Juniperlooza is coming

Posted on May 2, 2008
Filed Under Lance Mayhew | 2 Comments

This is the debut post from Lance J. Mayhew, a bartender in Portland, Oregon, and president of the Oregon Bartender’s Guild. He blogs at My Life on the Rocks.

“Gin, gin, gin. Gin will make you sin” my old acquaintance Dwight used to say, right before he’d take long draws off of lukewarm, generic-brand gin.

I spent a summer of my misspent youth hanging out at a local Laundromat, learning to cheat at backgammon from ex-cons like Dwight, Cal-Bo and Angry Mark, listening to their tales of life behind bars, and, occasionally, being offered a sip of their preferred distilled beverage, gin. I still remember my first sip of gin, it was hot going down, burned my esophagus severely and I bravely did everything I could to keep it from coming back up.

I kept it down and for the rest of that summer, I would run across the street and buy a small bottle of orange juice to add the gin to, never daring to drink it straight again. Gin became something that I associated with prison, and I avoided it like the plague for years.

Fast forward several years. My future wife was with me in a local dive bar, I was buying drinks and ordered something with whiskey when she spoke up and told the bartender,” I’ll have a Beefeater and Tonic”. Huh? “Excuse me, I’ll have one of those too”. I wish I could tell you that the bartender gave me a perfect combination of gin, tonic and lime, that holy triumvirate unmatched by any other combination in the cocktail world. Sadly though, this was not the case, as I was poured a heavy glass of gin with a splash of tonic, a few measly ice cubes and an anorexic slice of lime. At first sip, I made what my wife would later call my “gin face”, essentially a grimace of disgust.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure that the “Beefeater” in that bottle was more likely distilled in southern New Jersey or a suburb of Los Angeles. It was hardly a classic London Dry, but it qualified as gin, and I choked it down. I’ll admit to being rather nonplussed with drinking gin again, but I sure wasn’t going to let my wife know that I didn’t enjoy her drink of choice.

I persevered, and one day, instead of an unbalanced mess from our usual dive bar, I ordered one from one of the better bartenders in town. Real Beefeater, good tonic, and a fat, fresh lime squeezed into the drink. Suddenly. I realized that I’d met a cocktail that I could fall in love with.

With my new interest in gin, I began to explore the different styles of gin, and new worlds of flavor opened up to me. I fell in love with Plymouth gin, if it was good enough for Winston Churchill and FDR, it should be good enough for me right? Wrong, asking me to choose my favorite gin is impossible. I can choose a preferred style for a particular cocktail, but I am just as enamored with Dutch genever as London Dry and Plymouth. I’ve even hunted down (bad) Old Tom gin myself and drank (good) vintage Old Tom with the brothers Munat.

Juniperlooza could be the apex of my gin obsession. Bols (maker of Damrak gin), Beefeater, Plymouth and Oregon’s very own Aviation gin from House Spirits will all be presenting this event. Ryan Magerian, one of the premier mixologists in the country (possibly the best in my humble opinion), hosts with Simon Ford, Phillip Duff and Audrey Sanders. This is going to be the highlight of Tales this year. A chance to see the worlds leading experts discuss gin’s history, evolution and most importantly mixability in a setting of professionals and enthusiasts will be nothing more than possibly the best collection of gin products and experts ever assembled. Come, watch, taste and learn at the best gin seminar in the United States this year. Get your tickets now before this one sells out.

Juniperlooza takes place Thursday, July 17, at the Hotel Monteleone. Tickets may be purchased here.