Category: Distilling & Cocktails

Peter Peter Portland Eater has posted a report on his recent experience touring New England Distilling.

I enjoyed learning about the grains, molasses, and yeast that contribute to the culmination of great spirits, but after staring at the beautiful barrels of unbottled booze, I was definitely ready to try the products. New England Distilling has two products currently – Ingenium Dry Gin and Eight Bells Rum – with an as-of-yet-unnamed rye whiskey on the way this month. We proceeded to the front counter ready to try a couple sips of the rum and gin but were told we could also try the new rye before it came out in stores.

Mainely Spirits magazine has published an article about Andrew Volk and the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club (website, facebook, twitter).

Mainely Spirits is a publication of the Maine Beverage Company. The current issue isn’t online. To read the article click on the photo above for a large scale image.

Mainebiz has published an article about Maine’s small but growing spirits industry.

Luke Davidson sounds like a man whose head is spinning, a product of learning a lot about business in a little time. When Davidson opened the doors to Maine Craft Distilling in Portland this July, he didn’t expect the large crowds that flocked to his East Bayside business to taste the distillery’s craft batches of rum and vodka. The crowd surge created a number of logistical challenges, and it was all he could do to keep a supply of clean glasses and purchase bags handy.

El Rayo bartender Henry Jost has made it to the semi-finals in Bombay Saphire Most Imaginative Bartender competition. Jost’s entry is the High Port Cocktail which he’ll be pouring for the judges on September 8th in Las Vegas.

Update: for more information see this article in today’s Portland Daily Sun.

Three Portland bartenders—Trey Hughes, John Myers, Nathaniel Meiklejohn—were interviewed for an article in The Morning News about how bartenders go about naming the cocktails they invent.

This sort of creative referentiality runs rampant in mixonymics. Perhaps because, for many bartenders, the name comes at the end of the mixing—and the sipping, sipping, sipping. Many cocktail menus contain a fascinating, nearly Joycean sediment of in-jokes, failed poems, portmanteau words, geographical and historical reference, hat-tips, thumb-bites, and general alcoholic homage. Bartenders don’t need lawyers, they need lexicographers.

Dispatch magazine sat down with Zapoteca co-owner Tom Bard to learn more about tequila, mezcal and the restaurant’s extensive selection of both liquors.

Tom with his business partner Sergio Ramos have gone to great lengths to take the tequila and mezcal program at Zapoteca above and beyond any in the area. In fact, Sergio holds the title of Level One Mezcalier, one of only four in the United States to hold this prestigious accolade. Tom explains that Sergio is instrumental in sourcing their products. The two have even started the process of getting their own mezcal from Mexico to distribute in Maine and New Hampshire.