Toast San Diego's evolving cocktail scene
The Sam Elliot, San Diego's most quixotic cocktail, is complete only after a good swishing in the bottom of a cowboy boot.
This bit of important info comes from Thomas Tompkins, mixologist at San Diego's hip Craft & Commerce.
The sharp-dressed bar is done up around the collar in mossy wood trim. It's a rustically sophisticated joint, not unlike its patrons, and not unlike the San Diego I've seen so far on this trip.
I think for a moment that maybe Tompkins is putting me on. I don't see any cowboy kicks behind the bar, and there's not a single hitching post out front. It takes him two painstaking minutes to punctuate his masterpiece with a wafer-thin slice of cherry. Then he slides it my way with a sly smile.
"Drink up, partner" he says.
The aroma of the Wild West overwhelms me. Sam Elliot's sweet bourbon stings, and the sarsaparilla soothes. Immediately I understand that the libations in this part are of a unique ilk.
Cocktails, each an exercise in whimsy and a labor of creative love, are part of the reason San Diego is quietly becoming a craft spirit superpower. As Tompkins tells me, "The craft of the cocktail is not an escape from reality in San Diego; it is an exercise in local experience."
I see this come true as I sip my way through San Diego, and it's seriously good fun to discover.
My hotel, the iconic US Grant on Broadway, has a vivid spirit history of its own.
The air inside is thick with history. During the era of prohibition, the hotel's Bivouac Grill, now the Celestial Ballroom, was known as the Plata Real Nightclub. The clandestine speakeasy was operated under a thin veil of surreptitiousness — everyone in town knew what was going down, but they loved it so much they kept their mouths shut.
Those days of back-alley skullduggery are long gone, and San Diego's spirit scene is booming. Today, many local bartenders follow the lead of the US Grant's premiere artist in residence, spirit savant Jeff Josenhans.
A certified sommelier and master mixologist, Josenhans was the first American barman to craft bottle- and barrel-conditioned cocktails by way of fermentation, utilizing the beer and champagne method. His first release, the Mule Sur Lie, a combination of vodka, muscat, ginger and cascade hops, turned California's spirit industry on its ear.
Subsequent releases, including a Cosmo: Reinvited, and a barrel-aged Manhattan, have brought Josenhans significant acclaim in distilling spheres. His concoctions are part homage to the US Grant's fabled drinking past (think rum running, underground delves that open on the sea and secret lounges) and a nod to modern San Diego's ever-evolving palette.
His Génépi Americana is a chartreuse hybrid featuring wildflower honey, more than 25 California botanicals and young bourbon in a blend that is aged in Allier French Oak barrels. His Imperial Manhattan Rye Red, a Mission Brewery collaboration beer, is a classic red infused with cigar-smoked Luxardo Maraschino cherries and aged in the Grant Grill's US Centennial Manhattan barrels for four months.
I like to think of San Diego as a place where sun-bleached surfers sip pisco and apricot liqueur, a city where cocktails smell and taste like Old Western film icons. I love the verve and vigor siphoned into Jeff Josenhans' botanically capricious Douglas Collins, and I love succumbing to city's spirited overtures.
Travel is a wonderful way to see — and taste — the spirit of a destination evolve.
