From the colorful sweet drinks of a while back to today’s refined, mindful sipping. In between, an industry that in just a few years has gone through deep evolution. With sixty years of drinks and bartenders rotating behind the counter, it’s no surprise that today Red Garter is considered a litmus test of the changes that have taken place both in the world of mixing and in the taste of guests. Since 1962, the venue on Via de’ Benci has gone through shifts that radically changed the way people drink: what happened on both sides of the bar of this Florentine night spot has mirrored a gradual but unstoppable transformation in the way of approaching drinking, common to all of Italy. Changes that owner Riccardo Tarantoli has witnessed first-hand, thanks to a past as a bartender before successfully stepping into the role of a nightlife entrepreneur. It’s with him that we go through the main evolutions of how we drink. There’s no doubt that between the 1980s and 1990s some questionable gastronomic alchemies were carried out on the banks of the Arno as well. Those were the years when on the table you’d see strawberry risotto and champagne triumph, for example, while at the bar colorful vodka-based cocktails reigned unchallenged. Many venues went through the phase where mixing went after “catching” factors like trashy garnishes, little umbrellas and straws. “In that period a sweeter and sweeter taste was dominant — Tarantoli explains — and to some extent it still holds on. The classics were distorted to suit the taste of the time: the Caipirinha was ‘bastardized’ into the Caipiroska, while the Mojito became a top seller thanks to large amounts of sugar at the expense of rum quality. In those years, basically, the direction was sweet and colorful drinking”. At Red Garter, in particular, the “Zombie” (light rum, dark rum, aperol, brandy and pineapple juice), the “4 bianchi” (gin, vodka, triple sec and rum) and IBA classics like the Sex on the Beach, the Americano and the Long Island were strong. “The last two are still among the most requested drinks — Riccardo Tarantoli continues — as a bridge between the ‘before’ and the ‘after’, and alongside them comes the boom of the Spritz and the great comeback of the Negroni”. On this note, let’s not forget that the cocktail invented by Count Camillo Negroni — which in 2021 grabbed the title of most-drunk alcoholic drink in the world, knocking the Old Fashioned off the top — was born right here in Florence just over a century ago. Equally meaningful to understand how taste has evolved is the path of the Gin Tonic, another deeply Tuscan drink — almost half of the juniper used globally comes from this region: “Today people drink it with a slightly different approach than in the past — concludes Red Garter’s owner — because more and more often young people don’t just order it: they want to know about the brands, the botanicals, the type of mixing, and so on. Small producers’ gins are getting valued, kicking off the craft gin boom. Not only that: today’s more aware consumers are turning cocktails into real substitutes for beer or wine, pairing a drink with their meal”. A shift in the way we drink that goes back to the end of the 2000s: “The credit goes to a new generation of bartenders like the ones at Jerry Thomas in Rome — Federico Silvio Bellanca explains, author of many books and TV programs on the bar world — who bring the classics of mixing back into the spotlight, starting a new school, that of the Twist on classic: you take slightly outdated cocktails and try to give them new life by playing with ingredients and borrowing from the kitchen techniques like homemade preparations, fermentations, smoking and spherifications”.

But cocktails aren’t the only thing that has seen Red Garter as a privileged witness of changes in the drinks world. Think of the attempted rise — never fully completed — of craft beers, which reached our country about twenty years ago but managed to carve out a space only in a certain type of specialized venue. Italy discovered craft beer to the point of becoming one of the most lively countries in terms of production and variety, with microbreweries, brewpubs and restaurants offering pairings, but this trend never caught on in the nightlife market, mostly because of the difference in volumes needed to make it sustainable on the menu. For its part, Red Garter chose to pair the standard offer with a Lager beer — that is, a bottom-fermented one — of its own production, made in an old brewery just outside London. The choice to offer guests a different beer from the usual ones comes from the will to mark the name and style of Red Garter even more for the younger crowd: it’s no coincidence that the recipe was developed by Riccardo Tarantoli himself together with the English master brewer, and today this “blonde” with its fresh, slightly aromatic taste is on the menu in both the mother house in Florence and the dependance in Barcelona, where 500 hectoliters a year are served.