Australia's Best Bartender Talks Kissing Sofia Loren, and His Guest Spot at Atmosphere Until Sep 29

Even though Andrea Gualdi (the guest bartender at Atmosphere Bar in Beijing’s CBD until Sep 29) is the head bartender at Sydney Australia’s renowned Maybe Frank pizzeria and cocktail bar, and even though he won the prestigious 2017 Diageo Reserve World Class Bartender of the Year award for Australia, beating 19 other mixologists from the land from Down Under in the process, at the end of the day he should really just be known as a simple, old school true romantic. Don’t believe it? His Sophia cocktail, which he mixed up at the competition in Mexico City last year, is inspired by Italy’s most famous actress, and its flavor and aroma are all designed to evoke a kiss from that enchanting lady.

Gualdi getting psyched for the guest shift

Before hitting it big with all that high profile glamor, Gualdi bartending career began in an even more lovey-dovey vein. Hailing from a small town close to the northern Italian city of Milan, the then 20-year-old Gualdi accompanied his girlfriend when she packed her bags for London, England. “The easiest job for an Italian was of course hospitality. Especially because I couldn’t speak much English,” the now clearly more worldly Gualdi, dressed in a pink sports jacket with a rose in the breast pocket, recalls with a wry grin while mixing up a glassful of his award-winning Sophia cocktail for us at Atmosphere during the second night of his weeklong stint at the Beijing lounge. He goes on to recount how he had a surprising knack for drink making and service, and slowly but surely worked his way up the ranks, before opting for a far less rainy and wet locale: Sydney, Australia. After realizing his dreams of moving to such a balmy, beautiful city, despite not knowing a soul in town, he ingratiated himself in the Italian expat community well enough to gain a toehold in the local pizzeria scene, shaking up cocktails deftly enough to be approached by the owners of Maybe Frank.

Gualdi winning big at last year's Diageo World Class Competition

Before long Gualdi and his colleague’s focus on aperitivo and digestive cocktails, designed to be paired with Maybe Frank’s increasingly famous wood-fired pizzas, helped the space gain as much notoriety for being a bar as a restaurant. It snagged honors like being ranked among the Top 20 Best Bars of 2017 - Good Food Guide, SMH Australia; Gualdi’s aforementioned win as Best Australian Bartender 2017 at the Diageo World Class Competition (also securing a spot on the Top 4 World Class Bartender of the Year list at that same ceremony) and being named as a finalist on the 10 Best International Restaurant Bar 2018 ranking for Tales of the Cocktail, Spirited Awards.

As Gualdi completes our Sophia cocktail and places the statuesque long-stemmed glass on the bar, he turns to the menu he brought to Atmosphere and begins sharing a handful of colorful stories and details about each drink recipe on offer for Beijing patrons during his weeklong guest shift.

Sophia (made with Cocchi Rosa, Olmeca Blanco tequila, Itallcus, Peychaud's bitters, rose geranium syrup)
The drink that, last year, I took to the Diageo World Class Competition, the one that got me the award. It's named after was named after Sophia Loren. She’s Italian. And she has long been considered the most beautiful woman in the world by many in Italy. So with this drink, we tried to represent what a kiss from the world’s most beautiful woman would be like, only if it were in a glass.

So it’s made with a fortified wine from Italy. Also, some tequila, to give it a spicy character, just like a proper Italian woman. And then the vermouth and rosé round it out.

Dixon (made with rye whiskey, Cocchi Rosso, Grand Mamier, Becherovka, Peychaud's bitter, lapsang souchong tea)
Dixon Street is the main road in Sydney’s Chinatown. So here we try to take on a classic cocktail, the Sazerac, made in the French Quarter of New Orleans and evoking that place. We’re trying to do the same thing for Chinatown with this drink. So it has some lapsang souchong tea to represent Chinese culture, whiskey vermouth, and some liqueur.

It’s a bottled cocktail that takes two or three hours to make. We use cold infusion and make a big batch. So it's quite complex, and it also has a smokey flavor.

Prosciutto E Melone (made with Beefeater 24, Tia Pepe Fino sherry, Triple Sec, Suze, Rockmelon, Honey Syrup, lime juice, coriander, angostura) 
This drink is based on a very traditional Italian dish made with parma ham and melon. In Italy, you pretty much find it everywhere. Here, we turn it into a cocktail. The drink has melon juice, gin, sherry, and more served with chips of Parma ham and bits of melon on the top. It's very fresh and is meant to reflect the Italian tradition I grew up with.

Black to the Future (Elyx vodka, Cocchi Americano, Cedarwood, lemon sherbet, apple charcoal water)
Not so much a cocktail, but more like a trick for your mind! When you first look at this one and see how dark it is, you'll assume it has a smoky flavor. But in fact, when you taste it, it’s super fresh and light. That's due to the Cocchi Americano fortified wine that’s quite light. For the lemon sherbet, we burn the lemons in the pizza oven at Maybe Frank, then juice them and then use that juice in this drink. It’s a process that takes a couple of days, and yet the cocktail tastes quite fresh in the end.

Mexica (Mezcal, Aperol, Montenegro, Oscar 698 Vermouth Dry, rooibos tea, grapefruit bitters)
At the end of the Diageo Reserve competition in Mexico City, the bartenders were celebrating and making drinks for each other. I went to make a classic Italian aperitif. But we didn’t have all the ingredients required. So I just took something that was Mexican off the shelf and made a mix between the two cultures. something Mexican and something Italian. So we have Mezcal with Aperol and a very dry vermouth. Some rooibos tea, meanwhile, helps make it floral. This drink will always remind me of the amazing time I had in Mexico.

Andrea Gualdi will be the guest bartender at Atmosphere each night at 8pm this week, his last night Sep 29. Each cocktail is priced at RMB 149. For more information, click here.

Photo: broadsheet.com.au, drinks.world, courtesy of Atmosphere Bar