Espresso Martini Serve Guide

Welcome to the World of the Espresso Martini

The Perfect Serve:

  1. Get the bottle and a couple of coupes in the fridge before serving. The colder the better.
  2. Grab a cocktail shaker, strainer, jigger, ice and your cold glasses.
  3. Shakerless? Head to our store or at a pinch, improvise. We recommend freezing the bottle for an hour (max) and blending without ice, or using a glass jar as a shaker.
  4. Pour 100ml per serve (125ml if you are using a large glass) into the shaker and half-fill it with ice.
  5. Shake well for 15 seconds (time to get the iPhone timer out) and strain out into the glasses.
  6. To finish, top with three coffee beans and sink into creamy oblivion. The beans are meant to represent health, wealth and happiness – we’ll take all three.


The History

2020: the year of Zoom, takeaway pints, mad dashes back from Europe to avoid Boris’s curfew and QR Codes. Well done on making it this far and welcome to our latest launch; the Black Lines Espresso Martini.

Let's set the scene. It's England in the early 80s; a rain sodden rock where pints are flat and warm, the food is beige, the Space Hopper was invented, and the cocktail scene is a bit of a joke. Who could know that things are about to get a right, royal shakeup? Leaning up against the bar at Greek Street’s Soho Brasserie, a strong, sexy supermodel delivers the clearest of briefs:

"Make me a drink that will wake me up and f*ck me up."

Dick Bradsell, on the other side of the counter, willingly obliges. With those carefully selected words, the Espresso Martini is born, kickstarting Britain’s transformation into a racy, enchanting powerhouse of cocktail culture. 

 

Ingredients

The Espresso Martini has taken 3 years of experimentation and refinement, obsessing over every detail, from sourcing, to processing, to achieving perfect balance in the glass. To deliver that balance, we partnered with two of the very best British producers:

 

- Chase's field-to-bottle Potato Vodka.

 

- Origin's San Fermin cold brew coffee.

 

Meet the illustrator

Anna Soba

Brighton-based artist Anna Soba has had a pencil in her hand for as long as she can remember. Her traditional work features expressive depictions of the feminine form with a sprinkling of cats. She took a loose brief around the story and importance of the Espresso Martini and produced something equally significant in her art.

 “In the beginning, I called this illustration ‘Kick Like a Girl’, which, in my opinion, means something strong and powerful. The Espresso Martini lady kicks the coffee bean like she means it, I bet she’s a feminist.”

Her response to the cocktail effortlessly delivered a relevant and contemporary vision of the powerful feminine presence that inspired the serve.