Brooklyn Spirits Craft Distilling and Cocktails from the World’s Hippest Borough - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Brooklyn Spirits Craft Distilling and Cocktails from the World’s Hippest Borough


Author: by Peter Thomas Fornatale and Chris Wertz

Publisher: powerHouse Books, 2014

Price: $35

Training their attentions on New York City’s ascendant borough, Brooklyn, Peter Thomas Fornatale and Chris Wertz have penned a love letter to the bars and spirits that populate its neighborhoods in Brooklyn Spirits: Craft Distilling and Cocktails from the World’s Hippest Borough. Each chapter highlights a distiller based in Brooklyn, and traverses NYC’s most populous borough through drink recipes specifically crafted to emphasize the focus spirit. Profiles of people and places tied to the recipes provide a who’s who of the drinks scene across the East River. Seek out this book for the story behind Red Hook’s Van Brunt Stillhouse, or the recipe for the River’s Edge—Greenhook Ginsmiths American Dry Gin, lemon juice and dried lavender syrup served up at the Gowanus favorite, Lavender Lake. While many companies are capitalizing on the Brooklyn brand, the artisans and small-business owners highlighted here exhibit a true sense of Brooklyn’s pioneering spirit.

Caitlin Griffith knew her future career would entail food and drink when, at the age of six, she munched an anchovy from her father’s Caesar salad thinking it as a small strip of bacon—and was more than pleasantly surprised. While enrolled in New York University’s Food Studies program, she learned the secrets of affinage in the caves of Murray’s Cheese.


This story appears in the print issue of October 2014.
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