It’s no secret that we’re living in the age of the more-is-more cocktail. Drinks are designed to be so singular that they cannot be replicated at home, or even at another bar for that matter, thanks to the specificity and intensiveness of their preparation. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see cocktail menus that spell out the techniques—lacto-fermentation, sous vide, gel clarification, sous-pression—and sometimes even the time involved in a drink’s preparation to underscore just how much has gone into the drink before you. There’s an excitement to this type of cocktail, a celebration of the no-holds-barred approach to creativity. But even more exciting to me—perhaps in part because they’re harder to come by these days—are drinks that fall on the other end of the spectrum: minimalist cocktails that are the result of a far more restrictive, but no less creative approach. 

“The fewer the elements, the better,” says Yanni Kehagiaras, owner of Stoa, a San Francisco cocktail bar where what you see is what you get. All the drinks on the menu have four ingredients or fewer, and none use added sugar (apart from classics that specifically call for simple syrup), relying instead on Kehagiaras’ studied expertise and deep understanding of his backbar to find perfect balance.

The Gentleman is made up of just three ingredients: Bonal, tequila and gentian liqueur. Knowing that’s all that goes into it only adds to the excitement of the way these three elements come together to form an infinity loop of softly bitter, herbal flavors. Bonal, a wine-based alpine liqueur flavored with gentian and cinchona, among other botanicals, serves as the base. It’s complemented by a small measure of tequila, which is used in a supporting role to bring its signature vegetal quality and some weight to the drink while keeping the overall proof down. Its final component: a quarter-ounce of Antico Torino’s gentian liqueur, which has pronounced green bell pepper flavor, according to Kehagiaras. “The reverberation of those green notes is what the cocktail hinges on,” he says. 

Like so many of the drinks on his menu, The Gentleman feels like an instant classic. It may not have traveled beyond the walls of Stoa just yet, but it’s already a regular fixture in my rotation. It embodies one of Kehagiaras’ guiding principles at Stoa, an idea that perhaps deserves more consideration in the age of maximalism: “Simplicity and complexity live next door to each other.”