"Sleepless" Chapter 7 "St. George"

A Brief History of Alcohol Interlude

Southwest of Oakland is Alameda Island, an island home to a Naval Base on its Southern half, extensive residences belonging to police officer and fireman families, and somewhat recently, a row of breweries and distilleries. 

The finest of these is a now nationally-known brand called St. George. 

Gin is possibly the most demonized spirit in the realm of alcohol. 

“Oh no, I can’t do gin, it has me fucked up.” 

My response to statements like these as a craft cocktail bartender was,

“Let me guess. Freshman year of college. Bombay Sapphire.” 

This was always answered with a direct “yes” or an affirmative response with a modification to Tanqueray, Seagrams, or Beefeater. 

Gin has a history originating in the Netherlands with a slightly different spirit called “Genever,” which has a slightly more full-bodied, leathery taste that was given to soldiers before battle to get the nickname “Dutch courage.” 

Gin had a stigma to it in its early history as a cheap spirit particularly in England before a resurgence in the Victorian Era saw its reputation bolstered. 

As far as the latter half of the 20th Century is concerned, gin has been seen as a peculiar spirit that many would be perplexed as to why one would want to consume it. The popularization of the “James Bond Martini” saw a popularization of the vodka Martini that left gin’s primary role as the centerpiece for the world’s most famous cocktail. 

The “James Bond Martini” in reality is called a “Vesper” named after Bond girl, Vesper Lynd, and it isn’t made from purely Vodka. 

Vodka is a pathetic spirit in terms of mixology. It quite literally takes on the taste of whatever it is mixed with. This is something that I frequently demonstrated when training bartenders in servicing orders for Moscow Mules for sorority girls. “I’ll have a Moscow Mule, but is HAS to be Grey Goose.” I’d then instruct my trainee to make it with Ketel One, and the customer would never know the difference. 

The Vesper cocktail is a cocktail with both Gin and Vodka finished off with the traditional Blanc or dry vermouth. When I initially saw this as a new bartender this left me perplexed, but the dilution of the the gin and vermouth from the ounce of vodka  leaves a sweeter, more approachable taste. 

It should never be shaken however. Never listen to the famous line from the Bond films, “shaken not stirred.” That is an abomination. 

Aside from this, there are many legitimate ways to vary one’s Martini, to using more vermouth than gin (Julia Child), removing vermouth altogether (straight up), rinsing the glass with Islay scotch (burnt), and many more. 

Being from the Bay Area, this is a point I emphasize greatly. Not only was the Mai Tai invented in the Bay Area in nearby Emeryville at Trader Vic’s, but the Martini was first made by Jerry Thomas at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco during the early 1860s. 

So in some ways, it was a tragedy that the original centerpiece ingredient has been thrown into obscurity after the Vesper trend mutated into pure vodka martinis. 

Gin as a spirit got a facelift in the late 2000s with the popularization of craft gins. 

On the forefront of this was St. George distillery with their three legendary gins, the Terroir gin, the Dry Rye gin, and the Botanivore gin. Each of these were lauded as some of the finest gins to have ever been crafted. The Botanivore is their take on a traditional, London dry gin using California botanicals. The Terroir is an earthier, gin with the term terroir in the context of food and beverage meaning, “relating to environment or soil.” The Dry Rye is a gin that is a gin with spice and rye in the formula to give a bit of fire in the mid palette of the tasting profile.

St. George got its start making absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit that had been thrown into obscurity for centuries from several countries outlawing it due to hallucinogenic ingredients being placed in the formula. The craft spirit and cocktail boom of the late 2000s brought it back with vengeance beyond the Herbsaint that goes in a Sazerac.

St. George, by some arguments is the finest distillery in the United States with its supergroup of gins, its beloved absinthe, its spiced pear liqueur, its single malt whiskeys both Japanese-inspired an not, and its off the wall “miscellany” of shochu, Campari-killing “Bruto Americana,” and the unfortunately discontinued rhum agricole.

I then had the blessing to tour the marvel of a warehouse while being on the clock.

Sobre Mesa was a new Latin-American cocktail lounge opening up in the former site of a failed bar called “The Payback.”

I had signed on to be a part of their opening team and finally replace my job at the alleged “fine-dining” restaurant I worked at in San Francisco. The bar was founded by seafood chef, Nelson German, a kind-hearted, soft-spoken, and illustrious Dominican chef from Brooklyn who became a beloved adopted son of Oakland due in part to his successful seafood restaurant, Alamar.

German had hired the team of Susan Eggett and Alex Maynard to spearhead the launch of the bar. Maynard was a founder of the once heartbeat of Oakland event space and bar, Starline Social Club, and Eggett was a founder of San Francisco tiki haunt, Last Rites. Their consulting came with education for the opening bar staff that included Latin-American food and beverage history, tiki cocktail history, and a trip to tour St. George Distillery in nearby Alameda.

The space was a warehouse filled with natural light, and it was a nice change of pace from the routine of Dublin to Oakland and Oakland to Dublin. The tour included tastings of their line of gins, all of their liqueurs, and for our taste buds only, their plum wine two years out from being fully aged and ready.

The conclusion of the tour was in their lab of testing new spirits, and we were all introduced to the head of St. George, a tall bald, man whose name I can’t recall with thick frame glasses, tastefully picked raw denim jeans, red wing boots, and a build of someone who learned to appreciate fitness later in life. When asked by our group where his creative process comes from, he stated that an idea can’t be forced and that crafting an environment conducive to flow of thought is everything.

This disturbed me in a way. There was a large part of me that agreed with him, but my core knew another way and wanted my way to be the only way: to force one’s self to think through extremity and anxiety. Thinking fast under pressure had served me well, and I was almost disgusted by this idea of needing a peaceful external factor in order to create.

Heading back across the water to Oakland through one of the tunnels, I found myself back on Broadway at 3pm with a buzzing town itching for Friday night. The year felt like it was going to be everything we thought it would be: one giant party.

I had received a message from Justine as soon as I walked into local wine bar, The Punchdown.

“There’s a barbacking shift available tonight if you want it. I know you said you’re looking for extra cash for when Celine visits next week.”

I smashed a response with my thumbs, “I’ll take it. Need to prove I’m still king of the grind.”