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Women Who Shaped the Bar · Into The Barchive

• Nashville Drinks: Welcome to the Bar-Kai! Where the past comes alive! Forgotten drinks will revive! ⁓ we thrive! Sip the tails, let them jive! Welcome to the Bar-Kai! Welcome back, Barkavist, to this week's episode of Into the Bar-kive. And much like history in general, which focuses on male leaders such as kings and generals and presidents, cocktail history is often told as a parade of great male bartenders. Yeah. From Jerry Thomas to Sasha Petrosky. But when we dig deep into the Bar-kive, we can see a much fuller story. Women. Exactly. A lot of women. Precisely. And since March is Women's History Month, we thought this would give us a chance to re-examine the bar through a wider, more inclusive lens by examining women bartenders broadly before we focus in on two case studies, and Ada Coleman and Audrey Saunders. So women, they eat just didn't work behind the bar. They helped shaped what the bar became. Exactly. As we start to look into these two individuals that you've pointed out so far, I think it's very important that we focus on two cocktails. Let's go stir things up. Let's do it. So we're going to start by making the hanky panky, the famous cocktail created by Ada Coleman at the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. We're going to start by adding an ounce and a half of a London Dry Gin. So we're using Tankeray here, a classic style, and it's only fitting to use a London Dry Gin for someone who made their name. at one of the most famous cocktail bars in London. From there, we're gonna add an ounce and a half of sweet vermouth using the Carpano Antica formula sweet vermouth here, partly because that's what I've got. And then what makes this cocktail a little different is an addition of Fernet Branca, which is an Italian bitter. So I'm going to add that quarter ounce there. And after we add the Fernet, we're going to ice up our mixing glass. And as always, build us a little iceberg in the glass. And from there, we'll stir 30 to 40 seconds. Now, this cocktail was invented by Ada Coleman when the famous British actor Sir Charles Hattry asked for something to kind of perk him up after a long day of filming. And after some experimenting, Ada Coleman came up with this drink, the Hanky Panky, and it's named after Hawtreys reaction who said, by Jove, this is the real Hanky Panky. And now, this cocktail name has nothing to do with the sexual connotations we might associate with Hanky Panky today. Instead, in early 20th century Britain, it meant like magic or witchcraft, almost like hocus pocus. So when Hawtry is like, bye, Jov, this is the real hanky panky. He's essentially saying, bye, Jov, this is magic. And so we'll take our Chilb ⁓ Nikonora glass. You could use a coupe, a V-shaped martini glass, whatever you can fit in your freezer. and then pour that in like so. And then we're gonna finish by garnishing with an expression of orange peel. And so we'll get that with the orange, get the zest and oils, kind of gracefully dance it around the rim of the glass. And then because it is an up cocktail served in a coupe, I'm gonna just discard the garnish so it doesn't get in the way as I'm drinking the cocktail. And by Jove, this is the real hanky panky. Cheers. For our second cocktail, we have the Jin Jin Mule brought to you by Audrey Saunders. To think about this, it's more like a mojito meets a Moscow mule. In our shaking tin, we're gonna take our London Dry Gin and two ounces. Next ingredient is one ounce of mint syrup. Now, like a mojito, you would think about muddling that mint, but during this time of season, fresh mint is hard to get. And so making a mint syrup gives you a more consistent flavor profile. One ounce into your shaken tin. And now one ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice. All into our tin. Add some ice. Now let's go shaking. for 10 to 15 cents. Now that I've shaken that, got enough dilution and once again, build up that frost on the outside of the tin, crack the tin and grab us a shield, Collins or highball glass. What I'm going do now is actually build inside. Let's go ahead and grab a few pieces of vise, stack them up. There we go. And now strain into. If you were to have used fresh mint in this, you can double strain if you would like, or if you like that extra some minty flakes in there, feel free to just single strain into it. Now? Off to the side of your eyes. Top with some ginger beer. Fever tree is going in for us. Smaller, smaller format so we don't waste a large can. And now to garnish. Some fresh mint. Give it a little slap. Wake it up. Get those aromas going. Right into our glass. Put your straw down right next to your mint. But we're not finished just yet. Some candied mint. I mean candied ginger. Put that on the skewer. A little snack for later. Drop it in. Cheers. Our Jin Jin Mule. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. Give me some history. Well, when we look at the history of women bartending here in the United States, a lot of times women were barred from bartending, ⁓ except maybe for ends or family run taverns. Women were more involved in what we would call bartending when punk service was common. But as we move to the single serve cocktail, women kind of lost out in the bar. In contrast, British barmaids were more socially acceptable in pubs and hotels in the UK. But I mean, if you think about the title barmaid itself, that doesn't really convey the same sort of respect for the work that women were doing behind the bars there. No, we've heard the term beer maids before, something like that. giving a nod to maybe a different gender being behind the bar, but it's definitely not a name that was provided to a master cocktail artist or a bartender, right? Yeah. And here in the U S when prohibition happened, you know, bartending as a whole legally evaporated, but in some ways women use that space as sometimes they would work in speakeasies or they would make cocktails when they were entertaining people in their private homes. So that opened new horizons. Also notably, women as bar patrons became more accepted during the Prohibition era when it was when you had illegal speakeasies. Whereas before Prohibition, it was frowned upon women not just to bartend, but to come to the bar altogether. Yeah, men and women were not fraternizing in the same establishments. They had their own places to go to, tea houses or whatever that might be. Yeah. And what's interesting to me as I was doing the research preparing for this episode is what comes after prohibition. And what is that? So many states and cities restricted women from bartending as a profession altogether. under what were called protective labor laws. And so these were laws that were passed in a variety of states and to limit the types of work women could do, the hours, the working conditions, making the argument that the state had a compelling interest to protect women's reproductive capabilities. And so they thought they needed to keep women from bartending to like, Maintain their virtue and protect them from more of a moral standpoint and This was done legally through Well Most states are doing this even into the early 70s Yeah, so I mean pretty recent. It's kind of interesting ⁓ in Michigan they passed a law after World War two that said A woman cannot work in a bar unless she owns the establishment or like her father or husband owns the establishment. And so ⁓ some female bartenders took the state of Michigan to court and the U.S. Supreme Court. OK, again, U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gossart v. Cleary in 1948 that these laws that prohibited women from bartending were in fact constitutional and they did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. So that set up precedent in the late 40s. And so the number of states who had these sort of laws expanded. Like by 1960, 26 of the 50 states had laws that prohibited women from bartending in some capacity. this ever challenged or what changed to? because we see bartenders and women bartenders now. Yeah. So things of course begin to change with second wave feminism and the late sixties, early seventies. But think about this bartending did not become legal and that bastion of traditional conservatism California until 1971 and the California Supreme court ruled ⁓ against that prohibition in the case Sailor Inn versus Kirby and kind of a fun little note. Sailor Inn was a topless bar in California and the owner thought he would make more money if the women served drinks while topless and that got them in trouble with their version of the ABC at the time. ⁓ But it was a feminist law court for the state Supreme Court. that recruited a group of female law students and a female law professor to file an amicus curiae brief, which means friend of the court in Latin, ⁓ to support the bar. And they made the argument that this law ⁓ was against the intent and violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which said you could not discriminate on the basis of race in public places. And then they had added in a section to the law That said, you may not discriminate on the basis of sex either. And so by the early seventies, most of these state laws are falling, have really fallen by the wayside. So we've got late seventies, a case that now overturns the original Supreme court ruling, mainly because other rulings since then have now given race and gender and equality statement inside of the constitutional amendments. Where where do we start to see an uprising and or a more prominent, should I say, a more prominent figure of females behind the bar? Well, since that time, women over the decades, since the 70s, have actually become a majority of bartenders in the United States and female bartenders such as Julie Reiner, Audrey Saunders, Ivy Mix, Lynette Marrero, Jillian Vos. Shannon Mustapher, Julia Momose, Natasha Davin, many others that we could name have made significant contributions to the cocktail renaissance. ⁓ And ongoing conversations about making the bar a far more inclusive space. Yeah, I... Hospitality is a completely different industry if it's only single sex oriented. You have a different experience going to a bar if it's nothing but a male population, whether that be the host, host, the servers, the whatever, compared to going to an establishment that is female based. Maybe they're curated specifically because of that, but. Going to a bar that has a good representation across the gender, across the race, across, allows for a better experience because at times different cocktails speak to different genders correctly? Or just thinking in inclusive terms about what hospitality in general looks like beyond what's in the glass. as well. So what's the space look like? What are the serving rituals? Things like that as well. But what's interesting is, is you know, we can name all these women who have made a significant mark on contemporary cocktail culture and bartending, but the first real celebrity female bartender actually comes from over a century earlier. So before all of these weird, horrific laws in the US were going overseas. Yeah. So like I mentioned earlier, in Britain, there were, it was more acceptable for women to be behind the bar, even though they got that title barmaid, which perhaps didn't convey that level of professional respect and things like that. But Ada Coleman, who was affectionately referred to Colby, as Coley kind of made her mark as this first female celebrity bartender to kind of give you just a quick biography. At age 24, she actually started working in the flower shop at Clear Edges, which is like a nice luxury hotel in London. And there she learned the craft of bartending from a wine butler named Fisher. And she quickly picked up on the craft. and by 1903 she had not only moved to the Savoy Hotel and their American Bar, but had become the head bartender at the Savoy. So transitioning from Europe over to the US head bartender now. ⁓ This is definitely now. Free that 70s root those 70s rulings. Were people. Were people coming to the Savoy because it was the Savoy or did she have a following like of individuals that knew of her craft and wanted to follow her craft much like we would follow up? bartender or ⁓ a chef these days that is doing a pop-up somewhere. Sure. Well, certainly there were a lot of celebrities and important figures who visited the Savoy because it was perhaps the premier hotel in London. But Ada Coleman built up a loyal following based on not only her skillfulness and the craft of the cocktail, but also in terms of her personality. and her hospitality. I mean, she entertained guests like Mark Twain toward the end of his life, the Prince of Wales, Charlie Chaplin. So she had a very diverse clientele. In fact, she would host large parties at her house in the after hours. And a lot of these people would come to her house and continue having drinks and being entertained. It's like industry post-shift rituals. Exactly. ⁓ But by the mid 1920s, things begin to change for Ada Coleman. Okay, that sounds ominous. Yeah. So prohibition happens here in the United States. And this young American bartender who was actually from Britain, but had migrated to the United States, his name was Harry Craddock. After prohibition started, he moved back to Britain. And the legend has it that Craddock made the last legal cocktail in the United States before prohibition started. so Ada Coleman is the face of the American bar at the Savoy. Craddock is working the service well. So like people out in the dining room as they order cocktails, you know, he's making them, but he's not having kind of this rapport with the people sitting around the bar itself. And just to kind of back up a second, this bar at the Savoy is called the American Bar, not necessarily because it was meant to target Americans, but because it made American style drinks, aka cocktails, versus drinking wine, beer, or like simple like aperitifs, like vermouth. Yeah, the service wells drinks. Yeah. So Kravak maybe making cocktails, but he's not having that back-and-forth with customers at the bar. Ada Coleman was the face of the bar. And so in 1925, the Savoy temporarily closed the American Bar for renovations, and they announced that Ada Coleman and the other female bartender Ruth Kitty Burgess, ⁓ who worked at the Savoy alongside Coleman, they announced essentially both of the women had retired. Okay. And upon reopening after the renovations, Harry Craddock became the new head bartender at the American bar. Okay. And so although there's no like documentary evidence where we can conclusively prove this, some historians have speculated that Kradik essentially engineered Coleman's departure and kind of forced her into retirement and pushed her out. And there's additional circumstantial evidence that comes in the form of Kradik, who wrote the famous Savoy cocktail book, which came out in 1930, of all the recipes in that book. The only one that Coleman got credit for was the Hanky Panky. And it's likely that in her 25 year run at the American bar that she invented more than one cocktail. ⁓ she definitely had to have made more than one cocktail. But Craddock only gives her credit for one. And not all of his cocktails in that book had the bartender credited who invented it, but it's likely that her contributions were minimized as well. Now, other historians have argued that many of the Americans who were flocking to London during Prohibition would not have accepted a female bartender. They would not have wanted to come and sit around a bar with a female bartender because that was not considered appropriate in American culture. And so some people argued that they got rid of Coleman to promote Craddock as a more acceptable alternative. ⁓ But from there, some stories have Coleman working in the flower shop at the Savoy. Others have her ⁓ kind of working in her retirement part time at the Berkeley Hotel managing the ladies cloakroom there. ⁓ And so Coleman died, I believe it was in 1966. She was like 91 years old. But essentially, from 1925 until her death in 1966 and kind of faded into obscurity. And you mentioned her going to this cloak room. What gives these nods of her potentially continuing on as she's potentially, as she is what I would assume to be considered ostracized from an establishment that she built up to part of its glory? Yeah. Well, lot of it's just maybe newspaper snippets along the way. Wayne Curtis, a prominent cocktail historian, did some research and contacted the archivists at the Savoy Hotel and said there was no record of her working in the flower shop. So there were other stories. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, the Savoy is the type of cultural institution that requires an archivist for a hotel, right? That's how popular it is. ⁓ Several years ago, I was in London and went to the American bar at the Savoy Hotel to have a drink. They're not cheap. ⁓ But I mean, to take in probably one of the most important cocktail bars in world history that You know, had a head bartender like Aida Coleman followed by one, even if he engaged in some unsavory tactics. But Harry Craddock was still a very important figure. Yeah, you mentioned Craddock ⁓ in some of the pre-notes prior to this episode and that name registered. ⁓ Coleman did not at the time, but as you started to elaborate more and going into this like her influence, especially in that specific setting, that bar, it still resonates today. Absolutely. And in common, interesting contemporary footnote, almost 100 years after Coleman's retirement in 2021, Shannon Tabay was the second woman to become the head bartender at the American Bar as well as the first American. But she did. She did leave after about a year because of a cultural mismatch. But I mean, after this was coming on the heels of the pandemic and things like that. So now we have this on record, then the second head female bartender at the Savoy behind the American bar. Ada Colman, 1903 to 1925. And then Shannon Tobay in 2021. as putting a pin for a moment into Coleman and jumping a little bit towards Audrey, Audrey Sanders. Give me some history there. So first thing we have to remember about Audrey Saunders is that she was a leading figure at a time as the cocktail Renaissance was beginning. vodka and bottled sour mix still dominated the landscape and She actually didn't get her start as a bartender she had actually founded a Carpet cleaning service with her then husband But she was so taken with bartending that she took a NYU Continuing education class on the bar business, okay And it was there that she met Dale deGroff, the famous head bartender at the Rainbow Room. And this deGroff in many ways, he's known as like King Cocktail. I mean, he's the godfather of the cocktail renaissance who really gets the momentum and the ball rolling. And after the class was over, she went to him and said, you know, like, I want to learn everything I can from you. I will work for you for free. so I can learn the craft of bartending. But since the Rainbow Rim was a unionized workforce, de Groff couldn't hire her on and train her there. So instead, he used Audrey Saunders as a volunteer when he would bartend at charity events. Like one of their first gigs was a party at Gracie Mansion, the home of the New York City mayor, who was Rudy Giuliani at the time. ⁓ And essentially her job was to make Mary Pickford cocktails all night. Okay. And so Saunders would officially work for de Grof when he opened the short-lived Blackbird restaurant and bar for a brief time period. And then she took over the bar at Bamelman's and de Grof had been brought on as a consultant and he left Audrey behind to kind of run the bar once he kind of got things set up. Finally, in 2005, Audrey opens a bar of her own in New York City, Pegu Club. Okay, yeah. I remember, like, the Pegu Club was actually a cocktail from that original bar, correct? From the Blackbird's Menu. Yeah, so... DeGroff made his name like bring back old classic pre-peravision cocktails and on Blackbird's menu one then was Pegu Club. Okay, I see the connection now coming across so she's now using her in her her I guess lessons learned and some of those experiences and now creating this new Pegu Club itself. Yeah, and Pegu Club was named after a British Officers Club in Rangoon ⁓ in Burma now known as Myanmar in Southeast Asia. Okay. And so ⁓ also the name of a classic cocktail and like there are tons of bars named after classic cocktails. So pay you club is no no different than so many other bars. But some of the hallmarks of pay you club at this point in history in 2005. quality ice Not just crappy hotel ice. Yep Fresh squeezed citrus. Yes, no bottled sour mix things like that ⁓ in fact, they ⁓ had Almost like a no vodka policy of sorts So your cocktail the gin-gin mule was actually a way for Saunders and her bar team to like get people to like vodka or ⁓ gin in a more approachable way because I mean there were stories where people would come into Pegu Club and say they want vodka or something and Saunders and her team would say well we don't have vodka but we do have this citrus and botanical flavored vodka we think you would like. Okay gin. And so Saunders was super detail focused. Like, her R &D process, she would take a cocktail and make dozens of iterations. Like, ⁓ need to add a quarter ounce more of this, instead of like, the Gingemule started with Bombay Sapphire and eventually switched to Tancoray. You know, as part of her R &D process, because she went through all these iterations to make it perfect. Sounds vaguely familiar to somebody else I know. And I think the other thing that makes Saunders so important to the history of the cocktail renaissance is she helped mentor a generation of star bartenders. Okay, so we've got Toby Maloney, who would go on to found the Violet Hour in Chicago. Phil Ward, who founded the Mescalaria Mayuel and invented the Oaxaca. Oaxaca old fashioned, yeah. You've got Jim Meehan who would be head of PDT in New York. Please don't tell. Please don't tell. Yeah. The speakeasy. Sam Ross of milk and honey and then attaboy fame. ⁓ Brian Miller, he would go on to work on the early death and company team. And then he invented the Winchester cocktail, the which is essentially a gen zombie. Yeah. So like she mentored all these star bartenders along the way over the run of Pegu Club. ⁓ If I remember Pegu was potentially victim of the pandemic, right? The 2020ish time frame. Is that correct? Yes. ⁓ Tragically, the Pegu Club closed in 2020. Part of it was the financial strain of COVID and the restrictions and limited reopenings of New York City at the time. They also during that during the fall of 2020, their lease was expiring. And so, you know, they were facing a big rent hike and they had an ongoing plumbing issue that had plagued them since opening. And so it was they were going to have to invest even more money to fix that issue as well. And so during the pandemic ⁓ Saunders announced the closure of Pagoo club, of the major institutions of the cocktail Renaissance. So what is Saunders up to today? So today Saunders lives outside Seattle with her husband, Robert Hess, who is another leading figure in the early cocktail Renaissance. He founded the site drink boy. ⁓ And she focuses on consulting work, and she and her husband have been working on establishing an institute for bartending and beverages more broadly. And their ideas, they want to create an institution that's like, for bartenders, that's on par with the great culinary schools. Right? because a lot of times when we think about bartending schools, they're more in that TGI Fridays mold versus high-end fine dining sort of cuisine like we see in the culinary world. ⁓ For focusing on two individuals, we could have gone any other direction. There's... over 10 names that you listed earlier in the episode. ⁓ What would you say to kind of bring home the Women's History Month about women cocktail artists and bartenders? Sure. Women's History Month isn't about suggesting that women also contributed to cocktail history, like they're an addition to the men who contributed. It's about acknowledging that those women were always there. They were shaping the craft while being written out of some of its stories. Again, Harry Craddock gets most of the credit notoriety about the Savoy, but it's Ada Coleman who makes the American Barn Institution to begin with. So the archive doesn't just happen. Right? The records don't just happen out of nowhere. They are curated. They are... There's intentionality behind them. And so, sometimes that means for us that we have to go back and pull forward the names that were minimized and say them clearly so people know who those people are. ⁓ And just a quick aside... I taught at a small liberal arts college in West Virginia and one of the first classes I taught there was an upper level women's history course. And so it's like, okay, what's this man doing teaching a bunch of, and the class was all female, a bunch of women about women's history. And if you approach it with a sense of humility and like, these are important stories worth telling. And you know, I think we have to be willing to put those names out there regardless of our gender because they're important to shaping this craft we all care about. You, that may have been a better way to start this episode the way that you just presented that. Pulling those names, approaching it with humility, understanding that it's not too... It's not trying to force a subject. It's just shine the light on something that has been potentially purposefully put into the shadows. Yeah, absolutely. So in some ways one of the best ways you can do or best things you can do is make a hanky panky or make a ginger mule at home. Yeah, order them at a bar if you see them on the menu and when you do remember who created them, Ada Coleman. Audrey Saunders, two bartenders who were a century apart, quietly holding the line and moving the whole industry forward. And that's really what we're trying to do here at Into the Bar-Kive. Yeah, it's not just collect old recipes or retell all the same old stories, but to widen the frame to make sure that the people who really built this culture are actually part of the story that we're trying to pass on. And hopefully we did our part, or at least some part, today. As always, please like, subscribe, but leave us a comment about your favorite female cocktail artist, bartender, influencer in this industry. And before we wrap up, a quick look ahead. Next time on Into the Bar-kife, we're leaning into spring with an episode on floral cocktails and flower flavored liqueurs. ⁓ how they've been shaping drinks for centuries. Violet has a flavor profile that can be used if used appropriately. Sure. So we'll talk about violets, elderflowers, roses, orange blossom. We'll talk about where they came from, why they keep reappearing in cocktail history and how to use them appropriately. Without making them so soapy. Bingo. So. Thank you for watching and listening, and we'll see you next time, back into the bar-kive, where the history is always a little deeper than it looks in the glass. Cheers.