New west London hotel Templeton Garden has appointed industry veteran Will Meredith to lead the launch of its in-house cocktail bar Sprout.
Meredith, co-founder of specialist drinks consultancy Daisy Age Drinks and former bar manager of award-winning bar Lyaness and ex-head of bars at luxury restaurant group, Tattu, has been named the hotel’s bar director. He has been tasked with establishing the bar concept at Sprout alongside his business partner Ellie Camm.
Sprout is a neighbourhood bar that aims to strike the balance of progressive serves and a welcoming atmosphere. Its name is a symbol of new beginnings and of something fresh taking root.
Meredith and Camm, together with bar manager Dominic Royle, a Lyan Group alumni who worked under Meredith at Lyaness, have drawn inspiration from their tenure in the drinks industry, alongside the expansive garden of the hotel that is overlooked by the bar’s terrace.
The result is a dynamic menu that features both signature mainstays and an ever-changing selection of serves, using a market-stall ethos and incorporating traceable ingredients at the height of their season, including freshly grown herbs from the hotel garden.
The Spirits Business sat down with Meredith to get some exclusive insights into the new bar, and the ‘keystone cocktail approach’ he and Camm have adopted in the curation of the menu.
“The keystone approach is a term used to help us build structure around drinks,” Meredith explained. “Our drinks will all centre around a focal point. That point will differ from drink to drink, whether it be highlighting the benefits of a certain vessel, garnish, ingredient, ice, or any other variable we think stands out above all others. It’s simply a way for us to focus our attention and ensure we don’t lose sight of the purpose of our drinks.
“The menu is our way of expressing simple flavours in a glass. Our goal is simple, to convert tasty flavours from ingredients we know and love at their peak and make tasty drinks from them.”
The menu itself is broken into two sections, Meredith said. Firstly, the Market Stall menu harnesses pantry-style flavours such as onions, marmite, tomatoes, and anchovies. “With these ingredients we wanted to highlight London as a market city – a place where you can get just about anything – but in an ever growing world of variety the fundamental ingredients still stand up.
“Our Tomato Highball is an example of this, using aromats and seasonal tomatoes to create a consommé that gets mixed with a touch of fruit and Cognac before getting carbonated,” he said, noting that throughout the year, they will tweak the recipe depending on which tomatoes are tasting their best and use these in the drink.
The second section of the menu is the Seasonal Favourites. “With these drinks we have an ever-changing list that celebrates ingredients in their absolute prime. We’ll reach out direct to farms ourselves and via supply partners to get produce that is tasting its best and that we can trace to source. These will be converted into tasty drinks, expressing the produce in its simplest form.”
One example Meredith shared was the bar’s Gooseberry Bellini, which utilises “really delicious gooseberries” that are then blended with maple syrup to form a purée to use in the Bellini. “The drink sings of the fruit and celebrates the incredible flavour of gooseberries at their peak,” he said.
Meredith confirmed that the bar team will be in regular contact with the kitchen to ensure any cocktails added to the menus work in harmony with certain dishes coming into the restaurant.
“We are really keen to ensure there is joined up thinking between the bar and restaurant, which fortunately is simple because we are both applying the British lens through which we’re building our respective offerings.
“We’re regularly chatting about what we’re using and looking for opportunities to piggyback, but we’re not necessarily going to take like-for-like ingredients.”
In addition, Meredith explained that there will be occasions where ingredients are sourced from outside the UK, “but as long as we can trace the ingredients to a responsible source then we’re happy.”
He elaborated: “We opened up the definition of local for our ingredient sourcing. Our first port of call will be to use British farms and farmers but for us, the focus of local has to be around the communities these producers serve. For example, for us to consider an ingredient as local, it could be a Spanish farm growing oranges that feels supportive to its community, not necessarily ours.”
Above everything, however, Meredith confirmed that “from sprout to sip, every cocktail tells a story of seasonality, locality, and the simple joy of something new emerging.” This, he said, was why the bar’s name was chosen. “Sprout perfectly encapsulated this.”
Templeton Garden is set to open its doors in April. It is the first UK launch from luxury hotel group Miiro.
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