Cocktail Daily - Natural Selection I Scarfes Bar, London

Scotch Whisky / Carbonated Raspberries / Evaporated Carrot / Fino Sherry

Set inside Rosewood London, Scarfes Bar feels far older than it actually is. Rather than foregrounding the technical language of a contemporary cocktail bar, the room leans into a more lived-in sense of old London: dark wood, shelves of books, warm lighting, substantial furniture, and a fireplace that collectively create the atmosphere of a private drawing room.

What truly sets the space apart, however, is the work of Gerald Scarfe. His art is not treated as decoration around the edges; it is central to the identity of the room. Large-scale pieces occupy the walls, with some works reaching roughly ten feet in size.

The relationship between the artist and the bar goes well beyond simply hanging a few paintings in a luxury hotel. When Rosewood London opened Scarfes Bar in 2014, Scarfe’s name and visual language became part of the concept itself. Scarfe has also spoken about Bemelmans Bar at The Carlyle in New York as an important point of reference—a hotel bar where the artist’s work does not merely furnish the room, but defines its personality.

That distinction matters. Scarfes Bar is not simply a bar that happens to display art; the art is part of how the bar understands itself.

The bar has also maintained a strong presence on the international circuit. Scarfes Bar ranked No.31 on The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025, before moving to No.77 on the 2026 extended 51–100 list.

Yet what stands out most in person is not the ranking, or even the visual grandeur of the room. It is the accumulation of small details.

Scarfes Bar delivers a distinctly classic hotel bar experience. Service is fast, but never rushed. The team keeps a close eye on the room, responds quickly when needed, and takes the time to explain the drinks without making the interaction feel scripted.

Even the olives reveal something about the level of attention involved. Rather than serving a standard bowl of pitted olives, the bar presents them with additional seasoning and preparation, although the exact flavouring is difficult to determine with certainty from the table alone. The olive pick is also unusually substantial, built from three thicker metal prongs rather than a single slender skewer, making it noticeably easier to handle the larger olives. Even the water cups feel deliberate: heavy, metallic, and tactile.

None of these details would be remarkable in isolation. Together, however, they create a sense of luxury that does not need to announce itself through gold trim or overt spectacle.

Another detail worth noting is the way the drinks are finished at the bar.

Like many ambitious cocktail programmes today, Scarfes Bar relies heavily on components prepared in advance to improve consistency and speed. But that efficiency does not turn the bar into a simple dispensing operation. There is still plenty of shaking, stirring, assembling, and finishing happening in front of the guest.

For anyone sitting at the bar, that matters. Much of the technical work may happen behind the scenes, but the sense that a bartender is still actively making a drink for the person in front of them remains intact.

That balance between modern preparation and traditional service is also reflected in the current menu.

Released in April 2026, Heroes & Villains does not ask guests to choose between contemporary technique and old-school indulgence. Instead, it places them side by side.

What makes the menu especially interesting is the way it plays with the cocktail industry’s own shifting sense of taste.

Styles that are now celebrated for precision, restraint, and technical sophistication were not always considered the ideal. At the same time, drinks that once dominated bars around the world were later dismissed as too sweet, too colourful, too obvious, or too commercial.

Heroes & Villains uses that tension as its central idea.

Each featured figure is interpreted through two very different drinks. One side reflects the cleaner, more controlled aesthetic associated with modern high-end cocktail bars. The other deliberately revisits styles that the industry has spent years pushing away—Tropical drinks, Cosmopolitans, Pornstar Martinis, Mojitos, and other drinks often dismissed as dated or unserious.

Rather than simply reviving them, the menu uses both sides to question what the industry means when it calls one drink sophisticated and another unfashionable.

Led by Director of Bars Andy Loudon, the team built the menu around Gerald Scarfe’s 2003 work Heroes & Villains, developing ten characters into twenty signature cocktails.

The physical menu extends the same idea.

At first, only one interpretation is visible. Pulling out the concealed section of the page reveals its opposite. Hero and Villain are therefore not presented side by side from the beginning. The second identity has to be uncovered.

Ordering a drink becomes less about scanning a list of ingredients and more about discovering how the same character can be read in two entirely different ways.

Natural Selection

Scotch Whisky / Carbonated Raspberries / Evaporated Carrot / Fino Sherry

Charles Darwin appears on the menu through two opposing drinks: Natural Selection and Evilution.

Natural Selection represents the Hero side. It combines The Glenturret Triple Wood with Carbonated Raspberries, Evaporated Carrot, and Fino Sherry. Its counterpart, Evilution, switches to Eagle Rare 10 Bourbon, Pistachio Orgeat, and Sour Pineapple, moving away from a lean whisky highball structure and into something richer, more tropical, and more overtly indulgent.

What makes the pairing effective is that the two drinks do not simply feel like mirrored versions of the same recipe.

Natural Selection begins by taking Scotch away from its heavier associations.

The Glenturret Triple Wood is matured across American oak, European oak sherry-seasoned casks, and Bourbon barrels, giving the whisky a base of malt, fruit, vanilla, and soft wood spice.

In this drink, however, those flavours are not pushed further into richness.

Raspberry introduces a brighter fruit line, while Fino Sherry helps pull the profile toward a drier, more restrained shape. The most unusual element is Evaporated Carrot. The menu identifies it only by name, without publishing a full technical explanation, so it would be inaccurate to define it as a specific distillation, clarification, or concentration process.

Structurally, the carrot appears to occupy the space between fruit and whisky, adding a softer root-vegetable sweetness and a more vegetal layer between the raspberry and the malt.

That gives Natural Selection a clear purpose: not to demonstrate how complex Scotch can become, but how much lighter and more extended it can feel when its weight is redistributed.

Whisky, Sherry, raspberry, and carrot are not ingredients that obviously belong together in a highball. The carbonation gives each element enough space to remain distinct rather than collapsing into one dense block of flavour.

Tasting Notes

Aroma:
Based on the structure of the recipe, the opening should lean toward brighter raspberry and fruit notes before moving into the malt, vanilla, and soft wood character of Triple Wood. Fino helps keep the aromatic profile from becoming purely fruit-driven.

Palate:
The overall architecture appears designed to stretch the whisky rather than intensify it. Carbonation lightens the body, raspberry contributes fruit and acidity, while carrot may add a gentler vegetal sweetness through the mid-palate. Fino then helps pull the drink back toward a drier finish.

Finish:
The longer-lasting impression is more likely to come from the whisky’s malt and wood spice, together with the dryness of the Sherry, rather than from raspberry alone. That should prevent the drink from reading simply as a red-fruit highball.

Overall:
Natural Selection is perhaps most representative of the Hero side of Heroes & Villains not because of any single technique, but because of the way those techniques are kept in the background.

On the surface, it is an approachable Whisky Highball. Its real complexity lies in how Scotch, carbonated fruit, vegetable character, and Fino are arranged around one another.

Seen alongside Evilution, the larger idea of the menu becomes clearer. One side favours definition, length, and control; the other deliberately embraces richness, tropical flavour, and pleasure.

Rather than deciding which one deserves to be called the Hero, Scarfes Bar uses the contrast to make a broader point: the cocktail world’s definition of what is “good” has never been fixed.

Scarfes Bar
London / Holborn
252 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EN
Instagram: @scarfesbar
A hotel bar where Gerald Scarfe’s artistic world meets classic service and contemporary cocktail technique.

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