“When I went to a dim sum place, I had tea in a small teacup and thought the action of drinking tea with your hands felt unique,” Dipesh Rai says. “You don’t really drink any other drink with such an action. It inspired me to make a cocktail with the action of drinking tea in mind.”
Rai is poised to take the head bartender position at Orchard next month after developing cocktails like the Fortune Chai in a recent update to the bar’s menu. Founded by Alex Pun, Orchard is Hong Kong’s only bar whose primary focus is on fruit spirits or eau de vie, but drinks like the Fortune Chai showcase Rai and the team’s ability to build creatively on that base concept, evoking ideas like the process of drinking tea in a city like Hong Kong.
Taking cues from the Brandy Alexander, Rai “wanted to capture a dessert cocktail, but … didn’t want the thick, creamy texture that comes with [it]”. Armagnac, a regional brandy distilled from grapes, is fat-washed in brown butter, then batched with liqueurs – a creme de cacao liqueur infused with chai masala and another made to evoke the flavours of biscotti. This forms the drink’s base batch.
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