Cocktail Daily – Devil’s Adonis | Devil’s Cut, Madrid

Located in Madrid’s Barrio de las Letras, Devil’s Cut is a cocktail bar co-founded by Japanese bartender Shingo Gokan in 2024, marking his first bar venture in Europe.

Before establishing SG Group and expanding across Asia, Gokan spent years at New York’s legendary Angel’s Share, where he served as head bartender. His career has taken him from New York to several major Asian cities, each contributing to his evolving approach to cocktails. Devil’s Cut brings those influences together in a distinctly Spanish setting.

What makes the bar interesting is that it makes no attempt to recreate a Japanese cocktail bar in Madrid. Instead, it embraces the character of its surroundings.

The venue was previously home to Casa Pueblo, a bar established in 1983. Much of its identity as a traditional Madrid café-bar (café-bar tradicional madrileño) has been carried into the new space. The wooden bar, traditional floor tiles, and vintage details give the interior the familiar warmth of an old Madrid drinking establishment, rather than the contemporary aesthetic often associated with Japanese cocktail bars.

Yet the experience changes once seated at the bar.

Compared with other cocktail bars visited in Madrid, Devil’s Cut stands out for its Japanese-influenced approach to precision, technique, and attention to detail. It was also one of the few places encountered during these visits where bartenders were seen working with a Cobbler shaker, the classic three-piece cocktail shaker.

Although the Cobbler shaker is by no means exclusive to Japan, the way the team handles its tools, together with the measured rhythm of service, reflects the influence of Japanese bartending traditions.

That contrast is what gives Devil’s Cut much of its character: a traditional Spanish bar setting paired with the discipline and refinement of Japanese cocktail-making. Rather than blending the two cultures into a single visual identity, the bar allows each to retain its own personality. The result feels distinctive within Madrid’s cocktail scene.

The menu offers another compelling reason to visit.

For anyone familiar with SG Group, Devil’s Cut provides an unusual opportunity to explore cocktails that would otherwise require visits to several cities. Alongside original creations developed for Madrid, including drinks that highlight Spanish sherry, the selection features Gokan’s earlier work from Angel’s Share in New York and notable cocktails from SG Group venues in Tokyo, Shanghai, Okinawa, and Hong Kong.

This approach turns the menu into more than a collection of house signatures. It offers a journey through different periods of Gokan’s career, bringing together recipes shaped by different bars and cities.

Having these drinks available in one place also makes it possible to explore how the group’s cocktail philosophy has developed across its various concepts, without travelling between locations.

For enthusiasts interested in international cocktail culture, this is one of the strongest reasons to visit Devil’s Cut.

The bar also received international recognition in 2025, winning Best New International Cocktail Bar at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

Devil’s Adonis

Fino Sherry / Amontillado Sherry / Sweet Vermouth / Passion Fruit

Part of the bar’s Madrid-focused Devil’s Signatures collection, Devil’s Adonis draws on the foundations of the classic Adonis cocktail while introducing an ingredient rarely associated with the original recipe: passion fruit.

Dating back to the nineteenth century, the traditional Adonis combines sherry, sweet vermouth, and bitters. Unlike cocktails built around gin, whiskey, or other distilled spirits, it relies on fortified wines to create its structure, allowing their aromatics, sweetness, and maturation characteristics to take centre stage.

What makes Devil’s Adonis particularly interesting is not simply the addition of a tropical fruit. It is the way the recipe explores new relationships between flavours while retaining the wine-based identity of the original cocktail.

The starting point is its combination of two distinct sherry styles.

Fino undergoes biological ageing beneath a layer of flor yeast, a process that protects the wine from direct oxidation. It typically develops a dry, precise profile with notes of almonds, yeast, and subtle savoury salinity.

Amontillado, on the other hand, begins with biological ageing before moving into an oxidative ageing phase. This gives it some of Fino’s dry character while introducing greater aromatic depth, often expressed through hazelnuts, wood, and other mature, nutty notes.

Using both styles creates more room for contrast than relying on a single sherry. Fino contributes a lighter, drier framework, while Amontillado brings the complexity associated with oxidative maturation. Together, they offer a foundation that can balance delicacy with depth.

Sweet vermouth adds another dimension beyond sweetness alone.

Its wine base, botanical character, and spice notes help connect the two sherries, bringing together their different ageing profiles within a more cohesive structure. Rather than allowing the contrast between biological and oxidative ageing to dominate, vermouth introduces additional aromatic elements that can bridge the gap.

Then comes the ingredient that moves the cocktail in a different direction: passion fruit.

With its distinctive tropical aroma and vibrant acidity, passion fruit is often associated with fruit-forward contemporary cocktails. Its role becomes more interesting, however, when introduced into a classic built around fortified wines.

Here, the fruit offers a brighter counterpoint to the sherries’ mature, nutty characteristics and the herbal sweetness of vermouth. Its acidity also creates an opportunity to reinforce Fino’s dry profile, potentially keeping the overall balance from leaning too heavily towards sweetness.

The idea is not simply to turn an Adonis into a tropical cocktail. Instead, the recipe retains the essential components of the classic while using an ingredient from a different flavour tradition to expand its possibilities.

At the heart of Devil’s Adonis is a meeting of two distinct approaches to flavour: the depth and tradition of Spanish sherry, and the contemporary use of fruit acidity and aromatics in cocktail-making.

This relationship also reflects the wider identity of Devil’s Cut. Spanish ingredients, Japanese-influenced technique, and international cocktail traditions do not have to lose their individual character to work together. Their differences are part of what makes the combination interesting.

Tasting Notes

Aroma: The aromatic structure draws on Fino’s almond and yeast characteristics, the mature nuttiness of Amontillado, and the herbal notes of sweet vermouth. Passion fruit introduces a brighter tropical dimension, creating a contrast with the more restrained, aged-wine aromas.

Palate: The two sherries provide the foundation, with Fino contributing a dry, defined profile and Amontillado adding nutty complexity and oxidative depth. Sweet vermouth connects the herbal and sweeter elements, while passion fruit acidity introduces a livelier dimension to the traditional Adonis structure.

Finish: The flavour design extends towards the dry, nutty characteristics of sherry, with herbal notes and tropical fruit providing a contrasting dimension. How these elements come together in the finish is one of the more intriguing aspects of the recipe.

Overall: Devil’s Adonis builds on the classic Adonis by combining the different ageing characteristics of Fino and Amontillado with the brightness of passion fruit. Its appeal goes beyond the addition of a tropical ingredient. By keeping sherry at the centre of the cocktail, it explores how a familiar classic can be reinterpreted through a more contemporary approach to flavour.

Devil’s Cut

Madrid, Barrio de las Letras

Calle del León, 3, 28014 Madrid, Spain

Instagram: @devilscut.madrid

A Madrid cocktail bar bringing Japanese-influenced precision and internationally inspired drinks into a traditional Spanish setting.

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