MAY 19 UPDATE: When I spoke with Maybee last week, the trip was on. But he canceled it after Howard Hanna, Maybee’s partner in The Rieger/Manifesto, lost a family member. Our condolences to Hanna and his family, and apologies to readers for an off post. Still, pretty cool that Maybee’s in Gaz’s book. A deserved… Continue Reading
Mezcal. I’d read about it, but never given it much thought. Even after Doug Frost opined about its smokey richness back in, oh, 2007 or so. Even after Saveur published a killer article about it in 2009. Even after Ryan Maybee stocked Manifesto’s bar with it, and Beau Williams earned second place with his mezcal-based… Continue Reading
Naming a vodka is a tricky thing. Most brands strive to evoke heritage and history through slick packaging and glossy ads. Smirnoff needs no such marketing ploys. Its name is steeped in enough intrigue, blood and revolution to fill an entire book. The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of… Continue Reading
Rejuvenating forgotten classics is a favorite bartender past-time. They comb old tomes in search of deserving recipes, then return their discoveries to modern glory. The Last Word is one such worthy cocktail. As the story goes, Murray Stenson of the Zig Zag Café in Seattle was searching for ways to use unusual ingredients when he… Continue Reading
“True rye and true bourbon wake delight like any great wine with a rich and magical plenitude of overtones and rhymes and resolved dissonances and a contrapuntal succession of fleeting aftertastes.” So writes Bernard DeVoto in The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto (Tin House Books, 2010). The original came out in 1948, about the same time… Continue Reading