A speakeasy-style homage to the symbiotic beehive, Taipei’s nest by PUN is the winner of Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award of Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2024. Two years after opening and two menu iterations in, the drinks program – christened Tales by Nest – has emerged with a buzz-worthy lineup of libations.

Follow the golden bumble bees and honeycomb-shaped lighting down a dimly lit staircase from sister-bar PUN, situated off a Taipei backstreet, and you’ll arrive at a token-operated door that opens into nest by PUN. Boasting an apian golden canopy made of hexagon-imprinted organic wood pulp against an onyx backdrop (designed by local artist Kang Li Sheng in partnership with Daniel Hu Interiors), the immersive space parallels the inside of a beehive, replete with gently pulsing lights to the ebbs and flows of Zen rainstorm-inspired music.

“We chose the bee to represent the bar because it encapsulates the essence of what we stand for – creativity, craftsmanship, and a sense of community – highlighting the intricate and thoughtful nature of our work,” says PUN’s Head Bartender, House Fang.

The bar’s name, a pun in itself, plays off the onomatopoeic local dialect pronunciation of ‘very fragrant’ (pang gong gong) and ‘bumble bee’ (pang) in menu and space design. Within that, the team performs tasks with the precision of surgeons from two six-seat bars, the establishment’s focal point, ensuring both streamlined service and visual entertainment.

Like a beehive, the drinks program reflects both symmetry and collaboration. The hexagon-shaped flipbook menu encompasses ten cocktail classifications – think sour, clarified milk punch, highball, Collins, tiki, spirit-forward, mocktail, and so on. From this, guests first choose their preferred drink style and then receive a second menu: this one with pair of inter-dependent cocktails that shows two different approaches to said style. From there, the choice is between the two complimenting cocktails in the selected category.

When it comes to cocktail curation, in place of centrifugal clarification or rotary distillation, the team uses solely traditional methods of infusion and blending. Expect a back bar akin to an apothecary rather than a science lab, with an emphasis placed on bridging time-honored means with contemporary cocktail tastes.

From in-house made bee pollen-spiked Drambuie paired with dehydrated rose powder (representing the full pollination cycle in a glass dubbed the Bee Pollen Sour) to the biblically-influenced Promised Land Highball consisting of milk (in the form of yogurt fat-wash) and honey (infused in whisky), here are three category breakdowns of nest by PUN’s bee’s knees of a menu.

Tiki

Traversing global dissemination history, the tiki drinks are rooted in the stories of the spice trade of the East and the spread of Christianity in the West.

The King of Clubs is the tale of Alexander the Great’s – the man that appears on the back of this drink’s eponymous playing card – conquest across the Middle East to India. Peated scotch embodies the aroma of fire and war that followed in his wake, while a homemade ‘East Side Falernum’ (spiced with Middle Eastern black lime, Indian masala chai, and northern Asian burdock) traces his route. “Each of our cocktails include at least one wholly homemade component connected not only in cocktail creation but also in historical significance,” adds Mason Zheng, Cocktail R&D Manager.

Instead of fresh juices found in conventional tiki drinks, an in-house made dried fruit and citrus-spiked vodka is stirred with lime, culminating in a lighter libation.

On the opposite hemisphere, the Cricket Song’s fable is based in one of Christianity’s momentous stories involving Mastiha liqueur, also known as the tears of Chios, made from a resin obtained from the mastic tree. This piney, herbal spirit is shaken with Zubrowka Bison Grass Vodka and a piment distillate evoking nuanced heat. Presented with a serving of yuzu granita – a fruit that symbolises winter in Japanese culture – the cocktail corresponds to the same season via the famed English Romantic lyricist John Keats’ poem entitled “On the Grasshopper and Cricket,” whereby the former signifies the voice of summer and the latter indicates winter.

Clarified Milk Punch

The duo that makes up the clarified milk punch set demonstrates the collision of legacy heritage spirits with modern cocktail trends.

On one side of the spectrum, there’s Metal Baby – booze-forward with smoky Talisker whisky and Taiwanese-native gaoliang jiu (or fermented sorghum alcohol) – one of Asia’s oldest legacy spirits, rounded by musky pu’er tea and a treacly roasted caramelised peanut syrup for an anything but docile dram.

While the other side sees the beach-friendly clarified Vanilla Colada, a tropical Jamaican overproof rum and falernum mix finished with passion fruit in place of lime. A heart-on-the-sleeve love song to the coveted local Taiwanese pineapple – the most famed species in the region – the fruit coaxes out a demure sweetness that lingers like a bikini-clad sunbather long after dusk.

“Each cocktail is like a high-definition picture; you can appreciate it from a distance or zoom in to experience its layered beauty in both appearance and backstory,” mentions Bar Manager Jint Huang while siphoning a perimeter of coconut cream espuma atop the Vanilla Colada glass, laced with a Puerto Rican spice blend to emulate eggnog-esque coquito.

Mocktail

An equally viable option for those imbibing or abstaining, the mocktails champion how even zero-proof cocktails can navigate the world of old fashioneds to sours, with unbridled flavor. 

Split between the Southern Star (a salted star fruit juice and robust cold brew coffee tipple “stung” with licorice syrup) and the effervescent Teardrop (made with fermented green mango pickle juice, clarified coconut and rose water), the eyebrow-raising omission of alcohol is undetectable (and unmissed) by even the most seasoned drinkers.

This article was originally written for and published on the World's 50 Best Bars website here.