The world’s first virtual reality cocktail has arrived.
To start, patrons strap on the VR headset and spend two minutes in the Scottish Highlands and London’s Covent Garden theater district, complete with music swelling in the background.
When the time is up and voyeurs take the goggles and headphones off, they discover they’re right back in London’s One Aldwych hotel, with an real, tangible Origin cocktail — consisting of Dalmore12-year-old whisky, Merlet cherry liqueur, cherry puree, grapefruit juice, chocolate bitters and Lallier Champagne — in front of them.
Pedro Paulo, named Best International Bartender at the Lisbon Bar Show 2016, runs the bar at One Aldwych and wanted the drink to be a crowd pleaser. Drinkers also get a sealed glass hip flask with sherry wood chip smoke so that can be topped up at their leisure.
So why bother with the virtual reality tour of the Highlands and Britain when the drink alone seems great? According to CNN, London’s “food scene is always hungry for sensation” in the theater district.
The more important aspect it seems, is that the two-minute tour of the Highlands was made in collaboration with Dalmore whisky to be an introduction to the Scottish whisky-making process. As the name of the drink would imply, the tour and the drink combine as a look at how that whisky cocktail comes into being.
The whole experience is $23.
While Maureen O’Hare, the CNN reporter who tried the VR tour and the drink, says the VR headset is a “clunky and underwhelming gimmick,” but the research and attentiveness to the food and drinks on the Showtime menu is not. Her verdict: It’s worth sticking around for one or two more.
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