A great drink overseas will never taste as good at home

Opinion

April 9, 2026 — 6:00am

Sometimes it’s so obvious, it’s a cliche. If you’re drinking an orange-tinged Spritz, you are probably in Venice. A Singapore Sling, and you’re in the famous Long Bar at Raffles. A Chimay Trappist ale in a thick glass chalice, and you could be sitting at the site of the historic Abbaye Notre-Dame de Scourmont in southern Belgium, where it is made, or in a cosy, wood-lined bar in Brussels – useful information if you have had one too many.

When you really want to know where you are, look at what is in your glass. It’s the liquid equivalent of those helpful maps on the side of the street that always flag “You Are Here”.

So many of these once-rare, highly localised drinks are now available in every good bar around the world, but something special happens when you have them at their birthplace.

When you sip a cabernet sauvignon in a vineyard restaurant in Bordeaux and ask the sommelier where it is from – and she points out the window to the sloping vines, their heart-shaped leaves fluttering in the breeze, and says “there”.

Or when you visit a sake brewery museum such as Gekkeikan in Fushimi, Kyoto, and learn how the grains of rice are graded, polished, washed, soaked and fermented, using the famously soft water from underground springs—that’s when you start to “get” what sake can be.

Sure, you can make mint tea at home. But in Tunisia, it becomes a fragrant, elegant, social ritual woven from gunpowder green tea, sugar and fresh spearmint leaves, poured from on high into tiny glasses and served – if you are an honoured guest – with a few pine nuts. An invitation to pause, to join the conversation, to be part of a more civilised world.

It’s the best defence against a world in which everyone orders Diet Coke, wherever they may be.

You’re not just drinking what’s in front of you; you’re drinking everything in – the culture, the history, the climate.

Crack open a coconut at a farm in the Mekong Delta and drink the sweet, cool coconut water straight from the husk, marvelling at the freshness. Taste your first cup of ara (made from fermented high-altitude barley, rice or wheat) in Bhutan, surely a vital contribution to the country’s high Gross National Happiness score.

It’s why I’ll always have a gin and tonic in London – at The Connaught, preferably, where Agostino Perrone has raised it to an art form. But I’ll also order one in tropical South-East Asia, as a nod to the history of tonic water’s quinine being used as a protection against malaria.

Perhaps Captain’s Choice could curate a high-end itinerary that would whisk you by private jet to the birthplace of the world’s most famous cocktails, from Harry’s New York Bar in Paris for a White Lady, to Hussong’s Cantina in Ensenada, Baja California, for a margarita. Where do I sign?

But drinks, like everything else, are changing. Do the young Portuguese drop by a bar for a quick swig of sweet, sticky, cherry liqueur (ginjinha), as their elders have been doing since the mid-19th century? Ginjinha came about when an entrepreneurial friar first soaked sour cherries in aguardente (similar to brandy), sugar and cinnamon. There are fruit-based ferments all over the world, but ginjinha is as much a national treasure of Portugal as its caramelised pastel de nata (custard tart).

This is, perhaps, how we should travel: seeking out those small, everyday pleasures and local rituals that enlarge our understanding of culture, history and identity. It’s the best defence against a world in which everyone orders Diet Coke, wherever they may be.