When 30-year-old Yaroslav Maksymets found out that Pyana Vyshnya (Drunk Cherry) bar had opened in Kyiv, he rushed there on his lunch break the same day.
He wasn’t the only one. The renowned Lviv bar has a solid fan base, so its opening in Kyiv on Oct. 13 was a big deal.
For years, Maksymets used to bring bottles of cherry liquor from Lviv each time he visited the western city.
“Of course I wanted to taste the cherry liquor to see if it’s as good as in Lviv,” he said, adding that both the style and atmosphere of the Lviv bar had been recreated in Kyiv. “Look at these glasses. They are the Soviet-kind, very rare, and I like this place for the little details like that.”
Kyiv’s Pyana Vyshnya is a small bar with tall, round tables at which people stand rather than sit. A large glass chandelier and dozens of empty red bottles hang from the ceiling, and there are wooden shelves with rows of bottles of cherry liquor on them.
The bar serves only one drink: the artisanal sweet cherry liquor. At 17.5 percent alcohol by volume, it is a bit stronger than wine. It is served in small glasses, filled to the brim. A customer has to take several sips to make room in the glass so a bartender can add a couple of cherries to the drink.
Pyana Vyshnya also sells bars of chocolate with cherries, fruit jelly covered with chocolate, and chocolate candies with a cherry inside.
Lviv’s trademark
According to the bartenders at Pyana Vyshnya, people come in for a drink throughout the day.
“People would come here, order one glass of liquor and sip it slowly while talking to their friends,” says a waiter Borys Oliynyk, 20. “And then they usually ask for more.”
Before the bar was opened, all Kyiv staff went to Lviv for a week to study the best practices of Lviv’s Pyana Vyshnya.
What surprised the Kyiv staff the most were the crowds of people inside and near the bar that is located on the city’s central Rynok Square.
“I have never seen so many clients in other bars, long-long lines of people waiting to get a drink,” says Oliynyk. “All the alcohol we have in this bar in Kyiv would be drunk in less than a day in Lviv.”
Oliynyk believes it won’t take too much time for Kyiv’s Pyana Vyshnya to become as popular as in Lviv. The bar’s co-owner Andriy Hudo agrees.
“The bar is extremely successful, and it was a very rational decision to open one up in Kyiv,” says Hudo. “Still, I think one Pyana Vyshnya is not enough for Kyiv, and we will open more.”
Ruslan Talan, 21, also works in Kyiv’s Pyana Vyshnya. He says in Lviv the bartenders are like rock stars – everybody knows them, and people often greet them on the streets. And although the bar in Kyiv has just opened, Talan has started to experience the same thing in Kyiv.
“We’d worked in the bar for only three days, but people had started to recognize us in the streets,” claims Talan.
He also noticed some familiar faces in Kyiv.
“There were some people in Kyiv bar we met for the first time in Lviv, and we recognized them immediately.”
Pyana Vyshnya in Kyiv, 13 Khreshchatyk St., 10 – 12 a.m.
Pyana Vyshnya in Lviv, 11 Rynok Sq., 10 – 12 a.m.
One 150-milliliter glass of cherry liquor – Hr 55, 1-liter bottle – Hr 395, a chocolate bar with cherries – Hr 30, a bar of fruit jelly covered with chocolate – Hr 30, a chocolate candy with a cherry inside – Hr 12.
