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Food and Drinks
Lifestyle100 Top Tables
Drink in Focus: Trinidad Sour at Bar Tincture
Bitters make an unconventional cocktail base – and at Bar Tincture, founder Bone Cheng explains how he makes this balance of flavours work
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Josiah Ng
Published: 5:00pm, 30 Jul 2026
“Traditionally, bitters are used only [in] small dashes for seasoning,” says Bone Cheng, founder of Bar Tincture, the Ginza-style cocktail establishment that opened in Hong Kong in April. “But the Trinidad Sour elevates bitters to the main spirit. This inversion concept is very bold – it challenges the conventional definition of a base spirit and proves that bitters can form the soul of a complete cocktail.”
This statement encapsulates his mission for Bar Tincture, one of the few bars in Hong Kong to make bitters a central theme – even going so far as to make them in-house and use them as a base for signatures. Bitters are almost always relegated to a finishing touch, whether it’s a few dashes of Angostura or orange bitters to an Old Fashioned, or a choice dab of Peychaud’s to give a Sazerac an aromatic lift. Amaro – Italian for “bitter” – often plays a more prominent role in cocktails featuring spirits such as Amaro Montenegro or Fernet-Branca, but its flavour is more of an acquired taste.
Cheng’s move is a bold one, so it stands to reason that the concept lives or dies on whether he can pull off one of the few modern classics to showcase bitters in a new way: the Trinidad Sour. According to Cheng, the drink was created around 2009 by Giuseppe González at the Clover Club in New York, using Angostura bitters as the base.
“When designing the Homemade Style [red aperitivo] series for Bar Tincture,” Cheng says, “we wanted to interpret this drink using our own house-made bitters. Our bitters are made using a variety of spices, barks and herbsx house-made tinctures for seasoning, followed by short-term ageing to allow the flavours to integrate fully.”
The specific base for the Trinidad Sour emphasised spices and flavours like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and “gentian bitterness” (a sharp herbal bitterness). The goal was to “make it stronger and more layered than traditional Angostura, with reduced sugar, while staying true to the botanical essence concept we want to express”
On the night, these bitters are shaken with rye whiskey, lime and orgeat. “The almond sweetness and subtle floral notes of the orgeat,” he explains, “effectively neutralise the bitterness and spiciness of the bitters while adding body and roundness. The acidity from fresh lime provides necessary brightness and freshness, preventing the drink from feeling too heavy or medicinal. Together they create a perfect ‘bitter-sweet-sour’ triangular balance.”
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