In a downtown-Minneapolis bar, Kevin Gould meets an organic pioneer who borrows from ancient Ayurvedic principles to mix the drinks of the future.
Remember first that Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey was set in a time that will come at the end of next year. Feel old? When we were younger, we were encouraged to view the new millennium as the distant future; a place where skintight silver spandex featured heavily and food hardly at all. Meals would be taken in pill form, and nutrition-rich but flavour-free drinks sucked from plastic pouches. Still, one of Kubrick's space predictions has come true - high-flyers have become defined by the lack of space in their diary for long, pleasurable meals. Power lunches are a triumph of time management, with synchronised mastication and three courses in 30 minutes - tip included, deal concluded, and complimentary Rennies with the bill.
Today's clock-conscious age is characterised by our lack of time. Computer screens with egg-timer icons remind us of minutes wasting away, although our busy lifestyles don't leave us enough time to boil an egg. All those labour-saving devices so fashionable in the Fifties have left us with a dubious legacy: a concept of time as a commodity to be spent, not frittered away over a frying pan. Our belief in fate has been supplanted by planning for the future, even to the extent of pre-paid funerals (or 'Dignity in Destiny'), but although we'll definitely die, shouldn't we take time to enjoy the present? Time is money, but the smart money must surely be on those who meld the past with the present, taking lessons learnt over time to enhance our present with a view to our enjoying a better future. Enter a man called Horst.
Born in central Europe, Horst Rechelbacher travelled the world as hairdresser to the stars, developing a love for his planet and a knowledge of Indian Ayurvedic medicine, before making it to Minneapolis, where medical bills following a car crash forced him to stay and dress hair for the Minnesotans. Ayurveda works on the principle of harmony in all things: that the earth must be respected if it is to produce the food that nourishes us to become balanced beings who are worthy of our future. In Minneapolis, Horst set up organic plant nurseries that grew the food he wanted to eat and which he also served to his clients. The roots and leaves of these plants formed the basis of his hair- and body-care formulations, which he started to market 20 years ago under the Aveda brand.
Horst follows Hippocrates in his belief that one's food should be one's medicine, but he goes further than the cynical entre-preneurs whose late appearance on the organic bandwagon would be embarrassing were it not so blatant. His espousal of organic agriculture goes deeper than any marketing device, and Horst has used Aveda's multimillion-dollar muscle to establish organic plantations growing plants for human consumption in 35 countries. Translating lessons learnt from past cultures into a modern idiom has brought Herr Rechelbacher to his latest venture: Wunderbar.
Wunderbar is the coolest of hang-outs, a blond-wood bar and lounge in downtown Minneapolis where impossibly good-looking bar staff wear organic linen aprons over organic cotton T-shirts and jeans. And, as if pearly teeth and perfect pecs were not enough, Wunderbar staff are also trained nutritionists, whose job it is to diagnose the customer before dispensing the libations that not only taste good, but also fulfil our nutritional and medicinal requirements. The drinks themselves are based on plant tinctures that correspond to Ayurveda's principles of vata (air), pitta (fire) and kapha (water). They come in ten-millilitre vials that can be either poured straight into the mouth and held under the tongue for a few moments, or mixed with juice. Cold-blooded types who need a boost to the circulatory system may be prescribed a shot of vata/kapha, whose gingery, cinammon, liquorice flavours work well with organic apple juice.
Evenings at Wunderbar see fresh juices and Ayurvedic tinctures mixed with organic spirits such as rye vodka or bourbon. Customers continue to be diagnosed, and it's fascinating to watch therapy junkies invent new ailments between rounds in order to get their pulses taken or tongue examined by yet another attractive barkeep.
At Wunderbar, 'What's your poison?' becomes 'What's your cure?', a concept guaranteed to take off on both sides of the Atlantic. With an opening planned for New York, and London being considered, Wunderbar is, in Horst's view, simply the Ayurvedic village doctor brought up to date for a new era. Whether Kubrick saw the future or not is another matter, but Wunderbar proves Woody Allen right when he said: "It's like déjà vu all over again."