WHAT ARE THE PRODUCTS USED BY A BARTENDER?

This chapter is fundamental for an understanding of the text that follows: what are bartender products, how can they be classified and how can they be understood in relation to the approach given?

It is therefore a question of understanding the concept of “product” from the perspective of the field of gastronomy and appreciating that in this field we can talk about gastronomic products and non-gastronomic products (something which is also valuable when undertaking the company-minded processes required to open a cocktail bar). We then go on to establish how gastronomic products can in turn be classified into two large families: edible gastronomic products (which contain two large subfamilies: unelaborated products and products made by the food industry) and inedible gastronomic products (the tools that the bartender uses when making cocktails). This presents us a background from which to proceed to the main aims of this volume: from a general understanding of the concept of “product”, we then examine the field of gastronomy and develop our ideas from the particular perspective of a speciality such as a cocktail.