Get Weird With the Age of Aquarius Cocktail

Any person flipping through a dossier on my life would find that from childhood until now, littered across papers like report cards, teacher’s notes, transcripts, correspondences, psychologist’s notes, recorded schoolyard snickering, employee reviews, and greeting cards are words like the following: Unusual. Different. Peculiar. Quirky. Unconventional. Strange. “Unique.” Bizarre. Odd. Freakish. Eccentric. Offbeat. You know, WEIRD. Even my ESL-parents, whose native language doesn’t even contain a phonetic proxy for the letter W, would switch to English just so they could employ this adjective whenever I baffled them. “Why are you so weird?”

Short answer: I’m an Aquarius.

Aquarians are associated with change, the future, rebellion, revolution, innovation, lifting humanity into higher vibrational ascensions and yaddah yaddah yaddah. Despite being the Water-Bearer of the Zodiac, it’s actually an air sign??? Yea, that’s some Aquarius shit; characterised by whatever is outside of the box (or jug), or any exasperating contradiction. “Love humanity; hate people.” That’s an Aquarian slogan. The most open-minded judgmental people you will meet: The person who brought the communist manifesto as a gift to your baby shower, and weed gummies to your parent’s dinner party. We only go to weddings so we can dance at the reception, we don’t really care about the ceremony. We have great ideas!… if only someone else would do the work. But all that aside, at the end of the day, distill any Aquarius down to their most pure form, and what you’ll get is 100% unadulterated weirdo.

A couple of years ago, it was brought to my attention that a drink I had created, “Age of Aquarius,” had been featured on a YouTube channel about craft cocktails, called The Educated Barfly. The opening line of the accompanying blog post reads “The genesis of this cocktail is a mystery…” Which pleases me, because I want to be anonymously famous. In the video, the gentleman making the drink is very kind and complimentary, but I smiled to myself at the mark where he says that the flavour of the cocktail is one he will never forget and has never tasted before. The most flattering iterations of Different. Unusual. Weird.

Age of Aquarius

To get weird you will need:

• 44 ml mezcal
• 22 ml lime juice
• 22 ml passionfruit syrup (equal parts passionfruit puree and simple syrup)
• 8 ml honey syrup (three parts honey to one part hot water — mix well)
• 6 ml Campari to float
• Garnish with mint (optional)

Add all ingredients except Campari to shaker tin and give it a good swirl. Pour over crushed ice, and float the Campari on top. Add more crushed ice and garnish with mint — or whatever! Express yourself.