Cocktails have a new ingredient: perfume. Fragrant cocktails are making their way into many a bartender’s arsenal, thanks to Mandy Aftel, of Aftelier Perfumes. She is helping to usher in this new phenomenon in bars and restaurants across the United States with her fragrances, sourced from all-natural ingredients.

Aftel’s scents hit the cocktail world when mixologist Audrey Sanders discovered her book, Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance (which Aftel co-wrote with chef and restaurant owner Daniel Patterson).

Top bartenders are now using the scents (6 of which are bottled and sold by William Sonoma) by diluting them in spirits and spritzing them on glasses and garnishes. Certainly, cocktails appeal to our senses of taste and sight, but next time you’re sitting at the bar, take a whiff of your favorite cocktail and let it appeal to a different sense.

Source

Perfumes to Sip as Well as Sniff, The New York Times