Forget Richie Hawtin's Sake, Here are the Five DJ Drinks We'd Love to See

Everyone's favourite walking haircut, Richie Hawtin, loves sake just as much as he loves minimal techno. Sake is Japanese rice wine that tastes, or so the bloke down my local offie tells me, a bit like dry vermouth. While I was tempted to see what the fuss was all about, momentarily lost in a daydream where I down glass after glass of the stuff with Richie in the lobby of a chic Ibizan hotel one balmy evening, nerves got the better of me and before I knew it I'd walked out with the usual: six cans of Grolsch, an out of date bag of Sizzling King Prawn McCoys and a Twix Xtra.

On the walk home, where I was headed for a big night in with Tom Kerridge and a microwaved fish pie, I checked my emails. Amongst the usual offers of penis enlargement and track premier opportunities was a PR blurb about Richie Hawtin's interest in sake, which was odd because only minutes before I'd been needling the bloke behind the till for all the information he had on the stuff. What're the chances of that happening in order to facilitate a bit of content, eh?

Anyway, the exciting news was that Richie was going to be throwing a fancy dinner at "hot new restaurant Coricancha, combined with a full takeover of the island's Blue Marlin Ibiza for a party the next day." A few lucky sods will get to sip sake with the Minus man while chowing down on some of the best Japanese-Peruvian cuisine the island has to offer, and boy doesn't that sound more fun than chucking down a fistful of pills at a Disclosure party at DC10!

Later that evening after a few cans of premium European lager—other brands are available—and some sage advice from Tom Kerridge about avoiding over-absorption of oil in sliced aubergine, I remembered that it wasn't just Richie Hawtin who has a close attachment to grog. Danny Rampling has a vineyard, there's a whiskey that has something to do with 808 drum machines, and nearly forgotten Swedish EDM braggarts Axwell and Ingrosso released an alcoholic popsicle to minimal fanfare last year. And that got me thinking, after the cans were drained and I'd sucked all the residual prawn cocktail flavour off my fingers and sucked the caramel off both sticks of Twix, saving the biscuit for breakfast as is customary, what if other dance music luminaries entered into the highly lucrative world of alcoholic beverages? That really would be something, wouldn't it?

When I woke, groggy, dry-mouthed, awash with remorse, regret, and an easy-seeming recipe for braised lamb shank with bay and borlotti beans—thanks again Tom!—I found a wad of A4 paper scattered across my bedroom floor. Here, edited for some kind of clarity, is what I'd scrawled in my dreamy state. Now, usually my dreams are like anyone's; a disjointed and ultimately disorientating trek through the darker alleys of my own painfully mundane psyche. But that night they were different. They were lucid. They were explanatory. They were what the next generation of DJ alcohol brands might be!

NB: Obviously this is all fantasy and THUMP does not condone drinking in any way.

Eats Everything's Tropical Alcopops

If anyone in the world of dance music is ready to tap into the rapidly-increasing teenagers-at-festivals audience it's surely the chunky roller himself, Eats Everything. Behind the chirpy exterior lies a cold-hearted businessman determined to turn a profit no matter what he has to do to get it. He might look all smiles as he rolls his wrist in the air for the 50th time that night, but the second he gets back to his hotel room he's whipping out a whiteboard and telling anyone who'll listen about his plan to revolutionise the hyper-sugary 4% proof market. "THE KIDS," he screams night after night, "ARE GONNA GO FUCKING DAFT FOR THIS!" He reckons it tastes like "a club in a can," which conjures up a coagulation of fag ash, sweat, and MDMA-drip but in reality will be a sweet blend of mango, papaya, and raspberry.

Floating Points' Fortified Wine

To look at him you'd assume Sam Shepherd would be a microbrewery kind of guy. You can see him sat on a bench under a railway arch in Bermondsey supping on a schooner of bold yet refreshing California-inspired IPA discussing a recent haul of Ugandan beebop acquired during a trip to Stockholm, can't you? You couldn't be further from the truth. When he's not in the studio recording another set of tasteful jazz numbers for the recently-moved-to-Leyton set or trekking around the Andes in search of previously unheard Miles Davis cover versions, Shepherd loves nothing more than getting rip-roaringly pissed up with Four Tet and Dan Snaith. Their drink of choice? None other than everyone's favourite monk-brewed gut-rot, Buckfast. The problem was, the boys would rather spend their pocket money on records than grog. The solution? They put their bulging brains together and concocted a similarly sweet and sticky beverage that used slightly less price raw ingredients, creating a drink that's pleasing on both the palette and the pennies.

DJ Harvey's Low-Alcohol Lager

The hellraiser from the Fens stepped back from the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll lifestyle a few years back now, but the beaming, beardy badboy of Balearic still loves the feeling of gripping a cold one with the disco deviants every so often. The crack, the hiss, the fizz…that feeling never leaves you. So Mr. Mercury Rising himself dragged his surfboard out into the Pacific Ocean for a long hard think about how he could ensure that the world's teetotal diggers could get their drink on without the slightest buzz? The solution was simple: he'd team up with a Hawaiian brewery for an incredibly low-alcohol pilsner that'll taste as perfect as a sunset soundtracked by a Mark Barrott record.

Aphex Twin's West Country Scrumpy

Contrary to popular belief, Richard D James doesn't while his days away in a tank in a bunker in a bank. Instead, he's often to be found ambling around the bountiful orchards of of Cornwall, getting up close and personal with as many apples as he can. His personal favourite is the Colloggett Pippin, a massive pale yellowy-green apple, which he turns into a pretty, pretty potent brew indeed. Clocking in at a fearsome 9.4%, this highly complex scrumpy—named ciiiiiiI_|)_€rR—contains hints of battery acid, rhubarb, and tobacco.

Hunee's Turbo-Charged Green Tea

Ask anyone who's ever tried yoga about doing yoga and they'll undoubtedly tell you that yoga is the best thing about being alive, that yoga makes everything else seem needless, that yoga is all you need. They'll usually be telling you this from the lounge of their lovely flat in Berlin. They moved here a few years back now after uni, and yeah, winters are tough, but there's such a good vibe here in the summer that it's totally worth it, and would you like a glass of this Hunee-branded alcoholic green tea? It's got a great vibe to it, and we kinda tend to go out quite late here? Berlin, it's a great place. I love yoga too.