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The craft of mixing has made a unique Boston bar culture

Drinks Special

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 15, 2012|By Devra First

The bar at Brick & Mortar in Central Square, opened recently by Patrick… (ESSDRAS M SUAREZ/GLOBE…)

This winter, four new establishments showcasing cocktails opened in the Boston area, all within the course of a few weeks: the Hawthorne, Brick & Mortar, Saloon, and backbar. They join the likes of Clio, Drink, Eastern Standard, the Franklin Cafe, Green Street, Rendezvous, and many other local businesses serious about cocktails. In Davis Square, you’ll find the Boston Shaker, a shop that sells nothing but cocktail paraphernalia; walk into a liquor store and you’re likely to find a dizzying array of specialty spirits.

Boston has become a hub for craft cocktails - those made with fresh, quality ingredients, often reviving recipes from decades and centuries past. It’s easy to forget that until fairly recently drinks were made with neon “sour mix’’ and a bottle of bitters was nearly impossible to come by - never mind versions made in small batches by a dozen companies, in flavors from celery to sriracha.

How did Boston become a cocktail town? The transformation can be traced back to one musician’s epiphany, in 1985, in a diner in Cleveland.

Keyboardist Brother Cleve was on tour with his band the Del Fuegos (recently reunited, they play the Paradise Feb. 22). “We were having a little lunch at one of these old-school diners,’’ he recalls. “The back page of the menu said something like, ‘Try a refreshing cocktail!’ There were probably 75 or 80 drinks on it. I never even knew there were that many cocktails. . . . I remember looking at the other guys and saying, ‘What the hell is a sidecar?’ I went out and bought a bartending book right after.’’

Cleve experimented with making drinks, collecting stacks of books on the subject from used bookshops and Salvation Army stores. He eventually began bartending around town, joined up with the cocktail-centric lounge act Combustible Edison, and started DJing a night called Saturnalia at the Lizard Lounge. There he met Jackson Cannon, who booked acts for the club, and bartender-Harvard Divinity School student Misty Kalkofen, who became his protégée. Around that time, he also encountered a bartender named Patrick Sullivan at Flat Top Johnny’s. Cleve was celebrating his birthday, and he wanted a Negroni. He taught Sullivan how to make several drinks that night. “For him, it was like being in that diner in Cleveland was to me,’’ says Brother Cleve.

In 1998, Sullivan opened Cambridge’s B-Side Lounge, collaborating with Cleve on the cocktail list. Kalkofen joined them, behind the bar. Cannon went on to run the bar at Eastern Standard. Both establishments made it a mission to get locals interested in classic drinks such as the sidecar and the Jack Rose.