The Barbenheimer, and High-Concept Cocktails at Home

A double-feature drink to celebrate the dual release of two ambitious, interesting movies.

This week, we’re going to make a Barbenheimer cocktail. I can see already that you are wondering: What in the heck is a Barbenheimer? 

The short answer is that the Barbenheimer is a drink designed to celebrate the dual release of a pair of seemingly opposed motion pictures: Barbie, the Greta Gerwig-directed meta-movie about the world’s most enduringly popular doll, and Oppenheimer, the Christopher Nolan-directed epic biopic about the man who has been dubbed the father of the atomic bomb. 

The same-day release of these films — one bright and silly and female-targeted, the other dark and stark and intently focused on one of history’s most consequential men — has not only spawned a cavalcade of memes, but a cinematic mission for moviegoers who plan to see both films on the same day as a double feature. Some 200,000 moviegoers reportedly plan to see both films on the same day.

What moviegoing experience could be more strangely juxtaposed? What two movies could better capture the entire spectrum of studio filmmaking in a single-day experience? Even Tom Cruise, whose latest Mission: Impossible film is competing with both Barbie and Oppenheimer, has gotten in on the act. 

Now, this is a cocktail newsletter, not a movies newsletter. 

But I do love movies, and I think there’s some real, practical overlap between film and drink: Like movies, cocktails require “casting” decisions about which ingredients to use. And like movies, great cocktails have clear arcs, often based on repeated, recycled, and lightly modified three-part structures.¹   

And just as importantly, for the purposes of this week’s drink, I also love theme-based cocktail gimmicks. I have created drinks that mimic Irish soda bread and pecan pie in cocktail form. I have made a menu of Game of Thrones-based theme-night cocktails. And I am utterly fascinated by the spread of technique-driven, high-concept cocktails like those found at the New York bar Double Chicken Please, which serves boozy, technically complex drinks designed to capture the flavors of comfort foods like noodles, cold pizza, and key lime pie, and which was recently named best bar in North America. 

And so, as Barbenheimer weekend approached, I began to mull the idea of a cocktail that somehow captured their weirdly juxtaposed natures in cocktail form. What would that look like? What would it taste like? How would one go about creating it? 

So for this week, we’re going to make a drink I’ve dubbed the Barbenheimer — an admittedly odd cocktail that reflects the oddness of the movies that inspired it. And yet, it’s not too hard to make. With rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, coffee concentrate, Campari, and tonic water, it relies on ingredients that are relatively easy to find, many of which you may even have in your home bar already.

And because part of the goal of this newsletter is to try to teach readers how to think about cocktails, not just how to make them, we’re also going to look at some conceptual tricks for designing theme-driven cocktails at home. 

Come On Oppie Let’s Go Party 

I am lucky to have already seen both Barbie and Oppenheimer, although sadly I was not able to watch them on the same day.² 

They are both high-concept, formally daring films — the products of ambitious directors with distinctive visions. Tonally, however, they couldn’t be more different. One is bright and sparkly, but also a little offbeat. The other is bleak, somewhat difficult, humanistic but cold, and with more than a hint of bitterness. 

The question, then, when creating this drink, was how to combine the two sensibilities in cocktail form.