NCL SUSTAINABLE COCKTAILS
Leftover pineapple parts put to good use
FEATURE Bottles of
pineapple surplus
Wes Cort Sustainable shake
Anne Kalosh tells how Norwegian Cruise Line’s environmental commitment extends to the bevvies.
P
ineapple peel, overripe bananas, day-old croissants, flat sparkling wine, spent coffee grounds. Trash or treasure?
The answer is treasure for a beverage program that supports Norwegian Cruise Line’s Sail & Sustain environmental initiative. Ingredients like these go into making delicious cocktails.
Pineapple pulp and peel left over from pressing juice are fermented and blended with JaJa tequila, Chinola passion fruit liqueur and turmeric honey to make a golden drink called Pineapple Surplus.
Instead of pouring out sparkling wine gone flat, the wine is reduced into a syrup that’s mixed with gin and herbs and topped with club soda. Voila! Sustainable Spritz.
Surplus croissants are boiled down into sugar syrup that goes into a Croissant Mai Tai. Overripe bananas find a place in Work Hard, Cruise Hard, a new twist on the piña colada. Spent coffee grounds are simmered for three days into a rich coffee syrup that’s the base for a Café Replay.
‘It’s about using something that we have been throwing away, and now we don’t have to purchase another product, for example, coffee syrup,’ explains Wes Cort, vp food and beverage operations, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. These practices eliminate waste, packaging and CO2
emissions from transporting provisions. ‘Over the last couple years we’ve done so
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much,’ Cort continues. ‘As a company, we’re making progress in contributing to the environment.’
Plastic straws and single-use plastic bottles were eliminated fleet-wide. Kathy Casey’s Cocktails on Tap program cuts waste by using fewer bottles and containers. Many don’t require ice, saving water and energy.
Sustainable cocktails debuted with 2019’s Norwegian Encore at the outdoor Sugarcane Mojito Bar, where a different drink is featured daily. The program is rolling out to one bar per ship.
‘We talk about it and promote it, and guests seek out where the sustainable bar is,’ Cort says. ‘The staff takes a lot of pride in it.’
This has been a couple years in the making. It was inspired by a conference, Tales of the Cocktail, that Cort describes as the ‘most diverse, authentic event in the beverage
A Sail & Sustain cocktail is featured daily
industry.’ It’s not run by a media or beverage group but by bartenders, bar owners and mixologists.
There the Norwegian team saw a presentation by The Trash Collective, which aimed to show how even high- volume beverage programs such as those for concerts can produce minimal or no waste and reduce their carbon footprint.
Cort’s team did further research, supported by a Diageo conference. ‘We saw this was going to be a groundswell that will overtake the industry,’ he says. It requires substantial effort, though. ‘There’s work involved here. We’re committed to providing it. We know it’s the right thing to do.’
Norwegian established a head mixologist program four years ago. ‘Their primary responsibility is to make sure we’re making great drinks,’ Cort says. ‘A lot of managers are up to their elbows in work. We saw the need for someone focused just on the quality of the drink.’
When it comes to sustainable cocktails, the head mixologist coordinates closely with the galley staff. There’s one location on the ship where the syrups and other components are produced.
Ideas for new cocktails come from team members at sea and ashore. ‘We’ve really enabled our teams on board to be innovative,’ Cort says. ‘We have open contests. Everyone wants to compete and be a star.’ Norwegian bartenders have won the Bacardi competition a couple times and been finalists in the Diageo worldwide competition.
So far, the beverage team hasn’t measured the waste that’s being eliminated by sustainable cocktails, but the program is just beginning. ‘It’s important we document that,’ Cort says.
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