How Your Fancy Cocktail Came to Be
By Emma Janzen
FEW Spirits founder and master distiller Paul Hletko teamed up with The Publican to create a special genever for the restaurant’s bar menu. Photo: FEW Spirits. r>
Walk into any drinking establishment or restaurant in America, and you’ll likely find a carbon copy lineup of spirit brands stacked behind the bar. Fancy a Beefeater Martini at a desert cocktail outpost Arizona? Sure thing. Maker’s Mark Manhattan in Los Angeles basement bar? No problem. If you’re a fan of major-label liquors, you can easily find your favorite gin brand in any gin joint in the country.
There’s a lot to be said about the comfort that comes with that kind of reliability, but uniformity can also get boring quickly, so some bars are going to new lengths to challenge the paradigm. These days it’s not unusual to find a substantial selection of regional spirits in most craft cocktail spots. Bars and restaurants with great beverage programs like The Publican in Chicago and The Pastry War in Houston are going even further by teaming up with local distilleries to create one-of-a-kind, experimental spirits.
On a very basic level these “house spirits,” as they’re often called, create incentive to visit one of these bars. “I think the world of The Publican, but there are other restaurants in Chicago where you can get truly transcendent food as well,” FEW Spirits founder and distiller Paul Hletkosays. “If you can give customers something that they can’t get down the street, that’s a way to bring them back.”
The Grass Cutter cocktail at Ramen Shop uses the Shochu St. George Spirits made for the restaurant. Photo: Noelle Chun
The process of developing this kind of partnership also pushes distilleries and bartenders to think outside their normal wheelhouse. When The Publican teamed up with FEW Spirits, bar manager Matt Poli says they aimed to create a unique genever-style gin to offer something a bit more unusual than your average London Dry. “Our guests tend to seek out The Publican for tastes they can’t find anywhere else,” he says. “The FEW and Publican collaborative genever is a unique product that is hard to come by, and [a spirit] most guests have never heard of before, so it piques their interest.”
A small team of bartenders were “intensely involved” in the development of the gin, meaning the staff learned a lot of practical information about the production process and gained a real sense of ownership over the final product. “It means a lot to design something from the ground up, from scratch,” Poli says. ”To see it come to fruition in a bottle on the back bar is special.” The restaurant now carries an unaged version, a lightly aged one, and a heavily aged version from FEW, so they can sell flights to customers in addition to house cocktails.
RELATED: The Secret Truths About “Dealer’s Choice” at Bars
For FEW’s Hletko, the idea was simply an excuse for him to bring some attention to one of his favorite restaurants in the city. The cross-promotion certainly doesn’t hurt, either. “It’s a way to help everybody improve their business. They help us by talking about the house genever they did with FEW Spirits. We help them by talking about the house genever we did with Publican,” he says.
The Publican’s genever wasn’t the first bar alliance for FEW, who also crafted a Fernet with downtown Chicago’s SideDoor and an Amaro for Wicker Park’s Big Star. It was at the latter where Judah Kuper, co-founder of family-run Mezcal Vago was inspired to join the movement. “This seemed like one of the best possible ways to have my family represented and to collaborate with great people,” he says. “We always wanted to find a way to enlist A-list players from the industry to be our de facto spokesman, but never pay them—always have it be real and organic.” From the start he wanted to team up with the talented staff behind Houston’s The Pastry War, the first account to carry their products in America.
Mezcal Vago make an array of mezcal in Oaxaca, but the Cobre y Barro made for Houston’s The Pastry War was a limited edition release. Photo: Francisco Terrazas
Kuper and his father-in-law, master distiller Aquilino Garcia Lopez, crafted a hyper-limited release called Cobre y Barro, a re-creation of Garcia Lopez’ great grandfather’s recipe, aged in 100-year-old clay vessels used to store mezcal by the family for many generations. The Pastry War general manager Francisco Terrazas says not only is the liquid itself captivating (and selling well), it’s the connection the bar has established with a brand they respect and want to support that’s made the process so fulfilling. “I feel really lucky to work at a place that can buy an entire 101 litre lot and know where that revenue is going,” he says. “I think we as a bar are extremely fortunate to be able to have a direct positive impact on an operation that is such a standout in the category.”
RELATED: Your Spring Weekend Menu Plan, With Cocktails for Every (Yep!) Meal
This human connection is also what inspired Lance Winters of St. George Spirits in California to create a special shochu for his friends at Ramen Shop in Oakland, CA. “It was less of a collaboration and more of an inspiration,” he says. “I really love all the people who work at Ramen Shop, so my first thought was what can I make that would commemorate the opening?” The shochu was such a hit that several other bars and retail spots in the area have requested to carry it as well. Winters says he tries to accommodate such friendly requests, even though the spirit isn’t one of the distillery’s main priorities.
Financially speaking, it doesn’t make a ton of sense on paper for small craft distilleries to set time and resources aside to make super-limited batches of an otherwise experimental spirit for one or two accounts. Instead, it’s the thrill of working creatively in concert with like-minded people that offsets the costs of production. ”Financial payoff is really never a motivator for us,” Winters says. “The motivator is our love for distillation and seeing what we can do within the boundaries of the art form.”
Hletko echoes Winters’ sentiments. “I could make a lot more money making something that’s a lot less fun than distilling. So if you’re not going to make money, you might as well make some memories.”
More from Bon Appétit:
The 5 Affordable Bottles to Make Sure You Have (a Lot of) at Your Wedding
12 Gluten-Free Beers That Actually Taste Good
7 Amazing Fantasy Food Destination Weddings
DIY Wedding Cocktail Hour: Cheese, Charcuterie, Oysters. Done.
