A cocktail bar is no longer bound by menu. More often than not, we pick a drink simply because it is listed. But what if your cocktails now are built around your mood, seasonal produce, or whatever is fermenting in the bar’s lab?This shift is not just about sleeker tools at the bar console or the bartender’s theatrical presentation of your favourite drink, but also about the process of extracting the exact flavours out of the key ingredients used in the cocktail. It is time to pay close attention to the glass bottles lined along bar shelves — lemons, chillies, and fruits suspended mid-ferment. They’re not décor, but the new building blocks of flavour.Though India is no stranger to fermentation, with dishes like idli, dosa, kanji, pickles, shikanji, this anaerobic biochemical process became a global phenomena with food trends that popularised sourdough, kimchi and kombucha. From lemons and tomatoes to chillies and beyond, fermentation is becoming central to modern bartending. India, of course, has always had this language; think idli, dosa, kanji, pickles, shikanji. But it took sourdough, kimchi and kombucha going global for us to recognise its craft value. Today fermentation underpins a new kind of cocktail-making, one that leans on house-made vinegars, lacto-fermented syrups, kombuchas and kefirs to build depth, texture and a certain “funk”.