by TM Petaccia

The Aceite y Crema arrives looking like a dare.

At first glance, it reads as a martini, pale and composed but rimmed with a white powder and garnished with an olive — plus something that looks suspiciously like cheese. But the illusion is the point. The cocktail, currently on the winter menu at Hermanita, the speakeasy inside El Malo Tacos in Plaza Midwood, is a clarified mascarpone-washed tequila martini, built with Marsala wine in place of vermouth and finished with cherry bark vanilla bitters. The “cheese” garnish is actually a boozy gelatin candy made from the leftover mascarpone, an intentional, low-waste flourish. Even the rim tells a story: olive oil dehydrated and powdered using tapioca maltodextrin, falling like snow.

“It’s a bit unhinged,” says beverage director Jenna “Duckie” Reynolds. “The cocktail is inspired by an Italian dessert: vanilla ice cream with olive oil. It’s indulgent, creamy, a little sweet, but it still drinks like a martini.”

The balance between familiarity and surprise is the mantra of Reynolds’ work, and it’s rooted as much in her background as in her bar resume.

Before cocktails, Reynolds was a theoretical mathematics major at Carnegie Mellon University with a robotics minor. She brings that same analytical mindset to the bar, talking about cocktails in terms of palate geometry and wavelength: how acidity pulls, where flavors sit, when a drink resolves. A cocktail, in her view, shouldn’t reveal itself all at once. “If you get everything from the first sip, it’s not done,” she says. “You want it to take you on a journey and then land solidly in the center.”

Reynolds has been a part of the Charlotte mixology scene for a number of years, with past stints including Dot Dot Dot and The Crunkleton (where she was profiled in a UP Behind the Stick piece in 2023). But it was her time working as the assistant to Ron Oleksa, corporate mixologist for the various Duckworth’s concepts and Link & Pin, where she credits her real professional growth.

“That man has the best palate of anyone I’ve ever met,” Reynolds says. “He taught me how to physically recognize on your palate what’s missing and where to bring it. When we were working on the margarita for The Loft (at Duckworth’s), we made 25 or 30 margarita variations that day, just making sure we had it down to exactly as we wanted. We put a regal orange twist in there just to get a little more of the orange flavor without needing to go too heavy. I needed a quesadilla before I drove home that day. It was a great day at work.”

It’s why today, even Reynolds’ most unconventional drinks still trace their bones back to something recognizable. “My work with Ron made it easier for me to come here and make a really strong, creative menu, but in the end, it’s about getting the foundation right. For example, the margarita I have on the menu here, the Curryosa, it’s one of our flagships. It’s a curry-tamarind margarita. It’s super fun, but at the end of the day, at its bones, it’s still a margarita. The Hong Kong on my menu, at its bones, is a porn star martini.”

At Hermanita, Reynolds has something she hadn’t fully had before: complete creative control. Owner Andre Lomeli handed her the keys and stepped back. “I can say, ‘Hey, I’m making a cheese tequila martini,’ and he’s like, ‘Don’t tell me. Just do it,’” she laughs. However, it’s the non-creative side to running the bar that Reynolds feels she’s had the most growth. “Learning more of the back-end stuff has been important and also leadership and management. It was really hard for me at first, and it’s still hard for me to discipline people when they need to, or letting people go, or just having to get on people’s booties a bit. I have a long ways to go with that still.”

Although Reynolds has complete creative control, she refuses to have Hermanita be a one-mixologist band. “I really wanted all of my people to be proud to come in every day. So I made sure every bartender who wanted to got at least one cocktail placement on the menu. Even my bar back has a cocktail on the menu.”

In addition to the experience and skills she’s acquired in her various Charlotte stops, Reynolds has been a high-profile participant in a number national and international competitions, earning a number of accolades, including a Top Five finish in the USBG World Mixology Championships and a finalist in the NIKKA Perfect Serve competition which includes bartenders from the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia.

“Competitions remind me that the bartending community is massive,” Reynolds says. “You just see so much crazy, creative stuff from people from different bartending communities. They all have their own ways of doing things. It reinforces one of my favorite things to say which is, ‘There are 101 correct ways to do things and only a couple of wrong ways to do things. So it’s okay to explore.”

She also recently earned a grant from the hospitality nonprofit Another Round, Another Rally. “They did a four-part seminar with a big examination at the end. The top scorers for that get sent on trips. So I’m actually going to France next month to learn about cognac,” she says.

From mathematician to mixologist, Reynolds’ penchant for learning continues to shape a body of work that’s thoughtful, fearless, and full of effervescent joy.

“You wake up every day and choose to be miserable or not. So I just try my best to never wake up and choose to be miserable,” she says.