Casa Cavia is an ideal laboratory for a bartender hungry to experiment. This elegantly restored 1927 mansion in Buenos Aires includes a restaurant, flower shop, library, garden and, once, it also had a perfumery on-site. Head bartender Flavia Arroyo brings cooking methods like fat washing and fermentation to her bar’s inventive seasonal menu.

She is especially enthusiastic about clarifying cocktail ingredients. Arroyo builds complex flavors inside her minimalist cocktails through the process of cooking then straining impurities, just as the method of clarifying concentrates the flavor of consommés and butters in the kitchen. “It’s one of the teaching techniques that is very, very old, but now it’s really trendy for bartenders,” Arroyo says. Besides using clarification for her own drinks, she’s been teaching the method to bartending students and colleagues in Argentina.

Wheatgrass is also trending outside the wellness movement. Arroyo, however, is more interested in its vegetal notes in her cocktail. “For the whisky, it was perfect to have that herbal flavor,” Arroyo says. Her wheatgrass cordial can be prepared in advance and kept in the fridge. Combined with whisky and soda, the green cordial becomes a lovely pale goldenrod. Since the particles have been removed from this cocktail, it scales up well, and oxidizes less.

Although Arroyo likes describing what goes into Casa Cavia’s cocktails, she’s also happy creating the classics — she wants guests to experiment at their own pace: “If you want a Negroni, you can have it, and you’ll have the best old-fashioned or the best Negroni ever. I make the best Negroni, I have to say.” But with drinks like the Highball(er), Arroyo wants you to remember the flavor rather than what went into it. “When you leave Casa Cavia, you keep thinking about that cocktail. And when you come back, you ask, ‘Okay, so can I try that again?’”