San Antonio bar duo joins forces

  • 2015-04-30
Two of San Antonio’s top bartenders are uniting in a new venture.

Joe Hernandez and Javier Gutierrez have left positions at The Last Word and The Brooklynite respectively to start a cocktail consulting company. They also plan to join forces with Alchemy Kombucha and Culture, a San Antonio startup that focuses on brewing the fermented tea drink kombucha.

Neither Gutierrez nor Hernandez went into detail about their decision to leave their former employment, saying only they were looking for “greener pastures”. They are calling their new group, which is a cocktail-consulting company, “Milan and Turin”. At the moment, they are figuring out Alchemy’s cocktails, and in addition, they plan to consult with another San Antonio restaurant. Eventually, they want to open their own cocktail bar.

Plans for Alchemy include making drinks that suggest elements, by using ingredients such as grilled fruit to suggest fire and bubbles to give the impression of air. They also plan to use kombucha in place of ingredients such as ginger beer or soda. To begin, they plan to offer approximately six to 10 drinks that are unusual, such as a mango lassi made with rum, cardamom, and mango yogurt.

Gutierrez and Hernandez might consider working with a banner printing company on a colorful banner to hang above the entrance on opening day, which is slated for early May.