Bar/fly: Alto Bar, Berlin

Alto Bar does brisk trade with Antipodean families and Brits on bachelor weekends. Photo / Rod Emmerson

Stick to the good stuff - and water - is a Berlin barman's advice, says Grant Bradley.

Who wouldn't need a drink?

I'd biked for kilometres around Berlin visiting the site of a memorial to the people killed trying to cross from the former East Germany. Nearly 20m underground are the oxygen-starved air raid shelters where thousands of terrified Berliners took cover in World War II. The last of Berlin's remaining flak towers were built with the rubble of a ruined city, which formed a mountain not much smaller than Mt Hobson in Auckland.

Worst of all, and the name held a clue, I spent a few sad hours at the Topography of Terror, an exhibition of photographs and stories of Germany's Nazi past, set in the ruins of the Gestapo's bunkers.

I was exhausted. And fortunately mein host, Andreas Andricopoulos, doesn't do war stories or those of a divided Germany. "Only the tourists want to talk about that." But he does do cocktails.

He's a high-performing mixologist who's travelled the world plying his craft and winning awards. He's taken the latest thinking back to the fast-developing mixology scene in Berlin.

Andreas runs the Alto Bar in Adina Apartment Hotel, built less than five years ago, rising from what was a scruffy carpark for Trabants and Ladas in former East Germany.

Its bar is all very new Berlin cool and, with an emphasis on spirits (it has just five beers), it does brisk trade with Antipodean families and Brits on bachelor weekends.

Andreas' parents moved to the Dusseldorf area from Greece well before he was born in 1983. He's passionate about mixology - blending, infusing, straining, squeezing, barrel- and bottle-ageing a huge range of herbs, fruit, spices and liquor into an 85-drink menu.

Although the bar has a limited number of beers, it has 15 gins in what Andreas says is a gin-and-tonic town.

I got a taste of one of his gin recipe drinks: Beefeater with thyme and infused with orange peel and had a tall glass of what he recommended as a post-ride lifter - the Alto Spritz, (Aperol, soda, sparkling wine and grapefruit).

It's quiet in the bar. Berlin is suffering a post-football final hangover and many have been scared out of town by the city's massive annual bike ride that day. Andreas says, typically, hotel guests have one or two cocktails before heading around the corner to the lively Hackescher Markt near the Spree River.

The stag-night revellers hire beer bikes - contraptions for up to 16 people to chug away on while pedalling something that looks like a small bus - or are whisked away in limousines. On certain weekends, Swedes and Norwegians descend on his place - top-end drinks are cheap here compared to heavily taxed liquor at home - and they typically make an early start, hitting it hard just after lunch.

Alto's Teatime is served in a tea cup but is not your average cuppa. It too is gin-based, infused with ginger and camomile. That's the other thing: the range of glasses, cups and jars. Unlike the big hot chains, he's not constrained by what he mixes or what they're served in.

The bar features 20 types of bitters, a few homemade. The herb-based drinks were originally developed in Africa to ward off malaria, Andreas tells me. He's a perfectionist. His ice cubes must be large and double frozen, the second time to -22C to ensure they melt very slowly in a drink. He says don't worry about mixing different kinds of drinks. The best way to avoid a hangover is to ensure you drink plenty of water and only good quality liquor.

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Getting there: Virgin Australia and its codeshare partners Etihad and Air Berlin offer return Economy fares to Berlin.