Latest / Into The Barchive / Bourbon’s Modern Classics: The Democrat & Revolver
Transcript
- ITB: Into the bark where the past comes alive. Forgotten drinks will revive. ⁓ it's right. Sip the tails, let them drive. Welcome to the bark. Hello, Barkabist, and welcome back to Into the Barkive. The podcast where we dive deep into the stories, people, and cocktails of Shake the Way We Drink. I'm Tim Wright, mixologist, your above average curious drinker, and your slightly tipsy tour guide through Boo's history. And I'm Dr. Blake Jones, historian, mixologist, and certified specialist of spirits, here to pour out the stories behind what's in your glass. Whether you're a bartender, a Bourbon enthusiasts or someone who simply likes knowing why a drink exists before taking that first sip, we're glad you're here. Yeah, September is Bourbon Heritage Month, so today we're continuing to shine a spotlight on America's native spirit. But rather than spending our time only talking about 19th century cocktails, such as the old-fashioned, yeah, the Manhattan, the whiskey sour, and the mint julep, we thought we'd celebrate. The bartenders who proved bourbon still had room to evolve over the first 21st centuries. Yeah, but and that's really something easy to forget. Bourbon has centuries of history, but many of the drinks people associate with it today, the paper plane, the Kentucky Buck, the Revolver, they're relatively recent cocktails. They're actually younger than a lot of the people listening to our podcast. Exactly. Cocktail Renaissance wasn't just about rediscovering old recipes, it was also about creating new classics that respected tradition without feeling trapped by it. And today's episode is about one of those bartenders who managed to do both. Absolutely. John Santor built drinks that feel timeless, even though they were invented within the last two decades. We're looking at two of his bourbon cocktails, correct? We're going to look at the refreshing Democrat cocktail and the coffee accented revolver cocktail. Yeah, and I mean they're very different drinks, but together they show just how versatile bourbon became during the modern craft cocktail revival. We'll mix both cocktails, we'll explore John Santos' career, take a trip through San Francisco's craft cocktail scene. And look at why these drinks have earned places on cocktail minis around the world. So grab your mixing glass or your shading tin and let's get into the barcide. Our first cocktail is probably the lesser known of John Sanders cocktails, The Democrat. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start by doing two ounces of bourbon. So using that Nelson Brothers classic here. And then after our two ounces of bourbon, we're gonna add a half ounce of peach liqueur. Make sure you're using a high-quality peach liqueur here, probably not like a peach schnapps. ⁓ I've got the gaffard brand. So we'll add our half ounce of peach liqueur. Then we're gonna add three quarters of an ounce of fresh squeeze lemon juice. And then finally for the remaining sweetener, a half ounce of honey syrup. Now from here we're going to take our large tin and fill it just with some regular cubed ice. And shaker cocktail. We'll break the seal on the tin. And then traditionally you would serve this in a Collins or highball glass over pebble ice. So we'll strain. into our highball glasses sew and then we'll finish you could use like a fresh lemon slice but i kind of like you know it's beginning to be full now here in september use a dehydrated lemon wheel for our garnish and we have john santers democrat Our second cocktail is John Sancher's Revolver. And might as well stir something up. Two ounces of our Nelson's Greenbrier Classic that we've been using. And I may be able to get a bottle kill out of this. Ugh ever so slightly fat two ounces. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Next, we'll take a half ounce of a coffee liqueur. Here we're using Mr. Black. Final ingredient, orange bitters. It'd be two dashes or Japanese dasher, go four. One, two, three, and four. Now we add ice to our stirring glass and stir. And we'll stir for about 30 to 45 seconds. Speeds may vary based on how big or should we use stir. One of the cool things I love about this cocktail is actually the final presentation. This will be served up. So that means we're going to serve it in a coop, no ice. If you don't freeze your glassware prior, go ahead and start throwing ice into it before you start making cocktail and putting some water just to help chill down ⁓ your vessel. But if not, pop it into the freezer a little bit beforehand. After we got our correct temperature with the correct dilution, we are done stirring. Grab that chilled coop. On this one I'm actually gonna go a slightly different vessel. Maybe a little Niconora. and will strain. And this is where I think the name of this cocktail comes. The garnish. We're gonna take our what we would normally have as a lemon-expressed oil on top, and we're gonna add some flair. Flame responsibly. And here we have our smoking gun, the revolver. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. San Francisco and this cocktail renaissance. Yeah, so whenever people talk about the cocktail renaissance, New York gets most of the attention. Mil and don't get me wrong, milk and honey deserves every bit of praise it gets. Sasha Petroski influenced an entire And we devoted an entire episode to him earlier earlier this year. But I mean, we're not talking about New York. It's not standing alone. There's Seattle, there's London, there's Chicago. And now, especially, there's San Francisco. Yeah, and San Francisco already had a long relationship with cocktails dating all the way back to the gold rush. Thousands of people arrived seeking fortune, bringing drinking traditions from every corner of the globe. Hotels, saloons, oyster houses, and restaurants competed fiercely, and bartenders became celebrities in their own right. I mean, I've learned from you that the earliest cocktail books came out of California. Like Jerry Thomas, right? Spent a significant time in San Francisco during the 19th century, right? For his book. And then the city developed this reputation of hospitality, sophistication, like. Making sophisticated drinks that never completely disappeared. Yeah, I mean, now by the 1990s, cocktail culture did look a little different, like your brightly colored apple teenies and artificial sourmix and vodka, everything. You know, a lot of bartenders joke about the dark ages. But then something like remarkable happened though. People started caring about cocktails again. Not out of nostalgia, but Curiosity, right? Like what happens if I add fresh citrus? What if I actually start using real syrups and ice? Ice frickin' matters. Classic techniques, thoughtful spirits, bartenders became students again instead of just robots. Yeah, and several factors made San Francisco uniquely suited for a cocktail renaissance. First, there's already a strong food culture. The restaurants there cared deeply about ingredients. Wine appreciation was deeply rooted thanks to nearby Napa Valley and Sonoma. Local farmers markets made fresh produce ⁓ readily available, and consumers in San Francisco are already willing to pay for quality ingredients. And then you had like a generation of ⁓ bartenders asking bigger questions like. Why are we using a bottle of sour mix? Why don't we use fresh citrus, fresh juices? What did Terry Jerry Thomas actually write? Like, let's go and look at his specs. And then I will harp on this time and time again. Ice. Ice matters. Why can't we use improved ice? Can we improve our service and make it just more Us giving somebody something, making it an experience. Yeah, and something else changes during this period. People stop treating bartending as temporary work. And I mean that's enormously important. For much of the 20th century, pop culture portrayed bartending as something you did while you waited for your real career. Yeah, I'm a bartender or server while waiting to get my big break in Hollywood, right? Or I'm writing my scripts for this, and so I'm serving, you know, as a service industry individual. It's that, hey, it's paying the bills while I wait on that thing. Yeah, but the craft cocktail movement challenges that assumption. Bartending becomes a profession worthy of study. Technique matters, history mattered, hospitality mattered, mentorship mattered, and then kind of the folk. The central focus of our episode today, John Santor fits squarely into that movement. Not because he sought celebrity, but because he treated the profession seriously. Let's dive deeper then. John Santer. Who is John Santer? Well, if you've heard his name before, chances are it was attached to the revolver cocktail you made earlier. And while that certainly it is his most famous creation, it undersells his contribution to the movement. John Santer became one of the defining figures of San Francisco's cocktail movement during the early 2000s. Not because he was trying to be famous or building drinks for social media. Santer built drinks bartenders wanted to make. And that's an important direction. Like distinction, I guess, for us to go into. There's a phrase in the industry that the bartender's bartender walk through this. Well, that phrase describes someone whose influence is measured less by television appearances or celebrity status, and more by the respect of his or her peers. Someone other bartenders quietly admire. Okay, okay. So people saw him out because the way he approached this, right? He wasn't trying to be big and bold. It was just doing his thing and doing it well. And so his reputation was the afterthought, not something that he was looking for in the spotlight. Yeah, and Santa s was part of the opening team at Bourbon and Branch. ⁓ speakeasy in San Francisco. That's kind of funny. And like outside. The signage is actually for an old anti-saloon league to kind of point out its location. ⁓ and he worked there for a while. And then today Santa is the co-owner of Prize Fighter, a bar across the bay in Emeryville. And that bar seeks to make high quality cocktails with that neighborhood bar vibe. You know, that's a difficult balance to achieve. Yeah, sometimes cocktail bars can feel intimidating and others chase novelty over quality, you know, get the good Instagram picture. So how does he manage this creation then? Well, he's trying to appeal to seasoned bartenders and first-time guests. And maybe that's why the popularity of his cocktails spreads so organically. Nobody's having to market them. Bartenders just tasted them and then like, damn. That's good and making them elsewhere. Got you. then we talked a little bit about the revolver. Let's jump though into the Democrat and the those specs, and then we can go back, right? So let's talk about the Democrat. And although the Democrat has not reached the worldwide recognition of the revolver, it's a beautiful example of how Santa could take a familiar cocktail structure and give it an entirely new personality. Okay. And At its heart, the Democrat is a bourbon lemonade. Yes. ⁓ but one that's layered with honey and peach in a way that feels unmistakably southern. Which is hilarious. Again, San Francisco. Yeah. And but it has a very specific inspiration. So in 2007, while he was tending Bar at Bourbon and Branch, John Santor was reading David McCullough's biography of President Harry Truman. And President Truman was famously devoted to bourbon. It's often said that he enjoyed bourbon as his whiskey of choice. And Santor, as he read McCullough's biography, imagined the Trumans spending summer evenings on the porch of their Missouri home with something cool and refreshing in hand. And so He describes the Democrat. Makes sense. Harry Truman was a member of the Democratic Party. So the Democrat is this kind of ode to the South, ⁓ which during Truman's era was a Democratic stronghold. Makes sense for now the name of the cocktail in our our front porch sipping Southern boozy southern lemonade. Yeah, and this is a wonderful example of sometimes how stories become cock. Sometimes inspiration comes from another drink, sometimes it comes from historical events, and in this case it comes from a biography. So Santa wasn't trying to recreate one of Truman's drinks then. He was had this image in his mind and asked himself if if Harry Truman wanted a porch drink in this Missouri town, right? What would he be drinking on this Missouri evening? Yeah. And voila. The Democrat. And one thing I really appreciate about Santa is that he serves this over crushed ice, right? To make this very refreshing. So instead of your presentation, like in a coop or a Nick and Nora, this is it tells you the type of drink he envisions, right? This isn't meant to be analyzed in harsh tones in a corner, like, ooh, can you get all the complexity? This is meant to be enjoyed outside with friends, a drink that slowly evolves as the crushed ice metal or ⁓ melts and softens the drink. I I look at the revolver as the serious approach to a cocktail. This is the no nuance, enjoy it cocktail, right? Approachable. And it goes back to the bartenders. Mm-hmm. Or it actually could be vice versa, or the patrons that are coming through, just the normal guest. A bartender may want something that's served up neat. But for the most part, I think when cocktail patrons are coming in, the guests there are looking for that and the actual bartender is looking for that thing. That's the difference. It's kind of a tongue in cheek of his approach of making sure he can please the palate of both ⁓ both sets of of customers. Absolutely. ⁓ then let's roll into our revolver conversation. It's elegant, it's approachable. I like many of these modern classics. Once you taste it, your first thought is like, how did nobody think of this sooner? I'm it's very simple. It's Three ingredients. It's basically an old fashioned served up if you wanted to call it that. Yeah. Or even a Manhattan. Yeah. With the coffee liqueur in place of the ⁓ vermouth. And let's let's go ahead and break that down. Well, actually no. Let's let's talk about the the hallmark of this then. Yeah. The one of the big things that makes the revolver a great cocktail is you're like How did anyone think of the sooner? It doesn't feel invented. It's like just someone discovered what was obviously there. And it's just like that's a great cocktail. It's just someone's trying to put those pieces together. I mean, it's the set of least simple. It's the bourbon. It's coffee liqueur. It's bit ⁓ it's orange bitters. That's it. Mm-hmm. The thing that makes it sexy, the flamed orange spill goes with the name, of course, the revolver, the smoking gun. ⁓ yeah. That kind of thing. But There's no like exotic infusion. There's no like intoxicating molecular kind of techniques that you're trying to use on this. It is very simple at its base. No obscure spirits. Like it's just simple. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And if we look at the history of the revolver, it was born in 2004 at Bruno's in San Francisco. Okay. And that date is important. Because it sits at this important moment in cocktail history. And would tell me about 2004 then. So the obviously by this point the modern cocktail renaissance had begun. Bars were embracing classics again. Fresh citrus juice was coming back. Proper ice was becoming more important again. People were rediscovering those historic recipes, but there still weren't many new bourbon cocktails entering the canon. Bartenders had discovered the Manhattan. They had rediscovered the Manhattan. They had rediscovered the old fashioned. They had rediscovered the whiskey sours. Now making their own different techniques or modifications to them, but still it was a rediscovery. Yeah, it was a backward looking approach. Santa looked backward and then took one step forward. The revolver is unmistakably inspired by the Manhattan. And I I agree. This is more of a Manhattan spec. Yeah. Spirit Ford stirred up, built around whiskey. Two one two, even though we did only do the half. Yes. Yeah. ⁓ so instead of the vermouth, Santer reaches for the coffee liqueur, not enough to like totally change the drink's character, but enough to give it a new voice. And I'm going to state here. The coffee liqueur of your choice does change the cocktail. Much like I guess an overproof bourbon that you would throw into it, like those ingredients do matter because using a Mr. Black instead of say ⁓ a Kahlua coffee liqueur. Kahlua is notably sweeter, right? And knowing your your customer's palate a little bit, you may either have to use Kahlua because that's what you have. Or if you're going with Mr. Black or some other drier-ish coffee liqueur, adding maybe some sweetener to it will fit the palate of a patron outside of I enjoy it dry the way that it is, but I also like black coffee. Yeah, and I think, and I'm checking this now, that ⁓ I believe John Santer originally for the coffee liqueur, like this was well before Mr. Black was out, used Tia Maria. Okay. So like a rum-based coffee liqueur from the Caribbean. Gotcha. So it did have a slightly sweeter component and possibly even some different flavor profiles that would come to the table instead of this version. Absolutely. Okay. Not enough to fundamentally change the drink's character, though. We're still keeping on board, right? But it each ingredient does give this kotso its own voice. Yeah. And Like, let's maybe spend a moment unpacking the pairing of like the bourbon and the coffee, right? ⁓ people kind of instinctively understand this from the food world. So coffee and bourbon show up together everywhere on menus, right? Coffee rubs on barbecue, yep, bourbon barbecue sauces, coffee and chocolate desserts. Bourbon and chocolate desserts. You know, maybe after a steak dinner, have a shot of espresso and a pour of bourbon. That makes sense as well. And but why? Well, may maybe it's because they share many of the same aromatic compounds that are created through heat. You know, coffee beans are roasted, bourbon barrels are charred. Yep. Both processes create flavors we associate with caramelization. Toasted nuts, dark chocolate, vanilla, brown sugar, smoke, maybe even some subtle fruit nuts. So is this like one of those cases where science explains what our palate already knows? Yeah, essentially these flavors belong together. The coffee liqueur isn't introducing this foreign flavor that is Discord. Okay. With the bourbon, it's reinforcing the flavors we know already inside the whiskey. But there's more. Yeah. One of the interesting stories about the revolver is that it also comes out of the specific bourbon use in the original revolver. And what was that bourbon? Bullet. ⁓ And so This kind of makes the connection with the name revolver even more apparent, right? So we're leaning into gun references and all this all the way through. So we're using a bur ⁓ a bullet product thing is. Are we talking still bullet bourbon? Bullet bourbon, I'll get to that in a second. ⁓ okay. So like today, bullet is everywhere. Back bars, airports, liquor stores, cocktail bars. But in the early 2000s, it's still establishing itself among bartenders. The big reason that bullet was the bourbon of choice in the original revolver was the high rye mash build. And there's where you stopped me. I figured that was the case. It brings a different note to some of those that have a lower rye mash. Yeah. So while many of your traditional Kentucky bourbons would have Have higher corn percentages in their mash bill. Bullet was distinctive for being one of the early high rye bourbons because it provides spice and not like jalapeno spice, but like clove, allspice, cinnamon, things like that. Those baking spices that we're we talk about when we sip a whiskey. Yeah. And those spices are especially attractive in cocktails because it shines through the sweetness, shines through the modifiers, and the revolver helps introduce a generation of bartenders to that style of high rhy bourbon. So Sandra now starts taking this because it was a name. He knew the flavor profile, or what made him go that direct that direction? Well, he does it for a much more like practical, unsexy reason. He wasn't thinking about like, ooh, I'm trying to develop this flavor profile and I need a high-eye bourbon that has more spice to counter the flavors. It's for a much simpler reason. ⁓ the club Bruno's where he was working, even though Santa was the bar manager, his boss did all the ordering. Okay. And ⁓ Tom Bullet himself had just been in the San Francisco area going bar to bar hand selling his whiskey. So Santor's boss had ordered a case of Bullet whiskey. And so Santor's like, what am I gonna do with all this Bullet? You know, it's not something where you would put on the back bar bullet wasn't the sort of bourbon where, hey, I'd like a bullet on the rocks or a bullet and coke. Yeah. It was something he's like, Okay, I've gotta come up with a cocktail to move this product. So it was forced upon him to use this ingredient because there was just a back I mean, just a storage plethora. Of them needing to do. And so he was like, okay, for this cocktail, this is going to be my base spirit that I'm using for this specific cocktail. Or hell, at the bar. There's several bars that we go to at times, right? If they get a special or there's a fire cell, whatever the base spirit could have been for this next two to three weeks until they run through the case of whatever that came through, becomes the spirit of choice. But I think what makes the revolver a modern classic is that this was more than just I gotta move some product my boss ordered me, is that it genuinely worked. Yeah, but who now we go, is it a happy coincidence? Or did the flavor profile truly match when he went to go for and he was like, you know what, I can make this work. Yeah, I I mean, I would have to think that Sandra, like, as he tasted through, like, you know, okay, I've got to move a case of bullet, but he could have just as well put it in a drink like the Democrat, is that there was a specific reason, like it it's Mashville provided a unique flavor profile that was well suited for that. So it so in in the way that you would like to romanticize this is you feel that it genuinely worked. It's lucky happenstance, but it truly genuinely worked. Yeah, and it's one of those things where certain cocktails become inseparable from particular brands. I mean, like the big one I can think of immediately is the paper plan and Amaro Nanina. Yep. Is like, yeah, you can sub another Amaru, but it's not the same. Correct. And the revolver needs a high rye bourbon. So although we didn't use bullet in the one you made, we use Nelson Brothers Classic. If you compare the mash spill of ⁓ Nelson Brothers Classic to Bullet, Nelson Brothers Classic actually is a couple percentage points higher on the Rye content. So it's performing the same function. So I think it's a little easier to do with the bourbon than it is like an Amaro Nanino with the paper plane. So it's fascinating how often this happens then, right? These like inseparable brand you you mentioned Nanino. So we've got what naked famous with the yellow chartress. Yeah. Like what else do we have? ⁓ like using a penicillin isn't a penicillin without that float or spritz of islas scotch. Yeah. So we we end up drawing these and they just happen to be lucky happenstances. I I'm I'm convinced now. No more debate on that. Yeah. And I mean, I think the final piece to talk about with the revolver is the garnish. The flame. Yeah. So Santa drew inspiration from Dale de Groff's signature Flame Orange Peel Garnish. And again, that helps contribute the name Revolver to the cocktail. Because the flame orange peel gives like a gun smoke sort of aroma from ⁓ the strip match. And although he developed the cocktail at Bruno's Which was more of like a beer jack and coat kind of place, right? Absolutely. So, you know, this is a place where people weren't ordering craft cocktails. The revolver didn't take off until Santa left to go to Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco in 2006. Again, very specific place that highlighted that they were going to be a bourbon bar. Yes. Okay. And it and what's interesting is initially ⁓ the cocktail the revolver was deep into ⁓ Bourbon and Branch's menu. Okay. So like if you get a reservation at Bourbon and Branch, you know, they've got a book of cocktails and this is like page six Or deeper into the menu. So the revolver really took off because there's a section of bourbon and branch called the library where it's no reservation. So ⁓ when I was in San Francisco, I went in to I didn't have reservation, so we like found like the door guy, and you know, it's a speakeasy, so there's little kind of caginess about it, but ⁓ So we got into the library and they have like a blackboard menu with like let's say a dozen cocktails on it. And the revolver made it to the menu of the library. It's still there. I got a revolver. Of course you would get one of the classics from a I mean, from the home birthing place of it, right? Yeah, and what's so funny is that the revolver became so popular in the library at Bourbon and Branch. That bartender's fingers would be stained with ash from striking so many matches to flame the orange peels for the revolvers. And by 2007, just a year after it was introduced at Bourbon and Branch, the revolver's status as a modern classic cocktail was solidified when Bourbon and Branch was featured in a write-up by The Wall Street Journal. And then it spread from San Francisco. Where they started making it at milk and honey in New York. So again, kind of beginning to tie the country together in this craft cocktail renaissance. That goes to truly the bartender's bartender then. Like that cocktail did span across the US fairly rapidly after that those articles. Let's talk modern classics belonging in the barkive though. Yeah, and one thing we've tried to do and into the barch hive is resist the temptation to think cocktail history only occurred a hundred years ago. It's easy to like romanticize the 19th century cocktails. It's our Prohibition era cocktails, the golden age of hotel bars, right? Like those errors give us many a drink that we still enjoy today, but history doesn't stop there. Exactly. I mean, every classic was once a contemporary cocktail. There was a time when someone ordered the first Manhattan, the first daiquiri, the first sidecar, the first whiskey sour. I mean, somebody had to decide that those drinks were worth making again. Even if they turned up and were on a shelf somewhere, but later on they had to come back through that rent. Like they had to. come back and be retaught, especially after the pro like the prohibition era, right? Like someone had to teach another bartender how to make one of those. And eventually they stopped belonging at one bar and as you stated, spread across the entire US to other bars. Yeah, you don't have to go to bourbon and branch to get a revolver nowadays. And this is a process that we've watched happen through those cocktails you mentioned earlier, the paper plane, the penicillin, the gold rush. ⁓ hell, our Kentucky buck from the previous episode. Like, and today we have the Democrat and the Revolver. Yeah. And these cocktails are no longer simply John Santor's cocktails, right? Not at all. He developed them, invented them, and deserves all the credit for them, but they become part of the shared language of bartending. And that's actually one of my favorite definitions of a classic. It's a drink whose ownership disappears. Yeah. Not because we forget who created it. Again, we absolutely shouldn't, but because the recipe becomes common property for the profession. There was a bartender in San Francisco who makes this. Yeah, and then a bartender in London hears about it and makes it. And then someone in Singapore teaches it to a new hire. So a cocktail that's born in one neighborhood becomes part of The global conversation of cocktails. In conclusion, today, every Bourbon Heritage Month, we're going to celebrate the distillers, the Coopers, the Farmers, and the generations of whiskey makers who have built America's native spirit. And they deserve every bit of that recognition. But Bourbon's story doesn't end when the cork goes into the bottle. It continues every time a bartender reaches for that bottle and imagines something new. And that's what John Santa represents. It it's not just an inventive, I would say, bartender or steward of their craft, right? It's someone who understands the history well enough to contribute to it. His cocktails feel inevitable because they were built on a timeless principle of balance. In hospitality, things that we've covered in almost every episode. Yeah. That's why they still they're still being made today across decades. Yeah, and honestly, that's one of the most satisfying parts of studying cocktails. History isn't locked away in museums, it's alive. Yep. It's being stirred in mixing glasses every night. ⁓ It's being passed from one bartender to another. And sometimes if we're paying enough attention, we're actually going to get to see tomorrow's classics being generated in real time. We just have to be prepared to see it. Yeah. I think that's a good closing for today's episode. So as always, we would love for you to like and subscribe on YouTube, on Instagram, and ⁓ follow us on TikTok for your podcasting listening pleasure, Spotify, or on Apple. Yeah. And next time we're headed across the Atlantic to northern Italy. Ooh. Long before the Negruni became one of the world's most iconic. Cocktails, there were two simpler drinks that laid the groundwork. Here we go. We're going to explore the Milano Torino, a straightforward combination of bitter and sweet, and then the Americano, the sparkling apertivo that introduces those flavors in a slightly international audience way. Yeah, and those two cocktails are often overshadowed by the Negroni, but they deserve their own place in the story. Without them, Count Camillo Negroni would have wouldn't have had a drink to modify, and one of the most influential cocktails of the 20th century might never have existed. We'll trace the rise of Italian apertivo culture, the emergence of bitter liqueurs and vermouth, and how a simple splash of gin changed cocktail history forever. Until next time, keep exploring the past, one drink at a time, as we dive deeper. into the bark.