Priya Pathiyan
September 29, 2025
‘Industry Improver’, ‘World’s Best Bartender’ — Monica Berg’s mixology credentials are prolific, and impeccable. Here, she spills the tea on modern cocktail-making…and where it’s headed. Drink responsibly. This communication is for audiences above the age of 25.
The modern cocktail has a focus — or even hyper-focus — on ingredients, raw materials, attention to detail.
For something to be timeless, you need to stop following others.
My drinks have not changed all that much over the years: The combinations, the ingredients that I like to work with, are still the same. But the expression has matured; become richer and fuller.
As I develop, my drinks also develop.
From 2013, when I was in the Diageo World Class Bartending Competition, to now, I feel like there’s more acceptance for whisky cocktails; people find them more intriguing.
For so many years, we were told “whisky should be drunk like this”. There’s always going to be this transformational period where you start to change the conversation before people catch on.
But so many things have changed after the pandemic. You have a whole new generation in the industry; they don’t have all of this historical baggage.
As for new drinkers, they don’t care about the heritage and the tradition of things. They only care that your brand matches with their brand!
They want a drink that: 1. looks Instagrammable and 2. tastes interesting. Sometimes they don't even look at the menu…they show you a picture on their phone to place the order!
It’s the era of the modern cocktail bar. In the future, we’ll retain what’s good and improve what’s not: So we’ll keep this interest in incredible ingredients, but we’ll refine how we work with them.
We will also be much more consistent… …Because that is the Achilles heel of bartenders — we sometimes aren’t as consistent as we should be. I have been guilty of that, and have learned over the years not to be. Read Monica’s full interview with The Bar India here - https://in.thebar.com/articles/modern-cocktails-monica-berg-on-the-the-moment-the-movement