Excuse me waiter, there’s a frozen riverstone in my drink?!

For the first time ever the cocktail lists at the Sydney and Melbourne incarnations of adventurous cocktail bar Eau De Vie are aligned after a rare overhaul of the menu. Never fear: the famed Espresso Zabione remains. Drinks were honed over six months of experimentation. “Bartending is a craft,” contends Eau De Vie’s co-owner Greg Sanderson.

The new drinks list now guides patrons through ordering a bespoke martini, to delicate tipples, to tonics you can almost convince yourself are virtuous, to the manliest of night-caps. “We’ve been playing around with our vessels and our aromas,” explains Greg. So don’t be surprised if your drink comes in a perfume bottle, is to be sipped from a horn (guess which type), or arrives in the haze of an aromatic fog. Flavours include chorizo-spiked mezcal, cigar-infused rum and the love-child of granola and vodka. There’s also an extended dessert cocktail offering (which should at least discourage anybody from ordering a Toblerone here again – I hear it has happened).

The menu is charmingly illustrated by artists sourced online. The bar team’s own portraits were commissioned through Fiverr, Greg explains. “I had a guy in America do those for me. He doesn’t drink. He never goes to bars. So I was just asking for a guy stirring a cocktail and a guy shaking a cocktail and he had no idea! So I had to send him action shots.”

See the Eau De Vie team – and their new cocktails – in action at 1 Malthouse Lane, Melbourne.