Simple sells

Published 12:00 am Friday, April 1, 2016

Brad Irwin fully admits to being a classic cocktail geek.

“I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve burned on the Internet tracking down the histories of various drinks,” says Irwin, the owner of Bend’s Oregon Spirit Distillers. “But hey, they wouldn’t be classics if they weren’t classic.”

Old Fashioneds, Sidecars, Manhattans and Sazeracs — classic, simple cocktails from years past with usually no more than three ingredients — are riding a wave of popularity in Bend and beyond.

“Simple is the common thread with most classic cocktails,” says Irwin, who also owns and operates The Barrel Thief Lounge, which is located on Northeast First Street in the same building as his distillery. “The beauty of classic cocktails is that they focus more on the spirit.”

Irwin says more than half the cocktails The Barrel Thief serves are of the classic variety.

“As a guy that makes spirits, I love it,” says Irwin, who adds that an Old Fashioned made with Oregon Spirit Distillers’ C.W. Irwin Bourbon is his bar’s most popular drink. “I think it’s fantastic and I’m proud to serve it.”

Classic cocktails have been making a comeback around the country for the past decade, says Phoebe Pedersen, who owns and runs the Dogwood Cocktail Cabin in downtown Bend with her husband, Doug.

“What we’ve really seen is the rise of whiskey being popular again,” Pedersen says. “People are going for the smaller batch stuff. It really goes hand-in-hand with microbrews. Those same people are craving smaller, localized whiskeys.”

And the last thing new cocktail aficionados want to do when sampling small-batch spirits is to overwhelm their palettes with complex mixed drinks, Pedersen says, making simpler classic cocktails a perfect way to try a new single-barrel bourbon or high-end artisan whiskey.

“The cocktail revolution really started in the Pacific Northwest 15 or so years ago,” Pedersen says. “There were a lot of crazy, wild cocktails out there. Some people are wanting to go back to drinks that are a little more simple.”

Irwin doesn’t disagree — “I think there’s been a bit of a hangover from all the flavored vodkas and bubble gum cocktails,” he says — but notes that the history behind classic cocktails can be just as fascinating as their flavor profiles.

“Where drinks come from, that’s important, they have some social relevance,” Irwin says. “Old Fashioneds, there’s a debate on whether it was originally served with or without muddled fruit. … A Tom Collins, it’s got great history from New York. People were going around asking if anyone had seen a man named Tom Collins. It was essentially a prank.

“And the Sazerac,” he continues, “that’s an American classic that can trace its roots back to a bar in New Orleans in the 1830s.”

Prohibition played a major role in shaping what we think of classic cocktails, Irwin notes. When booze was hard to come by, people began mixing it with other ingredients to make it last longer. Also, the quality of spirits people were drinking during the dark days of Prohibition wasn’t always the highest. Cutting those drinks with bitters and citrus was often a necessary — if not delicious — evil. When the nation regained its sanity, its taste buds were forever changed.

“For anyone new trying these classic drinks for the first time, I really encourage them to talk to their bartender and read about the history,” Irwin says. “It really ties some things together.

“It’s neat to know what you’re drinking,” he adds, “and why.”

— Reporter: beaueastes@gmail.com