Why—and How—Do We Create Familiarity?

Have you ever had an experience like this?

You taste a flavor and, though you cannot quite say why, it feels very familiar.

Perhaps it brings to mind candy you ate as a child, the smell of the old warehouse at your childhood home, or perhaps simply a flavor hidden in an Asian night market. It does not necessarily make you recall something specific, but it lets you know—I think I have encountered it somewhere before.

This is the Familiarity that matters greatly to us at Rewind.

We believe a drink does not have to begin with unfamiliarity.

So when designing cocktails, we often return to the flavors that exist in Asian life: tea, seasonal fruits, spices, desserts, and even a familiar dish.

But we do not want simply to make them into “the cocktail version of a certain food.”

What we care about more is: which part is the one you truly remember?

Perhaps what a mooncake truly leaves behind is the aroma of baking, nuts, and salted egg yolk layered together; with a bowl of beef noodle soup, what you may remember is the lingering finish of rich broth, spices, and pickled mustard greens; and a cup of tea sometimes does not even need to be tasted; its aroma alone is enough to take one back to a familiar afternoon.

We take these memories apart, then reassemble them in the form of cocktails.

Therefore, when a drink is placed before you, we hope your first reaction is not:

“What is this?”

But:

“This flavor, I think I know.”

Only then do you slowly realize that it is actually not quite the same as the one in your memories.

To us, Familiarity has never been about copying the past.

It is about starting from somewhere familiar and taking you toward somewhere you have not yet been.

We don’t recreate memories. We create flavors that find their way back to them.