It's Easy to SVR FLVR!

NOTE posted 7-8-26: I guess when you get samples in May, write about them immediately! Sad news: It sounds like Untitled Art is no more. Oh, well.

Let's put it this way, what Untitled Art's line of non-alcoholic beerish (more on the need for the -ish soon) pours, FLVR!, lacks in vowels it makes up for in...well, you can probably guess. I was lucky enough to get shipped a couple of taster six packs to see what's up with the product line that used to be called NON (as in non-alcoholic), and am pleased to report deliciousness on all fronts. And we're talking diverse fronts--sure, there's a West Coast-Style IPA and a Juicy IPA to make the never-out-of-fashion hopheads happy, but then there's a Chocolate Dark Brew, an Italian-Style Pils ("style" might seem to be adding up as a hedge word but I promise it's not in the glass), a Mango Dragonfruit Sour, and a Grapefruit Radler.

Those two IPAs are certainly IPAealing, the West Coast doing a bit of the dank thing, the New England, uh, I mean Juicy, giving the squeeze of citrus. So you get what you'd expect, which is just what you want, as the less successful low-abv beers often don't seem to achieve their style at all, hoping to bamboozle you in a wash of bubbles and foam. I'd put them both up with the ever reigning king of NA's, Athletic, to the point I should probably do a side-by-side to decide who would win out.

The Pils also delivers that nifty mix of malt and hops levity you want in such a beer. It's supposed to be something you can suck down, and enjoy, while doing yard work on a summer's day, even if that yard work is reading in a hammock, not mowing the back 40. And it is. The Chocolate Dark Brew hits you with cocoa the moment you pop the can, and is surprisingly complex for an NA, kind of "chewy" in a good way, even if it might lack the lingering finish a stout with some alcohol can. Think of it as an after dessert drink that won't make you sleepy.

And then there are the-ish pours, and I don't sling that suffix as a slight in the, uh, slightest. Both the fruity offerings are less beer-like than just tasty, with the fruit being featured dominating the flavor profile and the hops gently raising its hand demurely in the distance. The Mango Dragonfruit takes you straight to somewhere tropical--what a fine Maui poolside pour it would be--while the Grapefruit Radler does that cool "I quench you as I make you thirsty" thing that isn't an issue because you could zip through a six pack and still drive home (if you were sure to hit the head before the drive--that'd be a lot of liquid, your bladder mileage might vary). 

On a day when the Los Angeles Times' lead guest editorial (subscription required, so the ideas shouldn't be that life-threatening) asserts "alcohol should be marginalized like smoking," it's easy to be left fuming if you feel most evenings tend to call for a potent potable or two, especially in our current beleaguered times of Trumpiness. What's coming-out of Wisconsin from Untitled Art can help you scratch that itch without pouring any alcohol on it, so to speak. So here's a huge HRY!* to FLVR! 

*If the sometimes Y rule is in play, please shorten that to HR!, even if that makes it sound like I'm rooting for home runs (that's ok) or Human Resources, the suck-ups whose job it is to allow the bosses to do whatever they want to the employees and give it the veneer of "fairness." 

So let's just say HOORAY! then.

Sandwich Week 2026: Cristino's and Etty's

 It's Sandwich Week 2026 over at the Santa Barbara Independent. That means over 50 sandos on special at 9 bucks per. I had the good fortune to sample and write about two--at Cristino's and Etty's. Highly recommend both!

The Chanticlair Crows Three Concepts

 Among its many wonders, The Chanticlair, opening on West De la Guerra Street, brings two acclaimed chefs together in one kitchen, offers three different concepts in uniquely and charmingly designed spaces, but more than anything, it is rooted in a true market menu bursting with surprises. White pineapple guava. Chinotto tangerines. Exotic shelling beans. Sikkim cucumbers. White blueberries. Chilacayote squash, roasted over pecan wood, served aside a stuffed squash blossom, and kicked up with mole amarillo and sprouting pepita crujido.

During my interview with chefs Jeremy Tummel and Jake Reimer, Tummel disappears out the kitchen’s door only to return with a few blackberries plus basil growing out back so pungent you smell it before the door shuts. “It’s Greek columnar basil,” he says, handing me a dime-sized leaf of the exotic herb so I may join in the munching. It hits with Wonka-big basil flavor. For reference points, Reimer talks about his grandfather’s garden, Tummel his mom’s. “This is stuff not sitting in a box or refrigerator,” Reimer says, after running through a list of purveyors —Tom Shepherd, Milliken, Earthtrine, Garden of…, Tutti Frutti — they will work with when items can’t come from just beyond the kitchen. “You’re going to taste the difference,” they promise.

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent.

Note: that photo above is mine, so not of the highest quality, unlike the amazing food--we got to eat there after I posted my story and everything blew us away, including this duo of lemon cucumber gazpacho with fresh English shelling peas and Aleppo and a SB uni parfait (with corn chowder).

A Review of Ted Geltner's "Flagrant, Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson"

Is it possible to feel sad considering the life of someone who authored nine novels (one a winner of the National Book Award), a novella, two books of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage? That’s a damn good run for anyone, let alone someone gone at the relatively young age of 67. Still, it’s hard not to look at the life of Denis Johnson and lament.

Clearly his biographer Ted Geltner recognizes that—just check out the book’s title. Geltner, a professor of journalism at Valdosta State University, remains true to his reporter’s roots throughout, digging up vivid chestnuts of facts that illuminate Johnson’s troubled yet also uniquely charmed life. We find out who he did acid with in high school, which real life members of the Iowa City demi monde are the sources for which fictional characters in his work, get a where-are-they-now? coda for the family that inspired his classic story “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books.

Review also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on July 7, 2026.

Goleta’s Beloved ‘Third Place’ Celebrates a Decade of Brewing Up Fun

Interviewing Reno King, brewer (or “Hops Wrangler” as they like to put it), and Tami Snow, media maven (or “The Storyteller”), at the bar in the original Goleta location of Draughtsmen Aleworks (DA) a few weeks out from their 10th anniversary celebration, it’s easy to see how they made it to a decade in business. Every customer moseying up for a pint stops to chat. Names are known. Jokes are shared. As King puts it, “We ended up a community center rather than a brewery.”

That’s, of course, overstating the case a bit, as King and crew have offered up more than 90 different beers since DA opened in 2016, currently pumping out 750 barrels a year. Draughtsmen has locations in downtown Santa Barbara at Mosaic Locale and in Solvang, plus pours such as their core IPA Awesome Possum are served in fine establishments such as The Daisy.

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Paloma, SAMsARA, What a Pair-A!

So often restaurant wine dinners are extravagant and obvious: why, yes, that tannic Cab is no mistake aside the steak. And how the Chablis-like Chard sings with the whitefish sautéed in the very same wine!  

So that’s why the recent SAMsARA dinner at Paloma on March 31 subtly surprised. The first of five delicious courses kicked off with—horrors!—a red wine. A chilled red wine. That was a 2022 Grenache from Spear Vineyard, a lighter, livelier version of the grape. SAMsARA winemaker Matt Brady--an efficient, ebullient host for the evening--called it "crunchy," which pleased me to no end as in my notes just prior I used the same term, meaning either I have a perceptive palate or we both love peculiar if precise adjectives. Its mineral, playful notes perked up with the Miliken Farms Japanese sweet potato, "brûléed" with a brown sugar BBQ sauce, hit with a bit of aioli, then strewn with sesame, scallion, and a vivid pickled ginger. Between the off-beat wine opening and the grounded yet vibrant first dish, everyone around the boisterous long table had to readjust their expectations for the evening. Very good was a bar at mere ankle-height for this crew.

The second course was spring itself on a plate, Tutti Frutti sugar snap peas, artfully sliced to expose their pretty innards, tossed with a rose dressing just faintly floral, crispy guanciale, and pickled red onion (a nice nod back to the pickled ginger in the previous course--it was that kind of sly segueing that made the evening even more memorable). The peas were buried in an avalanche of grated Pecorino, rich and salty. A steely 2022 Zotovich Chardonnay provided a laser focus to keep cutting the dish into sharper diamonds of delight. 

It turns out the process for the pairings began when Brady showed up with 18 wines for the Paloma staff, led by the unassumingly talented Paloma chef John Parker, to consider. Those flavor profiles got the kitchen's team mind spinning, and coming up with delights like the third course: a grilled oyster mushroom skewer--with all of that good red oak smoke inside--hiding a line of luscious Drake farms chèvre and also atop a shallow pool of green goddess, the two different creaminesses combining as a perfect complement to the mushroom umami. It needed a bit of textural balance that it got in two clever ways, one more typical--pepitas--and another spot-on, if oddball--toasted quinoa. The wine pairing for this course might have been the most by-the-book, but as Brady pointed out, "Pinot Noir is what we're best known for," so how could we complain? Especially when it wasn't just Pinot, it was 2022 Bentrock Vineyard PN, which Brady rightfully called "a rock star, an A+ vineyard." The wine's lean but far from mean raciness, that hint of wildness, unlocked even more flavor from the terrific dish it accompanied.

 

To be honest, they could have sent me home at that point a sated, elated man. I actually made sure to share a revised version of that old Borscht Belt saw to my nearby table mates, “Such good food—and such enormous portions!” And that was even prior to the fine servers dropping Snake River Farms wagyu tri-tip in front of me: not one, not two, but three hearty slices of precisely medium rare steak. A classic peppercorn au poivre sauce and scatter of chopped chive made the dish from Santa Maria but also from Ste. Marie, if you know what I mean, a culinary mash-up that completely worked. Plus, the humble inclusion of charred cabbage carried along the good time from the grill theme in the least pretentious, yet oddly scrumptious way. 

Brady poured one of his favorites of his own wines for this course, a 2021 Zotovich Syrah (the current release is the 2022). The 100% stem inclusion gave the wine a serious backbone, but only a hint of the green that stems can offer a wine. No, this was all about black pepper, as if it had its own au poivre sauce. Who needs a Cab when a Syrah can be this wonderful?

You know, when I started this I thought I might skip a typical course by course discourse, but I couldn't help myself. Writing this is such a lovely way to re-experience the delight of a night. And sure there was dessert, fortunately piquant and bright and light as these things tend to go--doesn't graham cracker crust seem somehow less dense? And toasted meringue, well, that's just air that's somehow spun from egg white and sugar--you could eat a bucket of that and it would barely register, no? Grapefruit curd is a fruit, so pretty much salad. White chocolate pearls are precious textural crunch and more eye candy than candy-candy, right? What's more, we washed it all down with a 2023 Blanc de Blanc that had the good breadiness you want from a sparkling wine but also a snappy depth and its own citrus bite. Another brilliant pairing that made the food better as the food made the wine better.

Kicking things off Brady made clear the SAMsARA mantra, "Let the site shine, don't put our fingers on the scales." That's a way to think of the entire evening, an unfussy yet artfully skilled celebration of gorgeous fruit and produce and proteins that would make any Santa Barbaran proud.

Coffee Week 2026: Renaud's Patisserie

Renaud’s Patisserie: Drip Coffee & Croissant ($5); Drip Coffee & Croissant BLT ($10) 

Be honest — so often, a BLT promises way more than it delivers. Flimsy bread, soggy lettuce, limp tomatoes, a surfeit of bacon strips, so 50 percent of your bites are sadly pork-less.

Now meet the BLT of your dreams. It starts with Renaud’s well-renowned croissants, the area’s best since the first of Renaud Gonthier’s spots opened back in 2008 in Loreto Plaza. There’s a rich aioli and not some dull mayo. Poor lettuce, so often a sandwich’s lackluster wallflower, here dances up a crisp, crunchy storm of bright green. The tomatoes have flavor. And then not just bacon, but also thinly sliced ham, lightly grilled for more richness and ancillary pork crunch. There’s red onion for those unafraid to partake of the pungent lily. You will make a happy, delicious, finger-licking mess.

Or go classic and order “only” a croissant, a celebration of lamination, baked butter, and fragile flake.

And either eats gets washed down with Peerless Drip Coffee, from one of the country’s premier roasters for more than a century. You can even choose from Hawaiian, French, or Guatemalan roasts, depending on how much bite you’d like.

Don’t be surprised if you also leave with a gorgeous chocolate Easter bunny for the kids. (Sure, for the kids.)

If you want to read about all the other Coffee Week deals, then do so at the Independent's site.

A Peek at Pico, Ten Years In

 When Kali Kopley and Will Henry opened Pico in Los Alamos in 2016, they walked the restaurant floor, taking turns cradling their one-month-old daughter, Winslow. To help celebrate Pico’s 10th anniversary on February 28, Winslow got on stage to join her dad’s band HWY 246 for a song. That’s some serious, personal markers for a business.

But it’s also a great emblem for what Kopley and Henry wanted the place to be when it began. They haven’t swayed from the vision Henry articulated when interviewed by the Indy then: “We want to create a great culinary experience using locally produced vegetables and meats, to make as much of our ingredients in-house as possible, and to pair it with the world’s best wines.” But beyond that, there’s “the mission to make you feel at home,” as not just their website puts it, but more specifically, the page called “Ethos.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Paul Willis’s ‘Orvieto’ Takes Readers Inside an Umbrian Hill Town

 

An American abroad has been grist for the literary mill, and Italy in particular has always held its attractions, as seen in work by poets from James Wright to former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate David Starkey (Circus Maximus and You, Caravaggio).

Now another former S.B. PL, Paul Willis, has turned to Italy for inspiration in his recently published chapbook Orvieto (Solum Literary Press). For a short book, it takes us on a deep dive into this historic, artful town in Umbria perched dramatically on a rock cliff (or, as Wikipedia puts it, “The flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff”).

Willis, an emeritus professor of English at Westmont, began work on the poems in the collection during visiting teaching stints in 2021 and 2024 as part of the Gordon-in-Orvieto program. He candidly admits how new this setting is to him, winning us over easily with his wide-eyed acceptance of the world. Typical of his often sly craft, he opens the book with “Shutters”— this is a book about seeing — and by the poem’s end, he has transformed himself into a songbird. Which he remains, tunefully bringing us the agony of history (especially World War II), the ecstasy of art (many poems are ekphrastic), and the spirituality of faith. For the latter, no one considers angels and saints more humanely, in particular, poor St. Julian. You don’t have to be Christian in the slightest to be moved by Julian’s fate, as Willis tenderly relates it.

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

And don't miss Paul Willis's book reading/signing at Chaucer's Books on Thursday, March 12 at 6 pm.

A Review of John Darnielle's "This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days"

 

If the claim “songs are poetry” drives you batty, John Darnielle’s This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days will give you fits. Darnielle fruitfully teases the artful line from song to poem in many of this book’s entries, even if “what poetry’s good at,” as he puts it, “dense economies of rhythm, sound, and meaning” certainly describes the majority of his lyrics. But there’s another level, too: can a written version of the heard capture a song? For he writes, “The page is not the song; it’s an echo of the song, or a wobbly mirror of it, or a clarification of its position.” (Note his love of the clause building on the clause that begins with the book’s double-coloned title.)

First, though, I’m sure I’ve already lost some of you. And want to lose you more, for I can’t help but point out this lover of the direct address in lyrics early in his book asserts: “If I have the choice between rhyming ‘you’ or ‘me,’ though, I mean that’s not really even a choice, the second person is the preferred person when possible.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books.

Indy Burger Week 2026: Blue Owl & Yellow Belly

Hope you didn't give up cow for Lent as it's time for the Indy's Burger Week 26! I got to preview the tasty delights from The Blue Owl and Yellow Belly, but there are four dozen options on sale for $10 until next Wednesday, February 25, so get eating, my friends!

Dry-licious Indeed with Pentire and Loquita

Pentire--with a big assist from the bar team at Loquita--is making a convincing case that NA cocktails should always be called AF, and I don't mean alcohol free, I mean tasty AF. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This post is a report on a "Dry-licious Dinner" that Loquita offered on January 22nd, when every course came with alcohol-free pairings, almost all featuring products from Pentire. You know, Dry January, and the overall trend no matter the month--folks are giving up alcohol, somehow, even as the world quickly swirls down a Trump-turded toilet. I'm pretty positive my consumption has gone up. But that doesn't mean I'm not interested in what I know is better for me, plus new products are fun to experience, and I remain ever-hopeful the cracking of the non-alcohol nut that happened for beers can someday also happen for spirits and wine. I want to live in a world where I might not achieve dry but damp I can do.

You see the extensive, detailed menu above, so note I won't take you through every bite and sip, but I do want to point out some highlights. Like the kickoff offhandedly labeled "snacks" that put to shame the Ruffles potato chips and Lipton onion soup dip I was raised on. The pan con tamate on the left offers "magical" bread that's translucent--really, I mean, you know I wasn't drunk and imagining things. (Speaking of that, despite being sat at long tables, so you get to/have to meet new friends, conversation still happened just fine without the often assumed necessary ABV lubricant, so that was cool too.) The bread is made with kuzu flour, so ends up a bit gelatinous and crunchy-chewy, a fine foil to the acid-sweet tomatoes atop, with their snowfall of Manchego. Then the croqueta is a brilliant, crispy fried ball that bursts with rich béchamel, all kicked into overdrive from a gorgeous wrap of Iberico. Perfect bites, especially alongside the El Facil, bringing together Pentire Seaward, cilantro, elderflower, and habanero. It passed the taste buds like a St. Germain-laced margarita.

The U.S. Director of Sales for Pentire, James Thomas, was at the dinner, and announced we were attending Pentire's first such event in California, "So now you're all famous." Thomas and Pentire both come from England, the product line itself from Cornwall, and many of its ingredients are found along that rough and rugged coast. So the Seaward bottling includes sea rosemary, woodruff, sea buckthorn, wild seaweed, and pink grapefruit, and the resulting liquid is botanically bright, vaguely gin-ish, but with more saline and light sweetness. 

Throughout, the Pentire products don't try to ape a particular spirit, but make a blend of distilled botanicals that sing on their own. That really helps with what's the usual disappointment with alcohol-free spirits--even when the flavor gets close, the mouthfeel is hard to come by without the sugars associated with alcohol. So, for example, you can quickly say, "I know tequila, and you're no tequila" to other brands attempts to mimic specifically. Not so with the more adventurous Pentire.

It helps even more that the Loquita bar team--led by Emilio Uribe--loves to play and does so brilliantly. Thomas recalled the first time he brought the products in hoping to interest the restaurant and the bartenders just grabbed some bottles and got to work as he talked, cooking up clever combos on the spot. "Loquita put this dinner all together," he insisted, "I only dropped off the product. We make this liquid; but these guys bring it to life." Indeed, if you didn't get to attend the dinner, the Bengala served that evening is a constant on the Loquita menu. Kicking off with Pentire's Coastal Spritz, it comes to spicy life with pomegranate, cinnamon, ginger, lime, clove, and a splash of soda water. 

The Pentire Coastal Spritz fits neatly on the NA side of the light Amari, thanks to its botanicals, blood orange, sea rosemary, and oakwood (a hit of tannin never hurt). Think Aperol without its 11% ABV and less sweetness. Turns out it's Pentire's most popular product.

Here's to Loquita stepping out of the typical wine or cocktail dinner box and trying something new--there's no question chef Cristian Granada and his team love rising to the occasion (oh, that arroz dish, a most elegant of paella-esque treats). And the evening ended without any of us feeling we'd missed a thing.

The Cool Cats Keep Coming for Good Lion Hospitality

 If you consider a visit to a haberdasher prior to bar-hopping, you’d want a top hat before sashaying into The Lion’s Tale, and a pith helmet before slinking into Jaguar Moon. That’s relevant sartorial information as both establishments just celebrated their first-year anniversaries. The former, gracing Coast Village Road in Montecito since October 2024, offers a swellegant hotel bar experience akin to the finest one at The Connaught in London. The latter, livening up downtown Ventura since November of the same year, takes you to the tropical Yucatán. The two join the other seven establishments that comprise the ever-growing Good Lion Hospitality (GLH) group headed by couple in business and marriage Misty Orman and Brandon Ristaino.

Given Ristaino insists it “takes a year to take a first breath” when opening a spot, it seemed a good time to check in on all things lion to see if everything was good.

Not to give the game away one-sixth of the way through the article, but the answer is complex. Crowds have been great and locals supportive, so much so that Orman and Ristaino couldn’t even get IN to their own Lion’s Tale over the holidays. “It was so crowded,” Orman explains, “that we didn’t want to come in and stress the staff having to figure out where to put us.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Answering the Urge for Urchin

 

How much just shy of delicious decadence can you take? If you’d care to find out, get yourself to Carp for brunch at Little Dom’s Seafood. Now almost six years since it took over the beloved space of Sly’s, Little Dom’s has settled into its own lived-in and local feel — servers fist-bump regulars and the bar room’s booths feel like they’ve been there for decades (the space had high-tops in the Sly’s days).

But it also has a classy and cool feel, too, starting with that very elegant Deco bar and carrying right through the menu. Especially from September to March when Brandon Boudet, executive chef and co-owner, gets to drop a few in-season uni dishes. None beats the simple-sounding but far from simple-tasting uni and eggs on brioche.

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Get Ghirardelli in Your Santa Barbara Belly

If it's going to take non-local businesses to rescue State Street, at least they better be California icons, and based on the line of folks queuing up to score a free sundae on opening day, January 22, I'd wager Santa Barbarans are going to welcome Ghirardelli with open arms and hungering gullets. Unless you have Rip van Winkled for 174 years, I assume you know of Ghirardelli, as Domenico opened his first store in San Francisco in 1852 when he could have met a living Washington Irving. That's one reason the name is practically synonymous with chocolate, but it's more than a long-established brand. On its website it claims to be "one of the few chocolate companies in the United States to control every aspect of its chocolate manufacturing process," which, of course, leads to a better tasting product. So combine ace flavor and a heaping helping of nostalgia and you have a winner. (Do note they are currently owned by giant Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG, but at least Lindt also has a history of quality chocolatiering. And there aren't any small companies anymore in a world dominated by massive capital. I'll put my Marx away....)

So the Santa Barbara store, located on lower State in what had mostly recently been Pascucci's (which, I know, most most recently was on upper State, sorry for any confusion), is so brand-spanking renovated it can come off a bit mallesque--all blue and white and tile and light--but my guess is time will add its patina eventually. The center of the store offers oodles of ways to take the famed chocolate bars home in more varieties than you might imagine (I'm not going to reference Wonka, I'm not going to reference Wonka). But no doubt the main attraction is the ice cream bar and its 26+ versions of sundaes, many starring Ghirardelli's famously rich, thick, and addictive hot fudge sauce. So while ice cream can seem an extension of the brand, it certainly doesn't mind literally bathing in the company's roots.

In the photo up top you see the Ocean Beach, a sea salt caramel sundae for those of us who know that saline hit of savory makes the chocolate all the better. And note your dessert comes with its own dessert--atop each sundae rides one of their SQUARES® and you get to call dark or milk chocolate. I have to admit I didn't know you could copyright geometric shapes. I think after eating one of these I'm headed to a governmental office so I can own ROUND®. It is scrumptious, definitely.

What's even better, Ghirardelli gives back. To celebrate being part of the Santa Barbara community, locals & students will receive a local discount of 15% off their entire purchase (with proof of valid ID). 

Drink Your Mesquite Neat

The whiskies from Islay in Scotland are as hard for some to swallow as it is for others to pronounce Islay (it's EYE-luh). That's thanks to the peat--Islay is where all the best smoky single malts come from. They roast barley over peat, and that flavor stays strong through the distillation process. If you're a fan--and I imagine all you mezcal-lovers out there just got interested--it's sort of addictive. Who doesn't love the scent of a campfire?

So, sure, there's a muchness to it. But for many, this writer included, that intensity is thrilling. One of the best Scottish Islay expressions can be found at Laphroaig, so it's exciting to know that Laphroaig's longest-term distillery manager, John Campbell, is now making whiskey at Warbringer in of all places Oxnard, CA. That might seem like too far from home in too many ways, but remember what Hubert Germain-Robin did for U.S. brandy and you'll realize there is some repeatable history to emulate. 

Of course, California shores aren't famed for their peat bogs. One thing we do have is mesquite, although to be honest, what Sespe Creek Distillery, which is the over-arching company for Warbringer, uses is charcoal from Texas--hence the official name, Southwest Bourbon. As their website puts it: "mesquite smoked corn comprises the majority of our mash-bill (65%), the rest is fire-roasted in a rotating steel drum, caramelizing sugars and imparting a sweet, roasted flavor." (The remainder of the grain bill is rye; as bourbons go, this one's low on the sticky side.)

Think big and bold--that makes it seem more Californian to me. Yep, there's a big hit of campfire on the nose and on the first sip, but then everything begins to balance as if a gifted cinematographer was pulling focus for you so you can explore all the frames of the drink. Caramel, a bit of graham cracker, a hint of cocoa--sure, think a drinkable s'more. Warbringer is finished in sherry casks, so gets a bit of pedigree in its finish. 

Obviously, and especially at 98 proof, it's a fine sipper all on its own, particularly after dinner around the fire pit. (If it ever stops raining so we can sit outside. How is this California.) It also works well as a smoky sub in cocktails like Difford's 100 Year Old Cigar, of course. But I had to know how it might do in a Health Inspector, my variation a Penicillin (long story--thought I was allergic to penicillin, so needed to make my take on the drink have anime that wouldn't make me ill). Typically the cocktail gets a float of Laphroaig to get some smokiness direct to your nose. Typically the whiskey bill is a blended Scotch, and to honor my Dewar's drinking dad, that's long been mine, too.

But, what happens if you skip the float and go straight for the smoke, using the Warbringer as all your whiskey? Well, that's a perfect delight, especially on a damp winter night. 

Smoke Em if You Got Em

(makes 1 drink)

3/4 Tbs. honey (try a local one wherever you are--I liken from Hollister Ranch)

3/4 Tbs. ginger extract (Liquid Alchemist does a vivid one)

1 oz. fresh lemon juice

1 oz. dry vermouth

2 oz. Warbringer Mesquite Smoked Southwest Bourbon

Add everything to a cocktail shake. Stir, first, as the honey takes a bit get incorporated. Then add ice and shake, vigorously, because, you know, that honey. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon peel.