"We're not making the wine with grapes – we're fermenting it from different base materials, like fruit juice and tea," Ryan Chetiyawardana announces gleefully, with infectious enthusiasm. But Chetiyawardana – or Mr Lyan, as he's often known – is more commonly associated with cocktails than wine. His two venues, White Lyan and Dandelyan, are both in the World's 50 Best Bars, and his prowess behind the bar has earned him more than a few accolades, starting with Diageo's UK Bartender of the Year in 2009. But as you'd expect from someone who's known for his innovative approach, this isn't just any old wine: he's putting his own unique spin on it – as well as beer and cheese – by making it in-house using microbes. Interest piqued? Ours, too. He tells us about cutting down on food waste, why he moved out of the kitchen and into the bar, and being in the right place at the right time.
On White Lyan's new wines and cheeses
Why are you overhauling your menu? What are you changing?
There are drinks on here which have been on the menu since we opened, and even a few which have been there since I first had the idea for White Lyan, about five years ago. We're changing the sazerac, and I know it's going to upset people because they come down for it. It's become quite iconic and associated with the bar.
We changed them because we can't get our rye whiskey anymore. We hit the same problem that a lot of the bigger brands did – we thought we'd been careful in the sourcing and that we'd be able to maintain it, but we couldn't. This bar's always been about offering what we're really proud of and what we're happy to put forward, and if we can't, then we shouldn't just stick with it for the sake of custom.
We're actually going for a different approach; we're tying together several different projects. We're working with some good friends in London who produce some rye spirits, and we're working on what we've affectionately called our time-travel project, and we're playing with something that's completely unaged, and how we can bring in aspects of maturity to a new spirit.
One of the new drinks we'll be doing is the Tennessee Nitro Martini. We're going to be working with Jack Daniels to make a JD, coffee, cola, espresso martini in a half-pint cup. It pulls like Guinness – it's creamy, it's rich, it's got the sweetness of the cola and the whiskey and the richness of the coffee.
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Can you see the way your approach to cocktail making has evolved over the years?
Absolutely, especially as we've had new members of the team come on board. I think it's inevitable that, as a bartender, you're not ashamed of what you had before, but it feels a bit dated. The work you did was pertinent of that period, it was of that time and it was reflective of what was surrounding it.
It's difficult with a menu that's all that you can order off [because White Lyan only serves pre-made cocktails]. You've got to be able to have a spread, and as the team has grown, we've been able to have a wider range.
The difficulty with opening this bar is that there was no frame of reference for what to do with it. I knew we could make drinks without ice or citrus, that was fine, but it was still knowing the space, how we were going to serve it, what the dynamic of the bar was going to be.
Why did you decide to start making your own wines?
For conversation's sake. It was about showing people the stuff that we're really proud of. Not saying it's the best in the world, but saying this is our version of it. The wines and beers will be something you can only get here and it's something that we've worked really hard to do. Although our background is in spirits, beer and wine is part of our world and we never wanted to alienate them.
We decided to take the same approach to them as we do to our drinks, and took on board the control, and from our side the geekiness; being able to control every aspect of it. One of the things we don't have control over at the moment in terms of the waste is all the additional packaging. We buy wine in boxes and we buy our beer in cans so it's easy to recycle, but this was the next step in terms bringing that same level of rigour that we have for our cocktails to the rest of our menu.
We're creating 'wines' with leathery, smokey, chocolatey, cherry and licorice notes
How are you doing it?
We're making it all in-house, but not using grapes. Instead, we'll be fermenting it from a variety of base materials. A good winemaker has a very deft hand at reflecting the fruit that goes into the wine. If you take that same deft hand and take those ingredients at the base – it could be grape juice, or it could be tea – we can strive to get a consistent end product. If we were trying to get grapes, the flavour would vary according to the season, so this way we'll get something that you can consistently buy that you can stabilise so we can get a consistent flavour base. We're essentially controlling fermentation to recreate wine.
If you take the profile of a champagne, it's got that brioche-y sweetness, it's got citrus, it's got floral elements and you can deconstruct that in a different way. Those flavours are reflective of the grapes but that can also come from citrus flavours, it can come from bready flavours and it can come from the citrus flavours that we add in. You take a base, you expand it, then you use yeast to create the fizz and the tertiary set of flavours on top and you end up with something that reflects a sparkling wine. You're taking the sugars from the fruit and all the other trace flavours and you convert that to alcohol using yeast.
We can use juices that we can buy, and that's the starting point. So we're creating flavour bases through various different constructs – some red wines have that leathery, smokey, chocolatey, cherry, licorice notes and we're using all of those ingredients, and we're fermenting it, converting those sugars into alcohol. The alcohol is a preservative, so we'll essentially be laying down vintages of wine, but we're never going to make thousands of bottles – it's not about that, it's about having a consistent product, and avoiding the wastage that comes with buying in boxes of wine and cans of beer.
We're doing a red, a white, a rosé, a sparkling wine and a beer. And they're going to be made in-house. We take over the space while we're not open, so everything will be produced in in the bar. When it becomes a larger part of what we do, we'll have to get a wine license, and we're working on converting the basement into a space for it.
It's daunting because it's more like creating a brewery. In an EU classification it's not wine, that's why we're labelling it as "sort-of" wine. It tastes like wine, it feels like wine, it has the structure, it has the ABV bracket, but it's a cocktail, essentially.
Why? And why now?
The bar's two years old and we've tried to be the first in new ways of pushing things. we're looking how we can change the set-up for the industry. We want to be able to do new things. Every time we think of something and we get really excited, we realise we're probably making our lives really difficult.
We'll be launching the wines with a cheese and wine pop-up – the cheeses will be made in-house as well, taking the old heated milk from cafés and stabilising it through bacteria. Again, part of it is about innovating and avoiding food waste, but I also think serving wine and cheese is just quite fun. Neither of them are really what people expect.
Every time we think of something and we get really excited, we realise we're probably making our lives really difficult
Is food waste something that you're really passionate about?
It's something that's part of my upbringing. We were taught to never be wasteful as children. We were taught that we could have nice things, but that they don't have to be wasteful. My mum was part of a big family, and in Sri Lanka they would make everything – they wouldn't waste anything. When it came to the bar, the concept was born out of the frustration of the way that everyone viewed that a restaurant or a bar had to be, and they always saw that waste as part of a luxury offering. I didn't think that luxury needed to be wasteful. Opulence doesn't have to be crass and wasteful. It works from both a simple waste perspective, but also from an ingredient perspective. If you're using things, why are you throwing away over half of it. It's never made sense to me.
It wasn't the focus, we didn't say we were setting out the create a green bar, but we wanted to stimulate a discussion around what you could do and to show that bars don't need to be that wasteful as well.
On his career
You originally started as a chef; why did you moved to bartending?
I didn't like being in a kitchen. I'd always had food as a big part of my life, but it wasn't just sustenance or luxury, it was about bringing people together. It was very human thing, and when I went into a professional kitchen, I loved it, but I didn't get to talk to people about the food, I didn't get to interact with people, I didn't get to tailor things to them. It was almost a factory setting, and that's not what interested me about food. I'm not saying that's the world of cheffing, it just wasn't my world.
How do you think your experiences as a chef influenced the way you make cocktails?
It definitely affects the way I set things up. I've always run the bars I've been involved in like a kitchen. You put the preparation in beforehand, you make sure that things are done in a rigorous manner and you're professional about it, and I think that was missing from the industry. Bartending has always been a bit more gung-ho – you just throw some stuff together, but that doesn't lead to a better product. If you look at the way a kitchen is run, if you cook on the spot, it's a disaster, and it doesn't lead to anything beneficial for the customer. And even the idea of sourcing ingredients and having that relationship with suppliers didn't exist in the drinks world. You worked with brands and you didn't look at the other side of it, you didn't look at what you were using and consider if it's the best way of using it.
Did you ever think your career would take off in this way?
When we were kids we were told we could do anything we wanted to do, we just had to work hard at it. I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I say this about any of the competitions – the first time I won UK Bartender of the Year, if it had been a different set of judges, it probably would have gone a very different way. That it was Marco Pierre White and that he could understand my approach to it was fortunate. I always push at things I really love and I do things with passion.
What's the thought process you go through when you're making a cocktail?
Sometimes it comes from a story. With the old fashioned, it was about recreating old-style whiskey, and it's doing a bit of a two-fingers-up to the whole idea that an old fashioned should take 10 minutes to make or whatever other crap gets put around. It was exploring a texture, a set of flavours, and it's an embodiment of the spirit, the history and all of those things.
Sometimes I taste a flavour and it reminds me of something completely different and then I want to link to it. It might be that their approach is the same so it's like combining the two stories. It's much more about a dialogue through the drink, because for me a drink is about so much more than just a flavour.
Who's been most influential in the way you mix your drinks?
There are definitely industry people: Mike Aikman and Jason Scott [from Bramble], Craig Harper and Ian McLaren –they were my mentors in Edinburgh. They still, to this day, have an influence on the way I do things. My team are really inspirational, too. The reason we've been able to achieve what we've achieved is because we have regular meetings and conversations about the creativity.
I'd say one of my biggest inspirations if my sister in terms of my outlook, how that affects how I pick up ingredients and look at them – although she doesn't work in food.
On London's food and drink scene
Why did you decide to open White Lyan in London rather than in Edinburgh, where you studied?
London was – and is – the epicentre of so many things. It was hard to get people up to Edinburgh, and I really believe in the power of collaboration and you've got more opportunity for that down here. You've got more exciting stuff going on, it's every day, everybody's here, everyone comes through London and I love it, it's my favourite place in the world right now.
We couldn't have opened White Lyan in another city, because a bar has to reflect its locality and this is the place my team and I know and understand best.
We couldn't have opened White Lyan in another city
Why did you decide to use white-label spirits?
The spirits are made all around the world in partnership with the distilleries or with brokers who source out the products that we need and we make a blend with distilleries and brokers around the world for what we need. There were actually two reasons why we did it: we wanted something we could control from the start point, and we developed workhorses. Whenever I use a brand I use it in a hyper-specific way rather than generically, so the spirits we created would work across the board and would factor into whatever we needed them to do.
Who do you think is doing really cool stuff right now?
I think one of the most perfect drinks I've had of late was in New York at Café Dante and it was a Campari and orange. The simplicity of that drink, it's a classic cocktail, but the execution; I couldn't fault it. Everything about it... not that I'm looking for fault, everything about it was so well-considered and so beautifully executed. And I think there's something amazing in that. If you can take something ultra-simple and allow it to shine in the complexity that it does have, then that's really special. I love that.
We're working with London Distillery Company to create some of these new spirits on our menu. It's something [drinks writer] Dave Broom and I have been talking about for years in the whisky industry – looking at the yeast and the different start points. Some of the spirits London Distillery Company is producing are exceptional and it's getting people to look at things in a very different way.
What do you like most about the London food scene?
The diversity. The desire to try and do things differently, although there is a flipside to that which can be negative. The strive to try and explore. The fact that you can get people from all over the world working here, and they get into London life and they bring their background and marry that to what's going on here. You can't do that in the States. I know everyone champions the cultural diversity here, but it's so reflected in the food and drink. You can try foods that are like travelling to a different world and really interesting perspectives come about because of that. Through that, that collaboration is stronger. You get amazing experiences and conversations through that.
And what do you think it's lacking?
Late night. It's very hard to do late night here. It's not a 24-hour city. The night tube will be great because it will encourage people to explore later in the evening. Food and drink is such a large part of our economy. We once gave a talk on this, about the schizophrenic view of alcohol. In one sense it's completely demonised and blamed for all of society's ills, but scotch whisky alone is a crucial part of our economy and it provides more jobs than any other sector. It's our biggest manufacturing and yet it's not supported in any way.
You can try foods in London that are like travelling to a different world
Also: Mexican food! There's not enough. If you go to Mexico or America, the food there is so different to what people think Mexican food is here. It's a real shame. You can get great Japanese here, you get great Indian, great barbecue, and then, in the general understanding of what Mexican food is, it's just not reflective of what it is.
Would you ever open a bar elsewhere?
I'd love to. I think Paris is really exciting at the moment and I think New York is about to crest another wave. I think Australia has one of the strongest scenes in the world; Melbourne and Sydney are incredible cities and I think it would be amazing to do something there. Some of my favourite bartenders in the world are in those two cities and that's a crucial thing, having people who are like-minded around you.
One of my ultimate goals is to have a farm. And if you have a farm, it makes sense to have a distillery... but those are pipeline dreams for now.
