I’ve men­tioned the mol­e­c­u­lar gas­tron­o­mist Hes­ton Blu­men­thal before, but I’ve now been intro­duced to Eben Free­man, the Blu­men­thal of cock­tails: a mol­e­c­u­lar mixol­o­gist from New York.

On the inter­na­tional cock­tail cir­cuit, Eben Free­man is a mas­sive celebrity. He is A + list. He is Madonna. He’s the future of cock­tails, the future, per­haps, of alco­hol in gen­eral. He’s a lead­ing light among the very mod­ern mixol­ogy set; the hand­ful of men who are busily rein­vent­ing notions on what it is to drink and get drunk.

The liquid-nitrogen-treated mint balls are a vital ingre­di­ent in Freeman’s Mojito of the Future. Early this year, Bac­ardi com­mis­sioned him to redesign the clas­sic cock­tail as a pro­mo­tional exer­cise. […] He com­bined the Bac­ardi, the sugar and the car­bon­ated water with Xan­than gum, so that the base liq­uid of the drink is vis­cous, and the bub­bles from the car­bon are sus­pended within it, some­what spook­ily. Into that mix­ture, Free­man intro­duces the mint beads, along with an equal num­ber of lime beads; they, too, dan­gle eerily in the cock­tail. It looks space-agey, the kind of thing you’d drink at the Torch­wood office party perhaps.

From The Guardian Food & Drink via Clue­less­AboutWine