by TM Petaccia

“Behind the stick” originally comes from taphouses, as in pulling the draft beer taps, but has been adapted over the years as an industry-wide term for who is working the bar. This series profiles working bartenders in the Charlotte area to learn a bit more about them and what you can expect when they are behind the stick.

This week, we spoke with Nico Desreumaux, bartender at Bar One Lounge in Uptown Charlotte. “Something I’ve always sensed about bartending, and maybe the service industry in general, is that ego is the canary in the coal mine of creativity. If no one ever tried anything new or different, then we’d never have shaken cocktails. As bartenders, we have more to learn from trying something we’ve never heard of than outright condemning it because we’ve never done it before,” he says.

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Where are you from originally?
I’ve lived in Charlotte most of my life, but I was born in the United Kingdom. I consider myself a Charlotte native.

What got you into bartending?
My grandfather always wanted my brother and I to appreciate wine, and my dad was from Belgium near Saint Sixtus monestary, so he wanted us to know about beer. After being a barista for several years, I felt like bartending would give me a more complete understanding of drinks in general: wine, beer, liquor, coffee, tea — everything.

What was your first restaurant/bar job?
My first drinks job was as a barista at Dilworth Coffee in Southpark Mall, which luckily led to me working at Dilworth Tasting Room just a few months after the original location first opened.

How would you describe your bartending style?
“Open-minded,” I think bartending style depends on three things: service, mixology, and movement. Service meaning how a bartender acts at work. In general, I’m reserved and welcoming with new guests, and progressively more gregarious with regulars. Mixology, in this case, means what’s important to the bartender in the drinks they’re making, traditions vs. new techniques, tools, and ingredients. I put my guest’s preferences on a higher pedestal than adhering strictly to tradition, or needlessly forcing some new gadget I saw online onto the menu. Movement is harder to describe. Sometimes I move fluidly, and I’m dancing with the other bartenders, sharing a well. Other times I’m more direct and robotic, but I try to be more of the former.

What spirit are you currently into right now?
I think sugar cane spirits need more representation, in Charlotte at least. Most menus focus on white, dark, and spiced rum, and most only offer daiquiri and mojito variations, or maybe rum as a substitute base in another classic. I’d like to see more selections that highlight the unique grassy/funky notes of different styles of cane spirits.

Do you have a particular approach or philosophy when creating a new cocktail?
I feel like I’m fortunate I came into bartending from working with coffee and a lot of experience as well as international cuisine cooking with my family. Between coffee and cooking, I learned to identify the roles of the ingredients. For cooking, it’s like breaking down a dish into something like “salt, fat, acid, heat.” Which is a good way to begin to understand the ingredients, tools, and techniques that make a dish work. With coffee, it’s more bitter, spice, sweet, fat, which explains a lot of coffee drinks, and for cocktails, it’s sweet, sour, spice, liquor, and length. My father was also a chemist, metallurgist, farmer, and overall mad scientist. So for me, those components all have very nuanced and infinitely complex roles in making drinks, but on the surface, it’s how I approach all of my new drink recipes.

What Charlotte-area bars do you like to go to when you’re not on the clock?
I think the bars I always want to go back to are less about the drinks and more about the people. It’s like so many things, it depends on what mood I’m in, but it’s less about going to the bar as it is about getting to spend time with people I don’t normally see, because we all work the same hours. Seaboard on South Blvd is great. They always have something going on, from specials to games to live music and a thriving wine club. I still like going to Dilworth Tasting Room on East Tremont, or visiting Alejandro at the DTR Southpark location to see how the program there has evolved. Eddie’s Place and Angry Ales are my comfort bars. I just always know what I want, and they’re great industry spots after work.

What’s your favorite cocktail?
Tricky, it depends on so many things. Ordering a cocktail isn’t like ordering coffee. Coffee is a source of comfort and convenience. Most people learn their order, their cafe, sometimes even their baristas, and never change. With cocktails, I like seeing what other bartenders have come up with. Otherwise, I think everyone who knows me knows I drink Fernet Branca and a beer, unless there’s Underberg or someone’s drinking Malort or Chartreuse. Those are not my “comfort” drinks, but I do love the chance to share one.

Recipe for the home bartender
This is my first real original cocktail. Coca-Cola has always been my drink of choice growing up, and bartending, I found a lot of flavours that either reminded me of cola or felt like they should pair well. So after a lot of experimenting with bases, liqueurs, ratios, infusion, barrel-aging, and all kinds of stuff, I came up with The Ghent, which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a city in Belgium, where my family is from. Surprise, it has Fernet.

The Ghent
2 oz. Rye Whiskey (I like High West Double Rye for the added bite)
¾ oz. Maple Syrup (the turbidity is important here, don’t use a clear sweetener)
½ oz. Averna Amaro (for me, this generates a lot of the cola flavour)
¼ oz. Fernet Branca (the menthol notes lift this drink)
2 dashes Bittercube Cherrybark-Vanilla bitters (or use and adjust any bitters to personal taste)

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail mixing glass with ice and stir. “There’s no way to speed this up. Take your time and let the sweetness and heat balance out.” Strain into a coupe or Nick & Nora glass. Optional: use lemon peel and orange peel to garnish. Pro tip: “Pairs great with a cigar or after any meal.”

Cheers!

Check out our other Behind the Stick bartender profiles.