Spirit Portfolio

You may have suspected it, but the recent Washington State
Bartenders Guild inaugural party made it abundantly clear: Seattle’s
bartenders are mighty attractive. They’re also smart: They’re banding
together to share knowledge, promote their craft, “secure a congenial
relationship with the WSLCB and liquor companies to broaden our state’s
spirit portfolio” (per wsbg.org), and
generally get better drinks into your thirsty but discriminating hands.
As one bartender said, “Whatever I do in life, I want to learn, so it’s
great—I’m learning.”

The party took place at what was accurately billed as “Anu and
Zane’s Amazing Loft.” Anu Apte and Zane Harris both
tend bar at
Vessel, and their amazing loft in Sodo—scarred hardwood floors,
billion-foot-high ceilings, Harris’s art on the walls, a telephone
table made of a stack of olive-green vintage vinyl luggage—has an
amazing bar of its own. It’s the first bar Harris ever tended, salvaged
from a restaurant his parents ran in North Bend. “This bar is nicer
than half the bars in Seattle,” a bartender said, and while surely
appreciative of the African ribbon mahogany, the bartender meant in
terms of liquor. It is enviably stocked.

Bartenders took turns being the bartenders’ bartender, making drinks
like Bobby Burnses (Dewar’s 12, sweet vermouth, and Benedictine, all
liquid gold and honeyed taste) and admiring each others’ skill with
garnish. Guild president Andrew Friedman welcomed everyone and briefly
discussed building community, the state’s growing new crop of
distillers (“There’s one around here somewhere”), an upcoming absinthe
class, and the guild’s planned persuasion of the liquor board—the
aforementioned securement of a congenial relationship. If you’ve ever
gone to a bar in New York or San Francisco or Dubuque, been jealous of
the bounty of spirits (and thus ever more refined or just plain odd
cocktails) available, and wondered what the hell’s wrong with our bars
here, the answer is the historically snail-like WSLCB. Approving new
liquors to be sold in state liquor stores has not been high on the
board’s agenda.

Neither have local distillers been a priority for the liquor board:
The advent of Dry Fly Distilling last year marked the first new
liquormaker in our great state since Prohibition. A couple spirit
aficionados/fly fishermen/businessmen from Spokane made it so only
after heroic hoop-jumping-through and great expense, paving the way for
others (including the one wandering around the guild’s party, from
Pacific Distillery: absinthe and gin coming soon). Prior to their
efforts, the state agency didn’t even have procedures in place to
inspect and license distilleries. With the board’s pump primed for
positive change—change that provides jobs, makes use of local
agricultural products as fodder for the still, and lets you support our
state via a nice martini—and the careful attentions of the guild,
the contents of the shelves of your liquor store and your favorite
watering hole should become more diverse.

“Support your local bars!” Friedman concluded, throwing in a plug
for his, Liberty. He and the guild’s other founders spent a lot of time
talking with Daniel Shoemaker of the Oregon Bartenders Guild (and of
Portland’s Teardrop Cocktail Lounge), modeling the
Seattle charter
on Oregon’s. Washington, D.C., also has an independent guild, and San
Francisco is rumbling about one. Otherwise, U.S. bartenders’ guilds are
backed by one of the largest liquor distributors in the country.

Other bars representing at the kickoff party: Sun Liquor, Spur,
Union, the Can Can, the Saint, Black Bottle, Viceroy, ToST, and more.
The vaunted Jamie Boudreau, formerly of Vessel, now at Tini Bigs, was
absent but is on board with the guild’s good work; whether the Zig
Zag’s famous Murray Stenson will join remains to be seen. The guild
will also connect good bartenders with good bars—as one bar
manager said, “I’m looking forward to being able to find someone who
knows more than how to make a vodka tonic and cares about more than
whether they get a dollar tip for it.”

If you’re curious which new bars bartenders are looking forward to,
the buzz was about the imminence of the questionably named Barrio (12th
at Madison) and a Thai place opening in Bellevue called Chantanee
(slated for December). While the liquor flowed freely all afternoon and
into the evening, everyone was happy, no one was sloppy: These are the
kind of professionals who enjoy their drinks instead of letting their
drinks enjoy them. The several hundred meatballs Zane had made provided
ballast. “Fucking delicious,” one bartender observed, spearing a
meatball with a toothpick. Attendees went home with bags full of
high-grade liquor swag: Dewar’s stainless-steel flasks (the kind with
the lid on an arm so as to prevent loss during turbulence), Bulleit
bourbon T-shirts in handsome burnt orange, thick knit caps with the
Crown Royal logo embroidered in golden thread, and 42Below terry-cloth
wristbands with the notification on the tag “NEW ZEALANDERS AGREE:
DRINK RESPONSIBLY.” Somebody better tell New Zealanders.