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How a cocktail collab goes from idea to your shelf

Read time 5 Mins

Posted 29 Feb 2024

By
Alexandra Whiting

The birth of a bar cart MVP – a behind-the-scenes look at the Blood Orange & Yuzu Sour cocktail mixer, our collab with Mr. Consistent.

History is full of remarkable, world-changing, collaborations. Musical (Linkin Park and Jay-Z with Numb), political (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, with, you know, the end of WWII), fashionable (too many to count), and now, the drinkable, Dan’s Daily and Mr. Consistent with the delicious Yuzu & Blood Orange Sour cocktail mixer. If you’ve tried it, you’ll know it’s straight-up delicious, highly drinkable, sunshine in a bottle, but if you’ve had some time to play, you’ll also know one of its key characteristics is versatility. Add amaretto, add bourbon (or both, hello Yuzu & Blood Orange Godfather). Try it with gin, tequila, or vodka. Delish. It’s the Tom Hanks of the drink world – there’s no role it can’t take.

To give you a little insight into how this bottle came to be, we spoke to Mikey Sebire, Mr. Consistent co-founder and product director and Mai Tai guy, and our own Lara Chan-Baker, Dan’s Daily Editor-in-Chief and equal opportunity cocktail enthusiast (but twist her arm and she’ll settle on a Dirty Martini).

The meet cute“Mr. Consistent came to Dan’s Daily with the general idea of doing something together, and even from our initial conversations, I know it sounds cheesy, but there was such good energy,” says Lara. “We’re all people who love drinks, but we come from different perspectives. Mikey and the Mr. Consistent team are master bartenders and product developers, while the Dan’s Daily team have an editorial lens, but the passion for excellent drinks is definitely shared. We all believe that bottled mixers can be great – but only if they’re made with real consideration and quality ingredients.” Like the makings of any great relationship, they didn’t know what it was yet, but they knew they wanted to do it. “When you come across people who love cocktails as much as you do, and you get along so well, you know it’s right,” says Mikey.

Watch: Lara and Mikey discuss how this collab came together

The briefOnce it was decided that the teams would work together to make a mixer, the key objective was to make something that didn’t already exist, that impressed the palates of both the Mr. Consistent and Dan’s teams. “Obviously, it had to be delicious,” says Lara, “but, for me at least, I wanted something that would be a total pain to make at home from scratch. I wanted to bottle the kind of drink that I would order at a bar and pay $25 for. The kind of thing that would take six hours and a heap of ingredient sourcing to pull off. I wanted to be able to pour that straight out, add a spirit and serve it to my friends.” 
Polling the peopleLara and Mikey, along with their teams, had ideas of what they wanted this bottle to be, but it wasn’t just their opinions that were considered. Dan’s Daily posed questions to their online community to find what they wanted to drink. “It was an interesting part of the process,” says Lara, “We’re thinking about so many considerations that the community aren’t. They are just telling you what flavours they like, so you get back stuff you maybe hadn’t thought of. And all of that went into the final product.” 
The Willy Wonka dayThe Dan’s Daily team flew up to the Mr. Consistent production facility on the Gold Coast for a day of creativity. Both teams were impressed by the other – Mr. Consistent by the Dan’s team’s ability to think like bartenders and construct complex, considered drinks, and Dan’s by the Mr Consistent team’s painstaking meticulousness. “I was mesmerised by how much we had to play with in the mixing room, so many homemade syrups and liquors, it meant we could get really, really creative,” says Lara. This, of course, was not always fruitful, many of the experiments were not what you’d call ‘drinkable’. “A lot of them were very bad!” But that’s also part of the process, assures Mikey, “If you’re not making shitty drinks on creation day, you’re not trying hard enough.” 
Finding the finalistsMixing days, while far removed from the Dan’s team’s day-to-day, is the usual process when it comes to making something new at Mr. Consistent. What was a departure for the team was all the extra critiques. “You usually go into it with a bit of an idea of what you want to make, and there are a number of directions that can then go in, and then you whittle it down to what your team, friends and family really like,” says Mikey. “Having any kind of panel is immensely valuable, but having a panel like the Dan’s Daily team, who have a solid background in drinks, who know the market and the customer, it meant we could really perfect and correct.” 
Judges’ decisionLike any good competition story, three finalists, all very different in style and flavour – and probably vocal stylings, if they could sing – were chosen, and taken back to Melbourne and the Dan’s Daily HQ for more rounds of blind sipping, mixing and judging. In the end, the lip-smackingly good, multitalented Yuzu & Blood Orange won out. Balancing those hero flavours are pineapple juice, rooibos tea, rosewater and bitters, making for a complex-to-make, easy-to-sip finished product – with all natural, 98% Australian ingredients. The bottle launched in peak summer and became a staple on bar carts across the country, including those of their creators. 
How they’ve been using it“I have gone through so many bottles, and I’m not getting them for free!” says Lara, whose favourite way to drink it is with an aged tequila, like Don Julio Reposado, but has been experimenting with the Godfather mix. Mikey served it as a Christmas Day Mimosa with Fireball and bubbles, “It had great feedback on Christmas morning, that freshness with the cinnamon flavours really works.” He’s also been trying it with soju. “Grape-flavoured soju is my favourite to pair it with. It makes for a great little low-ABV afternoon cocktail. I wasn’t expecting the flavour combination to hit but I was pleasantly surprised.” It’s the mix that keeps on mixing and spreading delight. If you haven’t tried it yet, you must, and if you have, you know how good it is, and should probably stock up as stocks are limited. Available exclusively at Dan Murphy’s.
For more ways to mix the Dan’s Daily x Mr. Consistent Blood Orange & Yuzu cocktail mixer, try our dedicated recipes for the Punch, G&T and Sour.
Shop related products
Mr ConsistentYuzu & Blood Orange Sour 750mL
Yuzu & Blood Orange Sour 750mL
$29.99 each
 
Authour image
Alexandra WhitingWriter, mum and afternoon spritz enthusiast. Thinks most gatherings should be celebrated with Champagne.
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LearnInterviewSpiritsCocktailsCocktail makingPre-batched cocktails
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