The Rusty Barrel Series: Making Serves on Camera

Most of what we do happens live, once, in front of a few hundred people. This autumn we are doing something slower. Rusty Barrel asked us to design and film a short series of serves built around their bottle, and we are a few weeks into shooting it.

It is the other half of the business, and the half most people do not see. Drinks brands hire us to make their product taste its best in a glass and to show it in a way that bars, shops and drinkers at home can copy. No stage, no crowd. Just the liquid, the light and a camera that notices everything.

Six serves, each one under ninety seconds on screen. The brief was to start with the drink people already know and move outward: a classic made properly, a long drink for summer, something with heat, something for winter, a two-ingredient serve for home that takes no effort at all, and one that is pure showing off.

Every serve went through the same process. We tasted the bottle neat, then with water, then over ice, and wrote down what it did at each stage. Then we built around what we found rather than around what we wanted to make. A spirit tells you what it wants to be mixed with if you listen for long enough.

A pour that takes four seconds live takes forty minutes on camera. The glass has to be spotless under lights that show every fingerprint. The ice has to be clear and cut to the same size each take. Garnish is prepared in triplicate because the first one wilts under the lamps and the second one is the one you drop. Our hands have to do the same thing at the same speed every time so the editor has something to cut between.

We also learned quickly that the camera does not care how a drink tastes. A beautiful drink that films badly is a problem, so some recipes changed between the test kitchen and the set: a darker syrup for contrast, a wider peel so the oils catch the light, a coupe swapped for a rocks glass because the heavy base reads better from the side.

The series is in production now and the first films are due before the end of the year. They will live on Rusty Barrel's own channels first, and we will share them here once they are out, along with the recipes written up properly so you can make them at home.

If you have a product and want to see it in a glass, filmed or poured live, this is the kind of work we like most. Get in touch and tell us about the bottle.