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Upcoming Drinking Events: Ginger Bliss release party; Mezcaleria Oaxaca Opens

Plus: Boozing it up at Pike Place Market, oyster HH returns to Whole Foods.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Oct 03, 2011 at 09:23AM 0 Comments

This Saturday, celebrate the release of a new collection of cocktail recipes from Seattle author A.J. Rathbun.

Bargain oysters = happy times. On Tuesday, October 4, Whole Foods Westlake reintroduces oyster happy hour; from 6 to 8pm the slippery suckers are just 69 cents a piece. (Oh and lookie here, on Wednesdays it’s 50 cent wings.)

Thursday: Long-awaited Capitol Hill distillery and tasting room Oola throws itself an opening party, your chance to check out its vodka and gin and get a look at the Graham Baba-designed tasting room.

Pike Place Market hosts Arcade Nights on Friday the 7th. The $25 admission is purchasable at Brown Paper Tickets. For that you receive 10 tokens, each good for a beverage or snack. It’s 21 and over, drinks on offer include wine, beer, and hard cider.

A mezcal collection AND food from the Carta de Oaxaca folks? That’s more than a little exciting. Saturday, October 8 is opening night at Mezcaleria Oaxaca at 2123 Queen Anne Avenue N. You never know what Seattleites are going to show up for, but if the consistently clusterfucky crowd situation at Carta is any indication, you’ll want to arrive early.

Also on Saturday: Rob Roy celebrates the release of Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz, the new cocktail book from local writer A.J. Rathbun. Meet the author, buy a book, and sample some of the cocktail recipes between 2 and 4pm at the Belltown bar.

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Tags: Cocktails, Seattle Bars, Books & Authors, Whole Foods, Mezcal, Oysters, Drinking Events, Queen Anne, Cocktail Recipes, Belltown, Books About Drinking

Books, Blogs, and Other Recommended Writing About Booze

Required reading for people who think about drinks.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 16, 2011 at 10:15AM 3 Comments

This photo of a stack of books is meant to represent the act of doing a lot of reading.

PHOTO SOURCE

When I was in grad school fancying myself some sort of employable writer, my narrative journalism professor was kind enough to put me in touch with a bunch of editors at publications around the city, including the woman who was, at the time, the Home Editor of the most important newspaper there.

This editor I will politely describe as straightforward. And she told me something that I’ve never forgotten. She told me to read. A lot. “And not just magazines and newspapers!” she shrieked through the phone line. She told me to read books: current bestsellers and biographies and novels and…everything.

She told me to read everything.

This encounter reminded me of another conversation I had four years earlier, with another tough lady, a lit professor. We were walking to class together and I was blabbering on about how no English major could ever read everything he or she was assigned. My teacher stopped me right there in the quad and pointed her death stare directly into my pupils. Wagging a copy of Middlemarch in my face, she preceded to set me straight. “Oh. Yes. She. Can,” she admonished. “ And if she is serious, that English major will read it all twice.”

I did not read everything twice, I’m sorry to report. Not even close. But I did get the message. And as a person who covers drinks, I try to read as much good booze writing as I can.

Here is some of the reading I’ve found most useful.

1. Anything by David Wondrich. Esquire writer, author of important booze history books, David Wondrich is an erudite badass who basically invented the modern booze writing genre. It would be worth buying a subscription to Esquire just to read his monthly column. Fortunately, it also happens to be the best magazine in the world. GQ has a monthly booze department too; it’s also good.

2. Local bartender blogs. These are not hard to keep up with, as they post pretty rarely, but they are edifying. Jamie Boudreau, Andrew Bohrer (come to think of it, this post owes a lot to his post about good bartending books), and Mike McSorley all have very fun and informative blogs.

3. Everything that rum expert and contributing Atlantic editor Wayne Curtis writes is definitely required reading.

4. The Tipsy Diaries by Frank Bruni, (formerly the NYT’s restaurant critic), is written in his lovable wry voice, and serves as an excellent reminder not to take the whole thing too seriously.

5. Local writer Paul Clarke has a blog called Cocktail Chronicles that is geared towards the true enthusiast. He also has written, as far as I can tell, just about every long feature Imbibe magazine ever published. I’ve learned something important from each of them.

6. Tan Vinh has written some really good stuff in the Seattle Times including a nice piece on the Last Word, Seattle’s unofficial signature cocktail. He also has a weekly happy hour column that’s very useful.

7. Imbibe.

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Tags: Cocktails, Books About Drinking