BUCKFAST-loving Brits will soon be able to inhale their favourite drink through their eyes and lungs.
Pop-up bar Alcoholic Architecture boasts a “walk-in cloud of breathable cocktail” – created by bartenders vaporising alcohol into the atmosphere of the bar.
Visitors “drink” their airborne cocktails by absorbing alcohol in the super-saturated air through their eyes and lungs.
The swanky London-based venue, which asks patrons to “breathe responsibly”, is currently featuring a crowd-pleasing cloud of gin and tonic.
But managers say that “notorious” Scottish Buckfast is on the shortlist of drinks soon to be vaporised by their experimenting bartenders – giving discerning London drinkers a taste of Scotland’s “other national drink.”
Alcoholic Architecture opened in London’s pricey Borough Market at the end of July, touting itself as “the world’s first alcoholic weather system for your tongue where meteorology and mixology collide.”
Bar bosses say: “The installation explodes drinks to the scale of architecture for a beautiful, inhabitable world that spatialises the world’s best cocktails and creates a fully immersive alcohol environment.”
Patrons are charged £12.50 for an hour in the rarefied atmosphere of the bar – where they will breathe in the equivalent of one spirit and mixer drink.
Guests are asked to don plastic suits to protect their clothes from the boozy air created by powerful humidifiers – which reduces visibility to less than a metre.
And customers will be cut off after an hour inside – as the alcohol inhaled bypasses the liver, dramatically enhancing its effect.
Once inside customers can also “order a specially curated menu of drinks presented in the regular format (in a glass)”, with bartenders claiming the “flavour perception” and “taste profile” of the drinks are enhanced by the alcohol in the air.
Buckfast is already on the menu – mixed with whisky in the form of a shot, or with yellow Chartreuse in a cocktail – which patrons can drink from a human skull shaped into a drinking vessel.
Drinkers can expect to pay around £7.50 for the Buckfast cocktail in the London bar – around the cost of the average 75cl of the wine norther of the border.
But now bar managers say that Buckfast is also on the list of alcohol to be vaporised in the bar’s lab – so metropolitan drinkers in central London can get a taste of the 15%ABV tonic wine.
Lynsey Mackay, Studio Manager for the project, has confirmed that the beverage – a favourite in Scotland – is on the shortlist of booze to appear in the drinkable crowd.
After six years in the making, the bar will only be open for six months, with the owners claiming its short shelf life allows them to be “radically experimental.”
A spokesman said: “As this is open and then closed in a flash we can be highly specialized, strange and unusual in what we are providing.”
