Oh, hey! Creative Loafing Atlanta has a new monthly column, penned by yours truly, to “explore Atlanta’s bar scene through the eyes of distillers, bartenders, and anyone else who makes their living somewhere in the boisterous world of booze.”
Sounds fun, right? First up is Julian Goglia, who mans the bar at the Pinewood Tippling Room. This month, you’ll learn his favorite place for a drink in Atlanta, his stance on birthday cake vodka vs. whipped cream vodka, and the drink he wishes he invented. Read the whole thing here.
By the way, if you haven’t been there, the Pinewood Tippling Room is worth seeking out. Any place so bold as to call itself a tippling room sure better live up to that moniker. Luckily, they do just that. There’s plenty of whisky to choose from, and the cocktails lean to reverence for the classics, with a dash of irreverent playfulness thrown in. The Pinewood is just one year old now, but Julian and his fellow tipplers have given it the feel of a well-worn neighborhood hangout.
Over several visits, the basic menu (shown below) has remained roughly the same. The formula is aperitif (such as a barolo chinato, or Aperol, or an amaro) + fruit juice (such as lemon or lime) + soda (such as ginger ale or tonic or cola or sparkling mineral water) + bitters. Of course, there are a few twists along the way, like a touch of absinthe in the mix in the “Reviver Pop.” And the results all fall on a spectrum that starts off heavily bitter (the “Cynar Lime Soda” packs a dry vegetal bite) and moves to equal parts sweet and bitter (the “My Amaro Cola” uses Mexican Coke for a heavy dose of sugar sweetness). My favorite choice for a hot summer day is the “Aperol Orange Soda,” for its bright citrus acidity and its powerfully refreshing base bitterness. These drinks are ideal to start off a meal, cooling you down, whetting your appetite with a not-too-strong kick in the pants, putting you in the mood for something rich and indulgent to counter the bracing jolt of the drink. The price is right too – six bucks seems like a bargain drink these days, and these beauties are worth every penny.
Cocktail purists will not be thrilled that there’s not a fulltime bartender on duty – the two heavy duty cocktails on the menu are pre-batched and the sodas are (in theory) easy enough for anyone to throw together. I must say that the pre-batched cocktails work wonderfully: the Negroni being everything you want in this classic cocktail, and the Italian Manhattan offering a rich and intriguing twist on its American counterpart. But I have had some variability of quality on the aperitif sodas, suggesting it may be worth the staff’s time to have some more in-depth training on putting these sodas together properly.