Forget Patiala, here's Patel peg

From serving in front of the bar to going behind it, life for this sommelier is one big swig. The man who didn't touch alcohol till the age of 23, talks about feni replacing tequila in the Maheshwar Margarita, and his new book on cocktails

Bhaichand Patel mixing drinks

If you are what you were not meant to be, life can be rewarding. And Bhaichand Patel's is. Born to a beef-banned, drinks-denied Gujju family, the last thing Patel could become was a cocktail-mixer. He became just that. And made a name as a sommelier after spending a lifetime being a career diplomat.

But following convention is something Patel had never set out to do. "I am a firm believer in enjoying life," he says. "I spent more than two decades with the UN and crossed continents. When I retired, I wanted to keep myself occupied. So, I did my newspaper columns, one incidentally for MiD-DAY, threw parties and entertained people."

And in the middle of it all, he also did a book, Happy Hours, "a first-of-its-kind that tells you all you need to set up your very own bar and make it the most talked about one in town." But isn't there a lot of stuff already on the net on the subject? "Mine stands apart because it is India-friendly no recipes with fruits or other stuff that's not available in local markets and nothing esoteric either. Plus, there are a lot of local cocktails."

True. If you leaf through the book, you will find Puerto Rican Pink Lady serenading with Maheshwar Margarita.
"The best feni cocktail I have come across, courtesy my friend Raja Richard Holkar, is a variation of the Margarita in which you use feni instead of tequila. Everything else remains the same. I have named the cocktail after the Holkar fort on the banks of the Narmada, where I first tasted it."

Apart from such desi concoctions, the book also offers information on premier liquor brands and their availability in India as well as entertaining asides on the most expensive whiskey in the world to the status of alcohol in ancient India. Did you know for instance that drinking was a way of life in Aryan and Dravidian cultures? Here's what Patel writes: "Women drank as much as men. The Aryans were particularly fond of a brew produced from a mix of rice, jaggery and mohua blossoms while the Dravidians were partial to toddy tapped from palm trees."
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What's the costliest cocktail in the world? "The Side Car which you can have for Rs 22,000 in the Hemingway Bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The elixir is a mixture of lemon juice, Cointreau and a cognac that is more than a century old which was almost seized from the hotel by the Nazis during the German occupation."

All this information from someone who didn't touch liquor till the age of 23. "I didn't touch beef till that age too. My first big jump was at the age of 18 when I ate an egg," Patel chuckles, good-humouredly.

His infectious humour spikes his unusual recipe book. Take this one: Ramnikbhai is down at the CCI bar in Churchgate where he bumps into Behram, the Parsi bachelor who lives in his building on Malabar Hill. They have quite a few drinks together. When he gets home he tells his wife that Behram had told him that he had made love to every woman in their building except one. The wife responded: "That must be that stuck-up bitch Mrs Mehta in 5D."

Such freespiritedness is not commonplace at his age (Patel is 73). "Guess, it comes from leading a nomadic life. And from being everywhere," he offers. In London, during the swinging sixties, for example, where Patel, and that libertine writer Shastibrata, had a ball. "We lived life. Had lots of sex. Sadly, London today is not the same. People are cautious because there's a sea of diseases." The action, Patel feels, has shifted to Indian cities now. "Look at Delhi. People have so much freedom. Girls walk around in jeans and everything else. It was unthinkable in our time. Holding a girl's hand was the ultimate fantasy."

So what's next? "My novel. But hey, it may not even get published. That's okay. The idea is to keep having fun."