A grand new cocktail bar has opened in the top level of an 1885 heritage-listed building in the CBD. It’s here that the Australian-made Japanese Slipper was said to be created. It’s also named after one of the leading botanists of the time, Ferdinand von Mueller. And the drinks are designed to capture the romance of a stroll through a botanic garden.
Is it high concept? Yes. Is it delicious? Absolutely. Bar Ferdinand’s bar manager Greg Thompson is making sure the two aren’t mutually exclusive, bringing his chops over from some of Melbourne’s great drinking spots including Apollo Inn, Gimlet at Cavendish House and Dinner by Heston, and putting the garden in the glass.
Here’s Thompson now with three drinks you need to try when you visit Bar Ferdinand.
Oak
Oak is probably the best place to start if you want to understand how Bar Ferdinand thinks about a drink. It takes its cue from the “Lady Loch” oak tree in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, which stood for more than a century before it fell, with saplings later replanted in its place. That story of loss and renewal felt like a good fit for a cocktail built around maturation and oak influence. The drink uses a local unaged whisky that’s force-aged in house with different oak to create a kind of house rye, then finished in a spirit-forward style with bitters and honey. The cocktail itself will keep changing, but that whisky component will stay at the centre of it.
Japanese Slipper
The Japanese Slipper is a direct nod to the drink’s origins in the same building, where it was first created at Mietta’s in 1984. This version keeps the spirit of the original, but takes it in a slightly different direction. It uses house melon liqueur, yuzu liqueur and citrus cordial, with clarified honeydew melon fortified with melon eau-de-vie to give it that melon depth without pushing it too far into sweetness. It’s stirred down rather than served in that bright green, high-gloss way people might remember, but it still has the same playful energy and recognisable flavour profile.
Arid
Arid is the one for anyone who likes the shape of a spicy Margarita but wants something drier and more savoury. It’s built around agave and cactus-like flavours, using a range of agave-based ingredients alongside prickly pear, black lime and jalapeño. The prickly pear is lacto-fermented to bring texture and savouriness, while the jalapeño is distilled for a dry, vegetal edge, then reintroduced in macerated form to layer the spice back in without letting it take over. It’s a cocktail that really leans into the idea of a landscape – in this case something dry, spiky and sunbaked, but still properly refreshing to drink.
Bar Ferdinand, Level 1/7 Alfred Pl, Melbourne, open 5pm-1am Fri-Sat, 5pm-midnight Sun-Thurs, bar-ferdinand.com.au, @bar.ferdinand