Ralph Erenzo, co-founder of Tuthilltown Spirits/Hudson Whiskeys in Gardiner, the first standalone distillery in New York State since Prohibition. Author’s photo.
RESURGENCE AND REVIVAL
THE DRINKS RENAISSANCE BEGINS
From the days when classic and creative cocktails were all but forgotten and the spirits that propelled them were mass-produced and often watered down, we’ve come full circle. The twenty-first century has brought a revival, not only in the art of well-crafted mixed drinks but also in the small-batch distillers and other producers who prize quality and take pride in using locally made and grown ingredients.
Joe Fee, of Rochester’s mixer and bitter maker Fee Brothers, credits the Internet as a spark. Bartenders and others interested in good drinks and their ingredients began talking to one another in forums and other online venues. They shared recipes and helped one another find ingredients. Then came the cocktail-oriented books and magazine articles by authors cited throughout this book, such as William Grimes, Ted Haigh, Gary Regan and David Wondrich. Demand for such items as small-batch bourbon and orange bitters soared.
“We hung around long enough until everybody found us,” said Fee, whose company, founded in 1863, spans more than half the time frame covered in this book.
Of course, there were other factors, including the farm-to-table movement and, in New York at least, a relaxing of some of the strict alcohol regulations that had accompanied the repeal of Prohibition. Whatever the reasons, Upstate New York finds itself in a spirits and cocktail renaissance.
FIRING UP UPSTATE NEW YORK’S STILLS
AT LAST
Doug and Suzie Knapp were already successful winemakers when they purchased an alembic still—modeled on the earliest type of distilling apparatus—in 1994. They used it, starting in 1995, to make brandy from wine at their Knapp Winery, on Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes. Knapp produced the first commercial distilled spirit in New York since Prohibition. Another Finger Lakes winery, Swedish Hill, soon followed suit.
But that was just a prelude. A decade later, in 2005, Ralph Erenzo and his partner Brian Lee opened New York State’s first post-Prohibition standalone distillery (and maker of whiskey).
“Now look what we’ve created,” said Erenzo, of Tuthilltown Spirits and Hudson Whiskey in Gardiner, which includes a stillhouse, tasting room and restaurant. (The whole operation was sold to the Scottish distiller William Grant & Sons, in 2017.) “We were once the only distillery in New York. Now there’s a whole distilling industry.”
By 2017, New York State had issued about 175 distilling licenses, most of them in Upstate New York. Many were issued to what are known as farm distillers, those who pledge to use New York–grown and produced ingredients in return for breaks on fees and easing of regulations.
Ralph Erenzo, co-founder of Tuthilltown Spirits/Hudson Whiskeys in Gardiner, the first standalone distillery in New York State since Prohibition. Author’s photo.
The craft of distilling has returned to Upstate New York.
Distilleries now can be found everywhere Upstate—in the Hudson Valley and along the St. Lawrence River, in the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes, in Albany, Utica, Rochester and Buffalo. They’re following the path shared by New York’s booming wine, craft beer and hard cider businesses.
It took a little longer for the hard spirits industry to get restarted after Prohibition. Wineries and breweries in New York reopened in 1933, but not distilleries. The surge in New York alcohol production we see today began with the state’s approval of the Farm Winery Act of 1976. It allowed small wine producers to sell their products directly to consumers—out of their own tasting rooms and without the need to go through wholesalers—in return for using New York grapes. The state’s winery boom began then, leading to more than four hundred wineries by 2017.
The 1976 winery law was the state’s first major effort to reform or abolish some of the restrictive alcohol laws put in place after Prohibition and untangle the bureaucratic web that made the liquor business difficult to enter.
Craft breweries followed. A few started up in the 1980s, growing, first erratically and then steadily, to about one hundred by 2012. At that point, the administration of Governor Andrew Cuomo, taking a cue from the farm winery act, worked with the state brewers’ association to enact a similar farm brewery bill that offered benefits for using New York ingredients. From 2012 to 2017, the number of breweries surged to more than three hundred.
Distilling came along more slowly. Tuthilltown had got the ball rolling, and Erenzo helped get a farm distillery bill passed in 2007—even earlier than the brewery version. “It was brilliant,” Erenzo said. “Here was law that turned your distillery into a farm, and as a farm you didn’t need to go through the three-tiered system [manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer]. We could sell our own stuff to our own customers and keep the money.”
A few more craft or farm distilleries started cropping up around 2009. Then, the farm distillery law was amended to offer even more benefits in 2014—notably the ability to sell other New York alcoholic beverages and even cocktails in the tasting room. That’s when craft distillers finally began to show up in bigger numbers.
Of course, all this coincided with the buy local, farm-to-table (or field-to-glass) movement that has become a big part of the national foodscape. That was important, because craft spirits, even more than craft beer or wine, finds itself in a specialty or niche segment of the market.
“Craft spirits are a little more expensive,” said Jason Barrett, owner of Black Button Distilling in Rochester, which hit the market in 2014. “So you have to have a little money and an interest in where your food comes from. People have to make that transition away from quantity over quality—they need to think about what they’re getting and where they get it from.”
In New York, the state continued to ease rules for all beverage manufacturers—notably allowing the sales of alcoholic beverages, including cocktails, in tasting rooms. Governor Cuomo began hosting craft beverage “summits” to find out what more the state can do to promote the industry.
Cornell University in Ithaca, which had been using its resources and research to aid wineries since the late 1800s, began turning more of its attention to brewing, hard cider and distilling. Cornell, which has a state-supported agriculture program, helps with everything from the types of grain to plant to best practices in the stillhouse.
“Because of the success we’ve had with wineries, and breweries, and hard cider, we have the infrastructure in New York State to help the distilleries,” said Chris Gerling, an extension associate at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva in the Finger Lakes. “I think we can help the distillers figure out how to differentiate themselves, how to establish an identity.”
Jason Barrett, president and founder of Black Button Distilling in Rochester. Author’s photo.
MODERN DISTILLERIES: FIVE TO WATCH
Today’s Upstate New York distilleries come in all sizes. They make all sorts of spirits, and use just about every conceivable base ingredient, from apples, grapes and honey to corn, wheat and rye. We’ve introduced some of them in previous chapters. Here’s a look at some of the other notable Upstate New York distilleries (and some of their signature cocktails).
Tuthilltown Spirits/Hudson Whiskey, Gardiner
Ralph Erenzo and Brian Lee are universally acknowledged as the pioneers of modern New York craft distilling. They opened their distillery in Gardiner, near New Paltz, in 2005. The project was initially intended to be a “climber’s ranch,” where those tackling the nearby Shawangunk Mountains could stay during their expeditions. Neighbors opposed the plan. “The neighbors threw up every obstacle to the ranch,” Erenzo says, “but they didn’t know me very well. I’m a terrier.”
With his first dream dashed, Erenzo figured out what else he might do with the thirty-six-acre property, which was zoned for farming and could be used for a winery. He didn’t want to farm, and he didn’t want to start a winery, which were becoming plentiful at that point.
Instead, he turned to distilling.
“Really the reason was because it was something nobody else was doing,” he said. “And it wasn’t rocket science. You could do it with determination and a reasonable amount of education.” Meanwhile, Erenzo also found a loophole in the tangle of state alcohol laws that allowed him to get into small-batch distilling at a lower license fee ($1,500 instead of $65,000). “I thought, ‘I wouldn’t risk $65,000 but I might risk $1,500.’”
He also knew he wanted to make whiskey, not just fruit brandies like the wineries were doing or just clear spirits like vodka or gin. He and Lee hit the jackpot with Hudson Baby Bourbon, made from 100 percent corn. Today, the distillery makes six whiskeys, two vodkas and a gin, plus a cassis, some flavored liqueurs and cocktails bitters.
Tuthilltown’s success attracted the interest of some buyers. It started in 2010, when Erenzo and Lee sold their whiskey brands, made under the name Hudson, to William Grant & Sons, a family-owned maker of scotch. Then, in April 2017, Grant bought the whole business, keeping Erenzo on as a consultant.
The Basil & Bourbon cocktail from the Tuthill House restaurant at the Tuthilltown Spirits distillery. Author’s photo.
Basil & Bourbon
From Tuthill House at the Mill, Gardiner
1½ ounces Hudson Baby Bourbon
Several leaves of basil
¾ ounce Demarara sugar
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
Combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake for a few seconds. Strain contents into a small coupe. To garnish, take a piece of basil, gently smack it to release the oils and place it on the top of the drink
1911 Established/Beak & Skiff Apple Orchards, LaFayette
When life gives you apples, what do you make of it? At Beak & Skiff Apple Orchards in LaFayette, just south of Syracuse, they have lots of ideas. Beak & Skiff started in 1911 and sold apples wholesale for decades, before starting a you-pick retail operation in 1975 and producing its own fresh apple cider in 1979. By the start of the twenty-first century, Steve Morse, a manager at the growing family-owned business, saw the need to diversify—in part, to compensate for bad years in the orchard. Morse knew he could press the juice out of even ugly weather-damaged apples and make alcoholic spirits from it.
Hard cider started in 2001 and vodka, distilled from hard cider, in 2009. (Morse had to battle the impression from some drinkers that the vodka would actually taste like apples.) That was followed in the next few years by apple-based gin and a vanilla chai vodka. In 2017, the company started down the road to making its first whiskey. That will be aged in oak a full three years, meaning it can’t be sold until 2020. It’s the first 1911 spirit not made from apples—it’s a four-grain whiskey (corn, wheat, rye and barley). “You have to stay on top of, or ahead of the market, and at the same time try make something different,” said Ed Brennan, who by 2017 had become general manager at Beak & Skiff.
In less than ten years, 1911 Established had become one of the Upstate’s best-known distillers, sold throughout New York. It also features a 1911 Tasting Room and Café, along with the gift shop and apple-picking visitors’ center at its main campus in LaFayette.
Hot Chai-der
From 1911 Established
4 ounces Beak & Skiff fresh sweet apple cider
1½ ounces 1911 Vanilla Chai Vodka
1 apple slice
1 cinnamon stick
Heat the fresh cider and pour into a mug. Add vodka and garnish with apple slice and cinnamon stick.
Orchard Breeze
From 1911 Established
1½ ounces 1911 vodka
4 ounces Beak & Skiff fresh sweet apple cider
Splash of cranberry juice (about ½ ounce)
1 lime wedge
Fill a 12-ounce cup with ice and add the vodka, apple cider and cranberry juice. Garnish with lime wedge.
Finger Lakes Distilling Company, Burdett
Brian McKenzie built his distillery in the heart of what is known as the “Banana Belt” of the Finger Lakes, the stretch along Route 414 on the southeast shore of Seneca Lake that boasts one of the densest concentrations of wineries in the region. Finger Lakes Distilling soon became a destination of its own.
Finger Lakes produces whiskey, gin, vodka, brandy and grappa and liqueurs. It makes use of almost every kind of base ingredient the region can produce: apples, berries, grapes, honey, maple, barley, wheat and corn. Its aged McKenzie Bourbon and McKenzie Rye are “neck and neck” as bestsellers, Brian McKenzie says, in keeping with the resurgence of brown spirits across the state. Those two spirits, along with McKenzie Pure Pot Still Whiskey and its gin are sold through distributors across New York and as far away as California.
It’s also become one of the state’s biggest and best known distilleries, producing about four barrels a day, five days a week. About half is sold through distributors and half directly out of the tasting room. “Tourism is important to our business,” said McKenzie, “We’re in a great location to pick up tourists. People visiting the area want to buy and taste local products.”
At the tasting room, the flavored liqueurs are popular, and so is grappa, an Italian-style brandy. It’s distilled from grape pomace (seeds, skins and stalks discarded after the winemaking process). It is popular with wine-country visitors (and made by several of the wineries themselves).
When it opened in 2009, Finger Lakes Distilling had just the second farm distillery license in the state. Now it has more than one hundred competitors. McKenzie, who has also served as president of the New York State Distillers Guild, has no problem with that.
“There is certainly more noise in the market,” he said. “But the more distilleries there are, the more people pay attention to what we’re all doing. That’s a good thing.”
White Pike Mojito
From Finger Lakes Distilling
10 fresh mint leaves
2 teaspoons superfine sugar
1 ounce fresh lime juice
2 ounces Finger Lakes White Pike Whiskey
Club soda
In a rocks glass, muddle together mint leaves and sugar. Add lime juice and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add ice, followed by White Pike Whiskey and stir again. Top with club soda to taste.
Finger Lakes R&R (Rye & Rhubarb)
From Finger Lakes Distilling
2½ ounces McKenzie Rye Whiskey
2 ounces rhubarb simple syrup
½ ounce fresh lemon juice
1 to 2 dashes rhubarb bitters
Shake all ingredients and strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a rhubarb stalk and a lemon twist.
Black Button Distilling Company, Rochester
“Live Large in Small Batches” is the motto of Rochester’s Black Button Distilling Company. Spend time with founder Jason Barrett, and it does seem he’s living large. He’s enthusiastic about his business. And why not? His family ran a button business, which he worked in when he was younger. Now, he makes whiskey. That’s got to be more fun than buttons.
Barrett’s drive inspires what he does. He likes wheated bourbon, so he makes a Four Grain Bourbon with a relatively high amount of wheat. He wanted a gin that stands out, so his is a Citrus Forward Gin.
Black Button started production in 2013 and sold its first products in 2014. It’s located just down the street from the Rochester Public Market, next to and in a building owned by Rohrbach Brewing Company, the city’s oldest craft brewer. Its products cover a broad range from Apple Pie Moonshine to Bespoke Bourbon Cream.
Barrett thinks whiskey is the future for craft distilleries, especially his own. “Gin drinkers tend to be brand loyal,” he said. “Bourbon drinkers like to like a selection, picking something depending on what mood they’re in. Besides, my passion is bourbon, so why don’t I stick to what I like?”
From Black Button Distilling
½ ounce Black Button Citrus Forward Gin
1½ ounce Black Button Bourbon Cream
2 ounces cold brew coffee
2 dashes Fee Brothers Orange Bitters
2 dashes Fee Brothers Chocolate Bitters
Add all ingredients to an ice-filled rocks glass and stir.
Lockhouse Distillery, Buffalo
The first distillery in the city of Buffalo since Prohibition occupies a pretty sweet spot in the city’s Cobblestone District, in the redeveloped Canalside area where the old Erie Canal once emptied into Lake Erie. It’s also near the arena where the Buffalo Sabres play hockey. Lockhouse started making spirits in 2012 and moved to this location in 2015. It has a stillhouse, tasting room and bar.
Lockhouse products include grape-based vodka and both an unaged and slightly aged “barreled” gin, plus Revolution Coffee Liqueur, made with espresso. Perhaps its most unusual spirit is Ibisco Bitter, made with hibiscus flower, vanilla bean, yohimbe bark, chamomile flower, gentian root and fresh grapefruit peels. It’s earthy, floral, bitter and sweet. It’s Lockhouse’s version of an Italian bitter aperitif, similar to Campari or Aperol. It’s one way to make an Upstate New York–based Negroni.
By 2018, Lockhouse plans to produce a whiskey, to be aged not less than two years, in fifty-five-gallon barrels. (Many new distilleries speed up the process for their first whiskeys by using smaller barrels—like five to fifteen gallons—and aging for only six months or a year.) “We’re going to do it right,” says Lockhouse operations manager Cory Muscato.
Muscato, who joined Lockhouse after it opened and is now a partner along with Niko Georgiadis, Chad Vosseller, Thomas Jablonski and Jon Mirro, is happy to be part of what has been a remarkable economic turnaround in Buffalo in recent years.
“All the brewers and distillers and cocktail bars—it’s all good,” he said. “It’s more people banging the same drum, but louder.”
From Lockhouse Distillery, Buffalo
1½ ounces Lockhouse Ibisco Bitter Liqueur
½ ounce lemon juice
1 ounce apple walnut syrup (see note)
Prosecco
Dehydrated apple and cinnamon, for garnish
Mix Ibisco, lemon juice and syrup in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake for about 20 seconds and then pour into a sparkling wine flute. Top with Prosecco, sprinkle with grated cinnamon and garnish with dehydrated apple.
Note: To make apple walnut syrup, bring 1 quart of water to a boil with ¼ cup of walnuts and 3 apples (cut-up and skin-on). Once it boils, strain out the solids and put apple water back into pot; add 1 quart sugar and stir to dissolve. Let cool, then bottle.
THE COCKTAIL REVIVAL: ROCHESTER
Of all the cities in Upstate New York, none seems to have embraced the new culture of the cocktail more than Rochester. You can see it in the fact that by 2017, the city had the fastest-growing chapter of the United States Bartenders’ Guild in the country.
You can also see it at the annual Rochester Cocktail Revival, held throughout the city each year in early May. It’s part pub crawl and part series of educational seminars. Mostly, it’s a celebration of the renewed interest in well-crafted mixed drinks in Rochester. The revival is the brainchild of Chuck Cerankosky, who has had a hand in the rebirth of the city’s cocktail culture through his association with two of its better bars: Good Luck and Cure.
Cerankosky began his career in the coffee business but quickly saw the potential in the craft cocktail scene. “With coffee, I had an interest in the origins and how it’s made,” Cerankosky said. He applied that to cocktails, back when a lot of people still thought “cocktail” and “martini” were synonymous. There were lots of blended, fruity drinks.
“I thought there’s got to be a better way to do this,” he said. “And in some ways, it turned out to be easier than I expected. It’s actually harder to make a latte than a Negroni.”
Although Upstate New York is generally a few years behind places like New York City in many fads and trends, Rochester embraced the return of the well-crafted cocktail. “There’s some magic to being in a well-run bar that takes its time to purvey not only an art form where mixologists create cocktails on the spot, but to be able to showcase flavors that make patrons feel good,” Cerankosky said in a 2015 interview with Edible Finger Lakes magazine. “This balance depends on an intense skill level—one that Rochester’s cocktail scene is pulling off on par with the larger markets.”
The Rochester Cocktail Revival started in 2014 and has attracted thousands of thirsty visitors to what Katrina Tulloch, writing for NYup.com in 2016, called its “boozy banquets and spirited soirees.” The weeklong event includes tastings and demonstrations and seminars that have been led by such cocktail luminaries as Dale DeGroff, Robert Simonson and Gary Regan. In 2016, one highlight was a demonstration on making the perfect James Bond (Vesper) Martini.
In addition to Cerankosky’s own bars, participants have included some of the other places in town noted for good drinks: Cheshire, the Revelry, Ox & Stone, the Daily Refresher, Roux, the Cub Room, Nosh and more. Producers like Fee Brothers—the bitters, cordial and syrup maker—and Black Button Distilling are also involved.
Using those local companies’ products in his bars, and showcasing them at the revival, has been a plus, Cerankosky said. “It’s great to be able to use those spirits in our bar program.…At first, we used them to be polite. Now, we use them because they’re good.”
Here is a drink created by cocktail writer Robert Hess in tribute to the city, with a nod to Professor Jerry Thomas.
Rochester Cocktail
From Robert Hess (drinkboy.com)
2 ounces rye whiskey
1 ounce Dubonnet
½ ounce Licor 43 (a Spanish liqueur)
¼ ounce absinthe
2 dashes Angostura bitters (note)
Add all the spirits with a couple dashes of bitters into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake up and strain into a cocktail glass.
Note: To make this more authentically “Rochester,” try substituting Fee Brothers Old Fashion Aromatic Bitters, similar in style to Angostura.
EXCELSIOR: ALL NEW YORK, ALL THE TIME
If there is one place where the union of New York spirits and cocktails reaches its pinnacle, it might be the Excelsior Pub in downtown Albany, just a few blocks from the state capitol. Jason “Jay” Bowers operates the pub on one guiding principle: all the beer, wine and spirits are made in New York State. That means most come from Upstate.
“If you give New Yorkers a chance to have some state pride, they’ll love it,” Bowers said. “They’ll just grab it. Every time.”
He shares that spirit when it comes to sales representatives who come into his pub bearing New York products. He’s been known to buy them at first sight. “If it’s made in New York, I’m an easy mark,” he said.
Owner Jason “Jay” Bowers in the Excelsior Pub in Albany. The pub exclusively serves New York State beer, wine and spirits. Author’s photo.
If you think it would be hard to stock a full-service bar with only New York beers, wine and spirits, Bowers is here to disagree. He even makes that New Orleans classic, the Sazerac, with an Upstate New York–based absinthe, made by the Delaware Phoenix Distillery in the Catskills town of Walton. The pub’s food menu also pays tribute to New York cuisine, from Buffalo’s beef on weck sandwich to Rochester’s “garbage plate” and Binghamton’s spiedies.
“Having things from New York that no one else has—that’s my bread and butter,” he said.
Capital Apple
From the Excelsior Pub, Albany
2 ounces 1911 Vodka
Splash of sweet cider
½ ounce cinnamon simple syrup
Piece of cooked apple for garnish
Put vodka, cider and simple syrup into ice-filled shaker. Shake and strain into martini glass. Garnish with pieces of apple skewered on toothpick.
Excelsior Sazerac
From the Excelsior Pub, Albany
Delaware Phoenix Absinthe
3 dashes Peychauds bitters
Sugar, to taste
Water
2 ounces Hudson Manhattan Rye (Tuthilltown)
Lemon twist
Swirl absinthe in a small tumbler or rocks glass and discard. Muddle bitters, sugar and water in bottom of mixing glass. Add ice and rye, then stir and strain into absinthe-rinsed glass. Garnish with lemon twist.
In the modern, fast-paced world, it’s not enough to create a cocktail list and leave it at that. You have to change it up.
Like some drinks, the list needs to be freshened on occasion.
At the Turning Stone Resort in Verona (between Syracuse and Utica), that’s a challenge. The resort, operated by the Oneida Indian Nation, has more than a dozen different bars (and even more restaurants). Each has its own cocktail list.
So Turning Stone’s beverage and nightlife staff created a “cocktail test kitchen” to bring some order to the process. “As cocktails evolve, we can’t be too slow to change,” said Jerry Marrello, the resort’s nightlife and beverage director. “We have to be forward-thinking.”
The cocktail test kitchen started in 2015, in a small space tucked behind the Turquoise Tiger, Turning Stone’s cocktail lounge and live music room “inspired by 1940s film noir.” It looks more like a kitchen than a bar. It’s got storage shelves and a big refrigerator for ingredients, stainless-steel counters and a sink. It’s loaded with lemons, cocktail bitters, milk, juices and, of course, a roster of gins, bourbons, vodkas and rums.
Jeff Hannagan of the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona makes a Romancing the Stone cocktail in the resort’s “cocktail test kitchen.” Author’s photo.
“It’s a safe haven for us,” Marrello said. “It’s a safe little nook for us to play around and experiment.”
The players—they call themselves the beverage committee—include Marrello, nightlife manager Vinny Belfiore and Jeff Hannagan, assistant manager for bar operations. They’ll also round up others, for instance, the chefs or bar staff at the particular venue whose list they’re working on.
“We also raid the chefs’ kitchens if there’s something there we want to use,” Hannagan said. “That’s the fun of it—sometimes you just change one little thing and you’ve got a whole new drink.”
One of the first drinks to come of the test area was Romancing the Stone, a signature drink for the entire resort. It’s a berry bomb, made with blueberry vodka, fresh blueberries and Chambord, a raspberry liqueur, topped with champagne.
The team is constantly looking for cocktail trends. Tea-infused cocktails heated up and so, in a way, did deep cold ones, made with dry ice that can chill a drink down to -25 degrees. Yet the cocktail test kitchen committee is also aware that serving the customers’ desires is key.
“A lot of people are comfortable with certain things, like vodka and cranberry or rum and coke,” Belfiore said. “It takes time and patience to convince them to try something new. It’s a challenge that our bartenders are up for. They say, ‘Try this, it’s really good.’”
Once a new drink or drinks list is developed, it goes out to the venues in the resort. Customers then provide feedback that the cocktail staff listens to. Behind the bar, it’s up to the bartender to sell the drinks—and that often comes with a bit of flair or entertainment.
“Everything we do has to have some kind of entertainment,” Marrello said. “Showmanship and flair in mixing drinks is just as important in a bar as having good conversation.”
These are some of the drinks devised at the Turning Stone cocktail test kitchen and now served at the resort.
Romancing the Stone
From Turning Stone Resort Casino
½ ounce Chambord
8 to 10 blueberries
½ ounce lemon juice
1½ ounces Stoli Blueberry Vodka
¼ ounce egg whites
Lemon twist, for garnish
Muddle Chambord, blueberries and lemon juice in shaker glass. Add ice, vodka and egg whites. Shake until cold and frothy, double strain into champagne flute. Top with champagne and lemon twist garnish.
Fifth Street Fizz
From Turning Stone Resort Casino
1 ounce Plymouth Sloe Gin
¾ ounce Campari
Dash bitters
Pink grapefruit puree, to taste
½ ounce lemon juice
1 ounce simple syrup
Champagne
Lemon twist, for garnish
Combine all ingredients except champagne and lemon in shaker tin, shake until cold. Strain into champagne flute, top with champagne and garnish.
DISCO LEMONADE: THE COCKTAIL IN A CAN
Ben Reilley may seem just like a guy who runs a distillery. In reality, he’s something of a drinks pioneer.
In 2016, his two-year-old Life of Reilley Distilling & Wine Company in Madison County, just east of Syracuse, launched a product called Disco Lemonade. It was the first “cocktail in a can” made from hard spirits produced in New York State and one of the first in the United States.
It’s a whole new chapter in the long history of the American mixed drink, and a twenty-first-century example of Upstate New York ingenuity in spirits and cocktails.
Reilley’s Disco Lemonade is a blend made from his distillery’s raspberry vodka, plus lemonade and mint. When the vodka (40 percent alcohol) is mixed with the lemonade, it comes out at 6.5 percent alcohol, about the same as many India Pale Ales and a little stronger than most domestic premium beers like Bud or Coors. It’s a pale yellow color, much like homemade lemonade.
But why put it in cans?
“We live in a place where people have boats, go to the beach or the park and so on,” said Reilley, whose distillery is on Route 20 near the village of Cazenovia, in the heart of New York State. “Cans are much more practical, easier to carry. And that fits in with that carefree lifestyle.”
Disco Lemonade, as a cocktail, had been around for several years, usually made with vodka, blue curaçao and lemonade. And the drinks industry had been awash for a couple of decades with flavored malt beverages like Smirnoff Ice or Mike’s Hard Lemonade (which have a fermented beer-like base). Those are typically sold in bottles and cans.
But in 2014, Reilley had the idea to put a version of Disco Lemonade in cans using his own distilled spirits as the base. He saw it as a way to market his vodka to a wider audience and build an identity for his distillery. (Life of Reilley also makes a premium unflavored vodka and a vanilla vodka.)
The inspiration, he said, came when he and his wife, Siobhan, were at a summer bonfire party and noticed how many people came in carrying six-packs of Bud Light Lime-A-Rita (a beer-based flavored beverage made by brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev). So they set out on a mission: create something that would be a true cocktail, using hard spirits, not beer, that would work well in cans. The formula that clicked has Life of Reilley raspberry vodka, fresh-squeezed lemonade and an infusion of mint leaves.
“It’s really not that sweet,” Reilley said, “and that shot of mint in the aroma really kicks it up.”
But we’re a little ahead of the story, because it took a while before Disco Lemonade in cans could get to market. It had to be approved for sale by state and federal regulators. The novelty of the product meant that federal and state alcohol regulators weren’t sure how to handle it. They kept comparing it to those beer-based malt products like Mike’s Hard Lemonade or Smirnoff Ice.
But the use of a distilled spirit—in this case vodka—put Disco Lemonade in a different legal category. “We had a lot of conversations back and forth about that with the TTB [the federal agency that regulates alcohol],” Reilley said. “Eventually we got it sorted out.”
Clearing the legal hurdles did come with one stipulation for Disco Lemonade: since it is a distilled spirit beverage, it cannot be sold in grocery stores or convenience markets, which is where you’ll find beer in New York. It must be sold in liquor stores, along with other hard spirits and wine.
But that, Reilley believes, works to his advantage. He doesn’t compete side-by-side with beer. Liquor stores have welcomed his product, because it gives them something to sell that customers come back in for more frequently than, say, vodka or whiskey.
“They like that ‘turn and burn’ that you get with this,” Reilley said. “Customers might be back every week to stock up on Disco.”
With Disco Lemonade, Reilley found, he could carve his own special niche in the surging distilled spirits business.
“It’s the only product I’ve seen that skews 50/50 with men and women,” Reilley said. “It’s going to be what we’re known for, I think. I think this category is coming on and it’s here to stay.”
KEGWORKS: BUILDING A BAR ONLINE
Mixing a good cocktail these days is no longer just for professional bartenders. No one knows that more than David Rivers, proprietor of a worldwide drinks business that has its base in the Buffalo suburbs. He launched an online retail business called Kegworks in 1998 and, in 2016, spun off an affiliate called Behind the Bar (behindthebar.com).
Kegworks at first specialized in the things a dedicated beer drinker might need, including glassware, bar mats and the kegerator (a small refrigerator specially outfitted to hold and dispense beer from a keg). The company moved into bar tools, tap systems, cocktail ingredients and all the necessities to set up your own “man cave,” including signs.
Kegworks’ customers have always included both bar professionals and the home mixologist, but the breakdown is hard to pinpoint because, after all, it’s an online business serving domestic and international customers. Rivers thinks it might be a 50/50 split.
Tracking his business put Rivers in the perfect spot to witness the resurgence of interest in the cocktail. While the cocktail categories—tools, glassware and such—have “grown exponentially” in recent years, he said, it’s the cocktail ingredient side that has provided the biggest boom.
His inventory of bitters, syrups, mixers, garnishes and more grew as more people discovered “the joy of mixology” (not coincidentally, the name of a cocktail guide by Gary Regan). Imagine Rivers’s joy when he discovered that Fee Brothers, a supplier of many of those ingredients, was located in nearby Rochester. “I got in my car and drove there in the middle of a snowstorm. We were the first to put their stuff online.”
The search for vintage ingredients for classic cocktail continues to drive much of the business, Rivers said. “It’s really those specialty, hard-to-find things—someone may read about a certain item and then look for it and discover we have it.”
Although he split the beer side and cocktail side of his business into separate (but linked) sites in 2016, Rivers sees them as parallel.
“The whole craft cocktail industry is mirroring the craft beer industry,” he said. “I’m happy to see the stock of both ticking up.”
AN UPSTATE EYE-OPENER
For me, writing this book was an eye-opener. I uncovered the history and lore of spirits and cocktails in Upstate New York and made my introduction to the modern revival of both.
In that spirit, I’ll leave you with a real Upstate eye-opener: the New York State Fair Bloody Mary, which highlights some of the iconic flavors of Upstate New York. It was introduced to the fair in 2016 by Ben Eberhardt and the Hospitality Concepts company of Hamilton, who run the Fair’s Empire Room. (They’re the same people who gave us the modern Flaming Rum Punch at the Gould Hotel in Seneca Falls.)
As you’ll see, this drink, like many of the best stories and legends of Upstate drinks history, is all about the garnish.
The New York State Fair Bloody Mary
From the Empire Room at the New York State Fair, Syracuse
1½ ounces 1911 Established Vodka
Bloody Mary mix
1 Buffalo chicken wing
1 grape tomato
1 boiled shrimp
1 slice of Italian sausage (such as Gianelli)
1 salt potato
State Fair spiedie sauce
Lime wedge
2 olives
Celery stalk
Fill glass with ice. Pour in vodka and Bloody Mary mix. Place next six ingredients on a skewer and drizzle with spiedie sauce. Put lime wedge and two olives on a toothpick. Lay skewer and toothpick over the glass and add celery stalk.
