the things I like to taste happen to have alcohol in them.

Niche Gins. Raicilla from Jalisco. Haitian Rum Agricole. Japanese Rice Lagers. Don't get me started on wine. Each is a distilled celebration of earth's bounty.

But nothing makes me frothier than The Perfect Cocktail. Cocktails are unique in the drinking world. The best can't be bottled, canned or enjoyed anywhere. They have to be made in the right place by the right people with the right ingredients and enjoyed on the spot.

The Perfect Cocktail is exceedingly rare. Most are predictable and made by the uninspired. It's not for me to condemn. Bar owners must survive in a difficult industry and bartenders rarely have the backing for excellence. But cocktails are expensive on the body and wallet. At this stage in my drinking career it's the best or nothing.

Find me the tinkerer, the madman, the aesthete, the obsessive savant pushing the boundaries of flavor and expression. Only then will I slit my wallet open and let my money bleed.

So you can understand why I hesitated to order the Vodka Soda.

But he was confident and I was curious.

Vodka Soda it is, I relent.

On request his switch flips and he begins to execute a series of motions he's likely repeated thousands of times. Into a tall glass go three perfectly clear ice spheres, carefully measured clear liquids from unmarked bottles, and a splash of soda. He garnishes it with nothing and hands it over, fully confident. True to Scandinavian form it is charmingly minimalist. I might as well be looking at a glass of fizzy water.

But there was to be an ocean of contrast between what I saw and what I tasted. I sip and slip into the sublime universe where time halts and everything is perfect.

It's gentle on the nose, and bright, citrusy, and a tinge vegetal on the tongue. Most importantly it achieves the Holy Grail of cocktail mastery - balance. Not too this. Not too that. Everything just right. Never has so much come from so little. It's magnificent. Noting my reaction the bartender nods as his confidence is validated. I must understand. I pester him for answers.

Betraying Lucy's florally minimalist front, the magic of Lucy's Flower Shop happens away from patron’s eyes inside a space more laboratory than bar. The Vodka Soda I'm fawning over is the child of ordinary vodka, homemade ginger soda, and, here's the kicker, centrifuge clarified celery juice. Artful audacity meets scientific precision in this anything-but-ordinary Vodka Soda. I smile, sip slowly, and weep quietly upon the conclusion of this ephemeral celebration of mastered simplicity.

I have found The Perfect Cocktail.