For our 6th and final stop on this year's Liquid Insights Tour, we took a bite (and a lot of sips) out of the Big Apple. We chose to visit New York so we could calibrate what we saw in markets as diverse as Tampa, Los Angeles, Austin, Portland and Denver. Debbi Peek and I were joined by Allen Katz, Southern Glazer's Director of Mixology & Spirits Education for New York and one of its (humble) icons of the cocktail scene for more than two decades. With this dream team in place, I was confident and thrilled to explore this incredible city that first opened my eyes to cocktails on the Lower East Side when I lived there in the early 2000's.
In the city that never sleeps, cocktails continue to be quite sophisticated - and like Manhattan real estate, a bit pricier. The average cocktails we saw were generally priced around $20, up from $16 just a couple years ago. This is New York, so you're paying for some serious creativity here with a concentration of beverage talent unmatched in most cities worldwide. Also, overall costs have increased to run a restaurant or bar in NY in recent years too. To make the cocktails worth it, program leaders are going all out with botanical spirits and liqueurs, crafting complex, herbal flavor profiles that would make even the most jaded New Yorker raise an eyebrow.
As far as what else is different in NY now vs. before COVID, Allen noted that fewer consumers work in a “traditional” office setting with structured work hours, impacting how (and how many) operators choose to be open for lunch, as well as how (and when) guests visit. Based on that, guests seem to be visiting earlier in the day, like the packed house we saw at a fried chicken and champagne hot spot at 5 p.m. The other impact is guests are moving from place to place, seeking unique and memorable “moments,” such as visiting one place for an after-work drink and bite at 5, and then another for early dinner, and possibly another for an early nightcap. This creates added challenges for operators to source traffic. The window of opportunity to source visits has narrowed. The response appears to be innovation through cocktails and wine that deliver both elevated experience (“memorable moments”) without sacrificing speed and precision.
Allen summed it up best when he told me, “We are in a constant stream of motion here, the result of on-going cultural re-discovery in a post-COVID economic recovery. The six-lane super-highway of NYC cocktail culture allows for flexibility in presentation, but creativity and flavor rule. Affordable access points for cocktails for newer consumers unfortunately is largely out the window. Costs here are stratospheric and that has put added pressure on the cadence of techniques and processes gleaned often from global influences to deliver memorable flavor.”
Speaking of innovation, there’s a whole umami revolution, mirroring what we saw across the U.S. We're talking cocktails with fish sauce-infused foam (and an optional rim of spicy dried shrimp), side shots of birria broth, and even something called "huitlacoche" or "corn smut" - the mushroom-like substance that sometimes grows on ears of corn. Sounds gross, but the drink where it was used was flavorful, earthy and delicious. It's a clever way to blur the lines between food and drink.
The use of unique ingredients doesn't stop there. Palo Santo, a "sacred wood" from South America made into an oil often used for aromatherapy, is making its way into cocktails. Then there's the increased use of herbal liqueurs like Suze and even vermouths or club sodas flavored with fig leaf - all accenting herbal, earthy, and sometimes bitter flavors. These types of flavors and tinctures evoke old apothecaries that created not just cocktails, but elixirs.
Interestingly, the milk punch trend we saw prominently across the U.S. was less prevalent here. While more common in New York 2022 than in other markets, that's now flipped, with other cities embracing it more. In fact, we only saw one on our stops - but it was at arguably one of the city’s hottest cocktail bars. Might this suggest that while the milk punch trend is hot across the U.S. right now, it could be short lived? It may simply be that operators in New York have pulled back on executing these types to lower labor costs of preparation steps.
New York isn't forgetting about the bubbles either. Fancy highballs and spritzes are big, with some places doing creative things to add complexity and interest. Take "The Egg" for instance - essentially a vodka martini served over an egg-shaped ice cube made with lychee puree and water, then topped with soda in a rocks glass. It's like a drink and a show in one glass that changes flavor as it melts. Another great example was the Market Fresh cocktail that mixed that fig leaf vermouth I mentioned earlier with Salers, lemon and soda - incredibly refreshing and herbal with a touch of bitterness to keep you sipping.
For guests who prefer non-alcoholic options, no location we visited left them out. Most places had at least a couple of zero-proof cocktails just as complex as their boozy counterparts. Some venues were really embracing this trend, offering as many alcohol-free options as there are boroughs in the city. For non-New Yorkers, that means five.
Now, let's talk wine. NYC's wine lists are like a world tour in a glass, as diverse as the city's crowds. Like all other markets on the Tour, we saw emphasis on light, bright whites, chilled reds, and sparkling red natural wines (pét-nat) served by the glass or mixed simply with a bitter vermouth - perfect for sipping on a warm summer night like when we visited. After some research and chats with bartenders and servers, we found that natural wines were often incorporated on lists without being explicitly labeled as such, suggesting they were chosen primarily for flavor and quality, with their omission of preservation additives as a bonus.
A cool (and refreshing) thing we saw at one of NYC's hottest new spots was strategies to make wine more accessible in price. Sure, you could still drop a fortune on a bottle if you want here, but this place, specializing in champagne and fried chicken, offered a dramatic price range that didn't ignore entry-level price points (which unfortunately many restaurants and bars across the U.S. have done). For instance, they featured three (white, rosé and red) high-quality Spanish and Italian options at $9 per glass, alongside others ranging up to $25 for still wines and up to $50 for champagne. The bartender also proudly pointed out that they feature 100 bottles of wine priced below $100. Whether a guest wants to spend a little or a lot on wine, they had plenty of familiar as well as unique and surprising options to enjoy.
Overall, it felt like NYC's drink scene was about pushing boundaries while still trying to keep things approachable yet memorable, much like the city itself. They're using wild ingredients and techniques, but also thinking about how to cater to different budgets and tastes, from Wall Street bankers to starving artists and everything in between. High-quality ingredients were the common denominator whether we were at a fine dining spot or a casual neighborhood bar.
As Debbi told me, “New York to me really is the heart of classic cocktail culture. With some exceptions that we visited, bartenders still largely are staying true to their classic roots and doing them exceptionally well, with very interesting global flavor influences often presented in a refined, elegant way.”
To wrap up our whirlwind tour of New York City and the Liquid Insights Tour research phase, we raised our glasses for a final toast. We knew one thing for certain: in the ever-evolving world of spirits and wine, all roads still lead to the Big Apple. Cheers to New York! May your cocktails always be inventive, your wine lists inclusive yet surprising, and your bar scenes forever buzzing with the energy and worldly influences that makes this city truly one of a kind.
