Due to coronavirus, Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) is shuttered “for the foreseeable future”, and this year’s instalment of winter festival Dark Mofo has been cancelled.
That means the closest you can get to David Walsh’s polarising museum is by tuning into livestreams of its weekly sky-high light show and a sedentary tattooed man’s back. But now you can add some booze to the armchair experience with Mona’s bottled cocktails.
From the Church of David Walsh comes the Unholy Water cocktail collection. It launched during Dark Mofo last year, designed for those in search of a souvenir – or something a little stronger – to crack into during the festival. Now you can order them to your door.
Leave your cocktail shaker in the cupboard and save yourself the upper-body workout: these are designed for easy, at-home drinking. All you need to do is stir over ice, strain, garnish and serve.
Is your sleeping pattern the latest coronavirus casualty? Lean into it with the heavily caffeinated Espresso Damnation, which blends an un-aged neutral-grain spirit with coffee liqueur, cold-drip coffee, chocolate-mole bitters and artichoke amaro. (The recommended garnishes: dehydrated orange and coffee beans.)
For something marginally boozier, the Double Smoted Negroni is a mix of gin, Italian bitters, sweet vermouth, oloroso sherry and orange bitters. Top it off with a twist of orange.
They come in very on-theme chapel-shaped packaging, too, with typically Mona-esque copy. (“David arose from slumber and shouted: ‘I am in the mood for an all-nighter. Bring me coffee’,” reads one. “David paused, and added a surprising eleventh commandment: ‘Also, thou shalt create a gin-based cocktail’,” reads another.)
Other cocktails in the range – the Almighty Martini, the Behold Fashioned and the rum-spiked Jesus Juice – have sold out, but Mona will be restocking in the coming weeks.
A twin-pack of two 100-millilitre cocktails costs $50. The Sinner’s Set (a four-pack with two Espresso Damnations and two Double Smoted Negronis) costs $85. Shop online here. Australia-wide shipping is free and takes around seven business days.
