“The outdated joke is that Arizona is only a bunch of sand dunes like [in] Lawrence of Arabia,” says Chadwick Worth, co-owner of Bar 1912 in Phoenix. “[It’s] humorous, however fairly removed from the reality.” Typically misunderstood, Arizona within the standard creativeness is barren and dry, not the form of place you may think is botanically vibrant. 

However Arizona, in reality, has the third highest variety of biomes within the U.S. It’s dwelling to grasslands, tundra, chaparral, coniferous forest, woodlands and desert, and it’s the one state to comprise 4 separate desert areas, every with its personal setting, wildlife. Phoenix, on the northern finish of the Sonoran Desert, is especially recognized for its wealthy biodiversity, together with “many leguminous bushes and columnar cacti,” says Worth. The preconceived concept of Arizona couldn’t be farther from the reality. 

With a menu titled “The 6 Ecosystems of Arizona,” Bar 1912 hopes to squash these misconceptions. Every drink is called after one of many aforementioned biomes, providing friends a approach to expertise the entire state straight from the consolation of the trendy cocktail hideaway’s bar stools. 

The head of the menu is the Desert Martini, a symphony of flavors which have been foraged, extracted and preserved from an array of domestically grown botanicals like cactus paddle and Buddha’s hand citrus. Worth was impressed by a foraging journey with wild meals professional and preservationist Pascal Baudar, who makes use of ancestral preservation strategies to seize a way of place, showcasing the weather of ecosystems collectively. “The concept that each setting has its personal distinctive affect is so easy, but so profound,” says Worth. He determined to take the same, “what grows collectively, goes collectively” method when growing the Desert Martini.

Worth and his group began by making completely different extracts, which included substances like Buddha’s hand citrus, palo verde beans (that are barely candy and style like younger backyard peas), ocotillo blossom (from a spindly cactus-like shrub) and creosote blossom (a terpene-rich flower that mimics the scent of the desert after it rains). By mixing the extracts with vodka, the group created what they dubbed an Arizona wild botanical gin.

Blaise Faber, Worth’s enterprise associate, has been making vermouth for years and developed the bar’s home cactus vermouth. The terroir-driven ingredient is constructed from vegetation like tomatillo husk, recent and dehydrated cactus paddles, hoja santa and dehydrated Tohono O’odham squash seed (a barely candy, historical squash with deep roots within the Tohono O’odham Nation). Faber blends these extracts with desert honey—made by bees that feed off the pollen from the identical vegetation used within the vermouth and gin—with a dry, high-acid white wine and a fortifying dose of mezcal.

As a substitute of the orange bitters typical of a Martini, the Desert Martini calls on creosote and citrus bitters constructed from the blossoms, black orange, black lime, blood orange and Buddha’s hand extracts. “Creosote is what you scent when it rains within the Southwest desert,” explains Worth, “and citrus blossoms are wildly plentiful all throughout the city Southwest.”

It’s not usually {that a} Martini is so expressive of a particular place. However the Desert Martini is sort of a liquid terrarium, a reminder that Arizona isn’t simply “a bunch of sand dunes.” Even its presentation underscores the concept: To serve the drink, the bar pours every of the layered elements right into a mixing glass and stirs them collectively earlier than straining into a calming carafe. An accompanying coupe is then sprayed with the creosote and citrus bitters, garnished with two skewered olives and a pickled onion. “The empty glass delivered first embodies the dryness and thirstiness of being within the desert,” says Worth. When the bartender fills the coupe to the brim, it “reminds us that the Sonoran Desert is the wettest desert on the planet, teeming with flora, fauna and exquisite flavors.”