Dave Landrum is a friend of mine, I'm excited to try their product. While they were considering where to open the distillery, they did a tour of the south. They came to Durham and I hosted them at my place. Dave made me one of the best cocktails I've had with some very limited resources. The guy really is great with the spirits.
I enjoyed this quote:
- "You can start a dream in Detroit with $2,000 instead of $200,000," Landrum said.
That was an interesting article, especially how these two seem to have been all over the place over the last 15ish years. But what I'm most interested in is the fact that there's a craft cocktail scene, I was not aware of such a thing.
It's definitely a "scene" and has been growing popular enough to be parodied. Check out this post from forwardslash, it's pretty hilarious and sums up the scene well. I should mention, I like that the cocktail is getting more respect and is being made with fresh, quality ingredients. Why a nice restaurant will spend countless hours and energy making sure they have fresh ingredients and creative dishes but still put out boring cocktails with store bought mixers always baffles me. The "scene" is an interesting one and there are serious people doing some pretty interesting work. Heck, even the glassware is important as cW can attest to. Speaking of cW, he had a fantastic response to forwardslash about "cocktails" that you can read here. So, go out and explore. My suggestion is to try a "craft cocktail" that sounds interesting to you at a bar and then ask the bartender how to make it. Most people are really cool about sharing recipes. Then, go home and make it yourself. You'll start to slowly amass a great bar while you're at it. That's how I got started.
Those were all wonderful posts. As a fairly poor, recently turned 21 college student, I haven't forayed or even known about this world of cocktails. Glassware is actually something I've been aware of, a friend is very much into beer and wine and has had that discussion with me before. I fully intend on exploring cocktails, not as a means to get drunk, but as a means to witness and experience the full potential of various spirits and mixed ingredients blended into a single product.
Have fun exploring. It's definitely nice to see how the different ingredients can blend together to form a delicious product. But what's also nice is the effect it produces, let's not kid ourselves.