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Marc Ramirez

This weekend, Dallas bartenders take Margarita out for a spin; you and a good cause reap the benefits

The classic Margarita. Image courtesy of LetsGetTwisted.com.

The Margarita transcends definition as…

Ponies, polo, and.... cocktails

This drink at Central 214 benefits literacy programs. Get over there immediately and order one.

The…

The 86 Co.'s signature vodka and rum.

A coup for Dallas' Jason Kosmas and his new spirits venture, The 86 Co.: The brand has been chosen to host this year's Bare Knuckle Bar Fight at July's annual Tales of the Cocktail (TOTC) conference in New Orleans.

The event, held toward the conference's end, is this year's version of the previously named Bar Room Brawl, wherein a number of selected bar staffs around the country battle for bragging rights as judges assess their ability to churn out drinks in the midst of a massive, party-type atmosphere.

The event's primary spirits will come from The 86 Co., which Kosmas launched earlier this year with esteemed barmen Simon Ford (brand expert for Pernod Ricard USA), Dushan Zaric (co-owner with Kosmas of New York's Employees Only bar). They include Aylesbury Duck Vodka, Cana Brava Rum, Tequila Cabeza and the highly rated Ford's Gin.

Del Maguey Vida mezcal will also be represented at the event.

"(TOTC founder) Ann (Tuennerman) wanted to give us an opportunity," Kosmas said. "It makes perfect sense for us.

"The Bar Room Brawl has been such an iconic part of Tales, and as the festival gets bigger, we're happy to be a part of it."

Participants and judges are expected to be announced on May 1.

Hibiscus' Peruvian Fix was among the stand-outs of the five-week series.

MY FRIENDS, this blog can sometimes be a grueling enterprise. In those moments I find myself re-energized by my sworn duty to my readers, and that, no doubt, is what powered me through five straight Thursdays of pisco sampling. Somebody had to do it.

Now I bring you the highlights of that brave mission, the best of a barrage of pisco cocktails fired up by some of Dallas’ ace bartenders.

First, a little catch-up: Not long ago, I told you about The Trail Project, Daniel Guillen’s crusade to showcase lesser-known spirits via a series of “bar crawls” through various Dallas neighborhoods. The idea, developed with Standard Pour’s Brian McCullough, is to introduce or reacquaint bartenders with spirits they may then decide to add to their shelves: The spirits become part of their repertoire, an ingredient to which adventurous patrons can be wooed; the brand gets marketed; everybody wins.

At Bar Smyth, bartender Josh Hendrix does the pisco thing his way.

The first series, sponsored by Pisco Porton – pisco, like Cognac, is a grapey eau de vie, native mostly to Peru – began with a walkable stretch of bars along Henderson; the next week, we’d moved to Uptown. Next came the Northpark/Mockingbird Station/Knox area, the Design District and Oak Cliff areas and finally a motley bunch of orphan bars stretching from Henderson to the Crescent to Oak Lawn. In all, more than 25 bars took part, amazing considering the number of quality spots not even on the list, such as The Cedars Social, Black Swan Saloon, Whiskey Cake and the Libertine. There were surprises – bars I didn’t expect much from made solid showings, and vice versa – and some non-surprises (many many variations on the Pisco Sour); all together, we probably each tasted about 60 cocktails.

Here, in alphabetical order, are my 10 favorites from along the way.

1. The as-yet anonymous second drink that Ashley Williams served us at Oak Cliff’s Boulevardier, featuring Pisco Porton, DeKuyper O3 liqueur, Cherry Heering, lemon and a float of Montelobos mescal.

2. At The Dram on Henderson, Jasin Burt’s mix of Pisco Porton, Dolin Rouge vermouth, chocolate bitters and vanilla extract – a drink I dubbed Down With The Brown – complex and grapey sweet, with a nice chocolate finish.

Ashley Williams puts Boulevardier on the list with her as-yet unnamed creation.

3. I dug the drink called the Hawaiian Room, a bit of whimsy from Sunset Lounge’s Nico Ponce, with Pisco Porton, Sailor Jerry spiced rum, applejack, lemon and pineapple. Served in a coupe with banana leaf protruding like a feather, it was again on the sweet side, but well-rounded: A refreshing iced tea with a vanilla-wafer finish.

4. At the Standard Pour, the Incan Resemblance, from Guillen's brother Armando, was one of the series’ most original and beautiful looking drinks. (The same goes for the epically named cocktail from his SP colleague McCullough, Pisco Kid Rides Again Into The Fiery Sunset.) Guillen's drink featured Pisco Porton, puree made from chirimoya (a Peruvian fruit), elderflower liqueur, ginger foam, Thai basil, Peychaud’s bitters and lavender bitters. A garnishing bundle of lavender leaves were rolled into a lemon peel papoose, evoking an Incan headdress. It was stunningly creative, with a smooth strawberry taste.

The Incan Resemblance, from Standard Pour's Armando Guillen.

5. It was practically midnight when we reached Tate’s on the Uptown leg of the so-called Pisco Trail, and head barman J.W. Tate obliged our tastes with an excellent digestif he called Muy Criollo, or Very Creole. “The word “Creole” is used in a very different way in Peru,” Tate told us. “It refers to a spirited way of life, similar to the way we’d say gusto, or the French joie de vivre.” He made his drink with pisco, Bonal bitter liqueur and three kinds of shrub, including habanero. It was arresting, a sipping drink for night’s end, with a pleasantly mild kick of spice in the finish.

6. At Bowl and Barrel, Ian Reilly found a way to incorporate hoisin, an Asian plum sauce he came across in the kitchen, in a fabulous drink he called the Passerine. Figuring the hoisin would go well with other Asian flavors, he mixed it with Hum, a feisty liqueur strong with ginger and kaffir lime, and pisco, lime, Yellow Chartreuse and orange bitters. It was brilliant tang and sweetness, all in one.

A mango-jalapeno cocktail from The Kennedy Room's Joseph Buenrostro, among the few to embrace heat in his pisco creations.

7. Hibiscus, on the first week’s itinerary, had to pull out at the 11th hour. After it was reset for week five, Bartender Grant Parker atoned for the wait with the beautiful and delicious Peruvian Fix, a bouquet of pisco, pineapple syrup, lime, mint, simple and most significantly, jalapeno-infused Green Chartreuse. It was lovely, with a slight kick – not too spicy, not too sweet, all the flavors exhibiting perfectly. Parker was among the bartending minority who’d worked with pisco before. “One woman came in once and put me through hell,” he said. “She had me make, like nine Pisco Sours.”

8. It’s fair to say that Sunset Lounge’s Nico Ponce, spurred on by news that the bar preceding his in week number two had turned out two pisco drinks, was a little motivated. He sent out a volley of at least seven pisco-based cocktails, all of them variations on the tiki drinks that are the trademark of the fledgling Ross Avenue bar. His Pisco Mai Tai was, yes, on the candy-sweet side, but oh so good: pisco, lime, orange Curacao and a bit of almond syrup.

The Pisco Mai Tai, one of Sunset Lounge's numerous tiki variations.

9. At Marquee Grill & Bar, Andrew Lostester made the tantalizing Pisco Star using a housemade syrup made with grapefruit, cinnamon and star anise. That was shaken with pisco, lime and seasonally fresh grapefruit, then topped with soda; it had a creamy mouthfeel with a citrusy finish, the perfect match for appetizers drenched in rich sauce.

10. It’s no fluke that Guillen himself ended up on this list; being Peruvian, he’s well versed in pisco and he raised his chances by offering up three drinks to sample at Northpark’s La Duni. His second effort, called the San Isidro, was money: pisco, Grand Marnier, lemon, maple syrup, peach puree, Angostura bitters and a housemade apricot-nectarine bitters. Topped with mint and a dried apricot lounging atop a tiny ice-bowl float, the result was all-up-in-your-face apricot with a double-barreled peach-maple sweetness.

The trail master himself, La Duni's Guillen, scores with the San Isidro.

If you’re keeping score by neighborhood, that makes Uptown/Arts District the winner of the first Trail Project series, at least in my book. The more notable point is, there’s a whole passel of bartenders out there who now know how to throw down with pisco, and the person who benefits is you: Get out there and try some of these drinks soon.

Guillen’s plan is to launch a whole new series of bar crawls built around a second spirit, so stay tuned either here or on my Twitter feed at @typewriterninja #trailproject.

Trail participants strike a pose with the raspberry-infused X Factor, one of several solid pisco cocktails from Bolsa's Kyle Hilla.

The Windmill's Charlie Papaceno: Unpretentious before it was cool.

Interesting story yesterday from The New York Times, which notes the number of craft cocktail joints popping up around the country that are striving for a more casual vibe. These places, the article says, are “part of what is shaping up as a fresh chapter for high-end mixology: a new breed of cocktail bar that seeks to retain the profession’s hard-won artistry while shedding the pretensions that often come with it.”

In other words, the complete opposite of cocktail culture’s stuffy stereotype – things like secret entrances, purposely subtle signage, bans on canned beer and rules against standing at the bar.

But for the most part, when it comes to serious craft cocktails, Dallas ain’t that kind of place anyway. Even The Cedars Social, which this year earned a prestigious James Beard nom for best bar program, has made a habit of stocking Lone Star and Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can for a crowd as likely to come in wearing T-shirts and jeans as much as stiletto heels and Saturday Night sport jackets.

Another draw of these casual bars, the story notes, is their bartenders’ ability to rapidly churn out quality craft drinks for dense crowds without the pomp and production that can often leave you wanting. In other words, what Uptown’s Standard Pour and Tate’s – neither of them exactly hidden away – do on a regular basis for the weekend throngs full of yuppies who thirst more for a quick buzz than for obscure cocktail knowledge. (For the record, I avoid these nights.)

Neither place is particularly stuffy, either, though it must be noted that in Standard Pour’s earlier days Tate’s own head barman J.W. Tate was turned away at the door because of the cap he wore backwards on his head.

As far as strict, quality-cocktail casual goes, these places already exist here: Charlie Papaceno at the divey Windmill Lounge on Maple has been crafting quality drinks since before it was a thing in Dallas. The Black Swan Saloon in Deep Ellum wears no fancypants, and the pubby Libertine on Lower Greenville has Mate Hartai, one of the better cocktailian minds around.

Granted, none of these spots went into business proclaiming themselves to be craft cocktail bars, so maybe the comparison is unfair. But pretension doesn’t go very far in Dallas’ cocktail culture, and so far, the jury is still out on whether people will stand, in line or in temperament, for even the tiniest bit of speakeasy pretension. (I’m looking at you, Bar Smyth.)  There’s something genuine about the scene here that evades the haughtiness that comes with being first. New York and the Bay Area no doubt paved the way for the country’s classic cocktail revival, but those cities are now also, according to the story, discovering the value in being a little less like themselves and a little more, well, like Dallas.

“I do think there are some bartenders out there that have a pretentiousness about them,” says Chris Dempsey of The People’s Last Stand. “But they’re quick to change once they see it affect their business. Most of the guys I know are humble and knowledgeable, which is a pretty good combo, if you ask me.”

What do you think? Do you find Dallas' cocktail bars pretentious? What do you think about bars that take a "speakeasy' approach?

The Psycho Smash, one of Central 214's DIFF cocktails.

Film festivals are a lot of work. Waiting in line, waiting in line: It's enough to drive you to drink.

Luckily, Central 214 at Dallas' Hotel Palomar -- headquarters for the Dallas International Film Festival -- has your best interests in mind. The bar at the Graham Dodds restaurant is featuring two cocktails designed especially for the event by head bartender Amber West.

"I was trying to think of all the great movies," says West, who recalls enjoying moviegoing in the days "before I became a working, crazy mommy."

She came up with the Citizen Kane, whose plot unfolds with High West rye, orange liqueur, maple syrup, lemon and finally a nod to that fateful word, Rosebud.

Then there's the citrus-y fresh Psycho Smash, a delicious sweet-tea frenzy of Angel's Envy whiskey, simple syrup, mint, lemon and Angostura bitters. No doubt Mother would be proud.

"Everyone loves a smash," West says between lunch guests, including an HBO documentary maker and an L.A. actress whose film was going to debut that night. "Plus I thought 'psycho' and 'angel' would go well together. I thought it would be kind of cute."

The $8 drinks will run the duration of the festival, which ends Sunday, and are the '8' part of Central 214's "2-4-6-8 " happy-hour promotion of specially priced appetizers.

  Above: A pisco cocktail at Dallas' Central 214 during last Thursday's crawl.

Last week, I wrote about the Trail Project, a series of neighborhood "cocktail crawls" conceived by La Duni's Daniel Guillen and Standard Pour's Brian McCullough to showcase lesser known spirits. Tonight, the fourth of five crawls, all free and open to the public, will muddle through Dallas' Design District and Oak Cliff neighborhoods.

This first series is built around the project's initial sponsor, Pisco Porton, with bartenders at each stop crafting cocktails featuring the Peruvian eau de vie. Last week, the less than punctual project lazed its way through the Northpark and Mockingbird Station areas.

Tonight's event kicks off at Meddlesome Moth in the Design District at about 5:30, to be followed by stops at FT33 and then several venues in Oak Cliff. If you're interested in joining or just following along, you can track the trail's whereabouts on Twitter with the hashtag #piscotrail.

 La Duni's Daniel Guillen has a passion he needs to share.

I have seen pisco gone tiki and pisco gone Southern and pisco show grace under pressure. I have seen pisco gone wild, hooking up with a variety of unlikely dance partners: watermelon, smoked balsamic, Champagne, hefeweizen, chocolate bitters, balsamic puree…. and this was all in the span of two nights.

Who knew pisco had it in her? Yes, pisco, the diaphanous Peruvian (and occasionally Chilean) brandy dating to the 16th century. When you think of it in a cocktail, you think of the Pisco Sour, and then… um, the Pisco Punch, and… well, who really thinks about pisco anyway?

Daniel Guillen does. He’s the 24-year-old beverage director at La Duni, and having been bitten by the craft-cocktail bug, he wanted to get other bartenders excited about lesser known spirits and liqueurs. Being Peruvian, he wanted to start off with pisco, and to show that there was more to this smooth, sweet eau de vie than the Pisco Sour.

With the help of Standard Pour’s Brian McCullough – president of the North Texas chapter of the U.S. Bartenders Guild – he came up with an idea: a weekly series of neighborhood-themed bar crawls, where bartenders at each stop would showcase the featured spirit in a different cocktail or three.

 A Pisco Porton cocktail at Joyce and Gigi's.

Tonight, the third leg of the Pisco Trail continues, and you’re invited. Never had pisco before? Pisco Porton, the project’s initial sponsor, wants to make sure you have your chance.

“Let’s have bartenders show how they can use pisco,” Guillen says. “Maybe instead of gin in a Negroni, or instead of vodka in a Cosmopolitan…. If mezcal is acceptable, I don’t see why pisco shouldn’t be.”

Parts of the Thursday night neighborhood crawls are even walkable. And anyway, the point is not to finish off every cocktail, but to sample, experience and move on.

 Pisco Porton, the project's initial sponsor.

The Pisco Trail series started two weeks ago in Knox-Henderson, then moved on to Uptown last week. This week the tour will target the North Park/Mockingbird Station area.

At Knox-Henderson’s Victor Tango, bartender Ivan Rimach made the tangy, refreshing Chilcano, a Peruvian cocktail little known in the U.S.: pisco, ginger soda, lime and bitters. “People would say it’s the Moscow Mule of Peru, but it’s really the Horse’s Neck of Peru,” Guillen said, citing a little known classic.

Next door, at Sissy’s Southern Kitchen, beverage director Chase Streitz gave pisco a Southern spin, mixing it with Champagne and Chambord black raspberry liqueur in a sweet drink he called Pisco In The South.

“We really enjoyed trying a spirit we didn’t know anything about,” Streitz said. “We’d never worked with pisco before.”

“That’s the basis of this whole thing,” Guillen replied.

 At Sunset Lounge, Nico Ponce's Lani Hana.

Across the street was the Dram, where bartenders Jasin and Ryan each threw down a couple of impressive pisco variations, my favorite taste being the drink I dubbed Down With The Brown – a mix of pisco, vermouth, chocolate bitters and vanilla extract finished off with a flamed orange twist.

The Pisco Trail concluded its Knox-Henderson crawl at Porch and the Old Monk, then resumed last week in Uptown with stops at Joyce and Gigi’s, Sunset Lounge, P/S, Standard Pour and Tate’s.

At Sunset, Nico Ponce tossed out an insane barrage of at least a half-dozen tiki-themed pisco drinks to sample, including a pisco Mai Tai. Among my favorites was the Hawaiian Room, a blend of pisco, Applejack and Sailor Jerry spiced rum that started as sweet tea and finished like a vanilla wafer.

Guillen seemed pleased. “Before I hit this place, I never thought Pisco could go tiki,” he said. “Before we hit Sissy’s, I never thought it could go Southern.”

 At P/S, a Pisco Sour transfoamed.

At P/S, head barman Rocco Milano started things off with the Pisco Espuma, a Pisco Sour in pressurized form spewed foam-like into a spoon. Then came the Peruvian Shandy, a group favorite in which he married pisco with lemon, simple syrup and Franconia Hefeweizen. “The acidity plays particularly well with the hefeweizen,” he said, “and helps the pisco come out in the finish.”

Standard Pour was an experience: Brian McCullough started with Pisco Kid Rides Again Into The Fiery Sunset, an elaborate production involving a cedar-chip-smoked coupe filled with pisco, pineapple shrub, smoked balsamic, lemon, Peychaud’s and egg white, followed by Armando Guillen’s (Daniel’s brother) drink, the Incan Resemblance, one of the most beautiful and tasty drinks on the tour.

At Tate’s, J.W. Tate dropped the perfect digestif with the Muy Criollo, mixing pisco with Bonal (a French aperitif wine) and three kinds of vinegary shrub.

 Standard Pour's McCullough employed cedar-chip-smoked coupes to make his epically named drink.

What Guillen hopes is that bartenders will learn to appreciate the products he hopes to showcase and start adding them to their inventories, and thus, their repertoire, which in turn will enrich the customer experience.

“I hope people will experience out-of-the-box cocktails instead of just the classics,” Guillen says. “That’s what bartenders get excited about. And if you’re adventurous, which you should be every time you go to a bar, you’re going to have a good experience.”

Join the tour tonight (Thursday 3/28) if you can. Stops are planned at La Duni Northpark starting at 7:30, with Bowl and Barrel, Central 214, The People’s Last Stand and Smyth to follow. I’ll hope to tweet as we go with the hashtag #piscotrail, so feel free to follow at @typewriterninja to figure out the tour’s whereabouts.

Like dinner with your whiskey? Then Tate’s in Dallas has a treat for you – a five-course dinner by FT-33’s Josh Black, to be paired with selected whiskies at the Uptown neighborhood bar.

The April 17 event is unsponsored, which will allow Tate’s to showcase some of its more interesting bottles. Rare whiskies such as Michter’s Sour Mash, Buffalo Trace Single Oak Project and, most excitingly, Parker’s Heritage 6th Edition Cask Stength “Blend of Mashbills” Bourbon will complement Black’s rad menu. (Three words: Fried pig ears.)

The dinner is the second cocktail-paired event Tate’s has put on. Last year, head barman J.W. Tate and his crew cranked out cocktails to go along with dishes from underground-dinner master David Anthony Temple. If you want to know why you should think about forking out the extra $30 for the optional cocktails J.W. will be pairing with Black's $50 dinner, consider this: Last time around, one of J.W.'s concoctions involved chanterelle- and pink-peppercorn-infused vodka designed to play off Chef DAT's arugula salad.

Wine by the bottle and Tate's' full cocktail menu will also be available via walk-up service. To ask about reservations, email Tate’s at [email protected].

  The First Mate, my fave of Abou-Ganim's three rum cocktails

For the last 30 years, Tony Abou-Ganim has been behind bars. Rum-pa-dum-pum.

The joke was his, and here was a dude whose wit and charm were well steeped in experience. Last week, the Las Vegas-based cocktail veteran – author of The Modern Mixologist: Contemporary Classic Cocktails – was in Dallas to lead an interactive mixology seminar with rum as the main course.

The event marked the launch of a six-city tour promoting Shellback Rum, a new rum line produced in Barbados. It was one of the better interactive cocktail events Barmoire has been to, with each attendee set before a well-stocked mixologist’s mise en place loaded with bar tools, fruit, syrups, glassware and, of course, the prime ingredient, rum.

Abou-Ganim, author of The Master Mixologist: Classic Contemporary Cocktails (David Grote Photography)

Abou-Ganim, personable and as bald as an Academy Award, has been around. In 1998, Steven Wynn hired him to develop the cocktail program at Bellagio Las Vegas, and four years later he won the Bacardi Martini World Grand Prix (according to his biography, one of only two Americans to ever do so). He’s appeared on TODAY, Iron Chef America, Fox News and Good Morning America. (Back when he wanted to be an actor, he was also in an Alka-Seltzer ad.) Most recently, he’s author of Vodka Distilled, in which he labors to clear vodka’s typically bad name among serious craft bartenders.

He arrived in Dallas a day early, and being fortunate enough to happen upon him at Uptown’s Standard Pour (where barman Eddie "Lucky" Campbell was throwing down), I then accompanied him and his crew to the recently opened Establishment, where we found the Cocktail Enthusiast himself, Kevin Gray. Good times.

 Our seminar workstations. 

But of course it was the rum Abou-Ganim was here for, and by the next evening he was at Dallas' Marc Events venue in comfy red Crocs and signature toque. He dropped a bit of rum history, including the origins of “grog” (the watered-down rum that sailors drank with lime – to avoid scurvy – and sugar) and the term “shellbacks” (mariners who crossed the equator).

Then he led us in a mass preparation of three of his own rum recipe twists using the weapons laid before us. We muddled, we shook, we poured. Someone broke a glass. By the end of the evening, we’d made and tried three commendable drinks – the Milestone Mojito, the Deck Hand Daiquiri and my personal favorite, the First Mate (recipe below), made with Shellback’s crème-brulee-like spiced rum.

The Milestone Mojito, another of Abou-Ganim's creations

The tour will continue throughout the spring and summer in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Miami, finishing up on August 16 – National Rum Day – in Los Angeles.

FIRST MATE -- Tony Abou-Ganim

1½ oz Shellback spiced rum

1 oz cinnamon simple syrup

2 oz apple juice (unfiltered works best)

1 oz lemon juice

Ginger beer

Put rum, syrup and juices into a shaker, then add ice and shake until well blended. Strain into an ice-filled Collins glass, top with chilled ginger beer and stir to mix. Garnish with lemon spirals and a “fan” of thin apple slices.

Before entire music libraries and players fit in your hip pocket, there was the age of console stereo systems. Back then, you'd veg out to the vinyl crackle of REM or Pink Floyd in the darkness, the light of the receiver glowing from behind the frequencies on the AM/FM radio display.

That's the feel you get at The Establishment, the long-anticipated cocktail lounge from Mike Martensen and Brian Williams in Dallas' Knox-Henderson neighborhood.

It's no accident, because if The Cedars Social, the James-Beard-nominated bar Martensen and Williams co-own south of downtown, is decidedly 70s retro, The Establishment is even more so -- dark, cozy and swank, with sleek wood paneling creeping from the walls onto the ceiling above the bar.

Plush, U-shaped booths wallow in the murk. A shag-carpeted back room features vinyl-ornamented shelves. The whole scene is soul-ified by a soundtrack courtesy of Al Green, Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind and Fire and recalling a time of gold chains, leisure suits and bell bottoms.

"I feel like I could walk into that (back) room and hair would grow on my chest," said Ian Reilly, who runs the bar at Dallas' Bowl and Barrel.

The speakeasy atmosphere begins on Travis Street, where no obvious sign or entry marks The Establishment's existence. An unlit hallway bends into the nightlight-dim lounge, where the bar glows in the darkness like the Yamaha tuner in your daddy's man cave.

"I think this is what my dad thought his basement bar looked like," said Charlie Papaceno, the stalwart behind Dallas' Windmill Lounge, admiring The Establishment's wood-paneled setup with a Manhattan in hand. "I’m sure when he looked at it, this is what he saw."

In its purposefully quiet, early opening days, small numbers and familiar faces demonstrated the intimacy of the space, snug as a den. So far there are no stools at the bar and plenty of room to move around or melt into the shadows, as long as the numbers remain limited. And Martensen insists that's the idea: A host will make sure attendance tops out at 48, which is why reservations may ultimately be recommended. “It’s never going to be crowded,” he says.

Not everything about the room is perfect: A prominent staircase, set off by a pair of stanchions, leads temptingly to nowhere but offices. But that's a small trifle, and of course it's the drinks we're here for. There’s no menu, just a list of spirits, your own desires and the whims of the dapper wizards behind the bar. Name a poison, vote spirit-forward or not, claim a preference for bitter or sweet -- whatever you fancy. Mezcal is how I dive in: bartender Mike Steele churns out the Slow Trombone, an apricot-tinged concoction he's still perfecting. Later, Omar Yeefoon, The Establishment's bar program manager, works magic with Hum, one of my preferred liqueurs.

“That’s the great thing about working here,” says Steele, exhibiting a sheet of note paper with scribbled ingredients and proportions on both sides. “All these drinks, I came up with last night.”

If hit-or-miss experimentation isn't your thing, go safe with a classic; in the hands of these bartenders, you won't go wrong.

And when Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" comes on, you'll know you've officially crossed the Boogie Nights barrier.

Word from the man himself, Mike Martensen, is that The Establishment -- the long-awaited, long-delayed, reservations-driven cocktail lounge in Knox-Henderson -- is finally up and running.

Located at 4513 Travis Street, the ambitious, three-pronged magnum tipplus from Martensen and Brian Williams -- the brains behind The Cedars Social south of downtown -- will eventually feature an oyster bar along with its vinyl music tracks in the space once occupied by Trece.

Get over there and let me know what you think!

Don't look now, but Texas is having a national cocktail moment: No less than Imbibe magazine, the nation's premiere publication devoted to all things drinkable, highlights the Lone Star State in its latest issue.

"It's kind of surprising," says John Garrett, who represents the spirits division for Texas distributor Virtuoso Selections. "They could have done any state. They picked Texas. They know this is a burgeoning area."

Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio cocktails, beer and coffee are all featured. Getting deserving cocktail nods from Dallas are The Cedars Social, The Standard Pour, Private/Social, Tate's and the Black Swan Saloon. More questionable recommendations are dining-centric Local, the fast fading Chesterfield and, most incredibly, the Establishment, described in great detail as an "experience for a Dallas night you won't soon forget" even though the place has yet to actually open as of today. Way to go, Imbibe!

Nevertheless, the focus on Texas shows the state is finally emerging from behind the national curve when it comes to cocktails, and Lone Star luminaries such as Houston's Alba Huerta and San Antonio's Jeret Pena are prominently featured. There's even a drink recipe from The Cedars Social's Mike Martensen.

Things are only going to get better here.

If you missed the American Harvest Vodka launch party last week at Sundown at the Granada, you missed the spectacle of vodka shots poured through a formidable ice slab into the waiting shot glasses of partygoers; you missed the mini-Sloppy-Joe sliders and the low-octane trio channeling Foster the People and the bartenders outfitted in ranch-hand regalia.

But mostly what you missed was bartender Josh Hendrix's specially created menu of vodka cocktails made with the fresh, sleekly bottled brand, which made me reconsider -- for a night, anyway -- my typical indifference to vodka-based drinks.

These product launches are generally festive and kitschy occasions; a similar opening last year at Standard Pour for Montelobos mezcal featured ground-worm snacks and what appeared to be a taxidermied wolf. For instance.

American Harvest's glossy marketing makes the most of the organic spirit's American roots in a typically import-heavy crop, built around images of straw and happy farmers.  According to the literature, the Idaho-distilled spirit is "proudly handcrafted in small batches from organic American wheat, certified organic ingredients and water from deep beneath the Snake River Plain." And as it turns out, it's pretty good: I found the taste pleasant, buttery and crisp, a possible contender for my short list of faves worth drinking straight including Iceland's Reyka, Russian Standard and Seattle's Mischief.

Hendrix says vodka's virtually blank canvas gives a bartender room to show off flavor-building and technique, with the crispness of a winter wheat vodka a factor in both texture and finish. The two cocktails of his that most stood out to me that night were the Cynar-accented American Apertif and the sake-kissed Harvest Pearl, both of whose recipes are recounted below, courtesy of Hendrix.

While neither drink is on Sundown's current menu, either is available by request.

AMERICAN APERTIF

1.5 oz American Harvest vodka, 1/2 oz Cynar, 1/2 Lillet Rouge, 1/8 Rothman & Winter apricot liqueur. Stir with ice and strain into glass.

HARVEST PEARL

1 oz American Harvest vodka, 1/2 oz lemon, 1/2 oz simple syrup, 3/4 Rothman & Winter apricot liqueur. Shake with ice, pour into glass and top with Zapanga sparkling sake.

Raise a toast for the hometown boys: Dallas' The Cedars Social, which I recently highlighted in conjunction with the locally pioneering cocktail lounge's second anniversary, is among the semi-finalists for best bar program in this year's prestigious James Beard Foundation awards.

The 2013 semi-finalists, in 20 national and regional categories representing food, wine and drink, will be narrowed down to smaller lists of finalists by mid-March, with the winners announced at the foundation's national awards event in May.

The Cedars Social, which Brian Williams and Mike Martensen opened in Dallas in February 2011, joins two dozen other bar-program nominees on the list, including Houston's Anvil Bar & Refuge, New Orleans' Cure, Portland's Clyde Common, Seattle's Canon and New York's Pegu Club.

The raspberry-syrup-infused Quaker, one of The Cedars Social's Prohibition-Era cocktails.

The renaissance was going to reach Dallas eventually: The craft-cocktail tsunami washing inland from the coasts was too powerful for a city this big to ignore.

Dallas can be maddeningly set in its ways, but sooner or later someone was going to blaze the trail, and two years later, Mike Martensen and Brian Williams are still standing. And not just standing, but aiming to take the city’s rapidly maturing cocktail culture to a new level.

This month, The Cedars Social – their first joint project – quietly marked its two-year anniversary. If you’re looking for the place that truly stirred Dallas from its Crown Royal doldrums, this would be it.

This isn’t to ignore the bartenders who’d already been making a humble practice of honoring classic drinks and squeezing fresh juices, or the handful of restaurants and high-end hotels that had started toying with craft cocktails to mark the growing trend. But The Cedars Social was the first to say: This is what we do. This is who we are.

Someday -- and hopefully someday soon -- Martensen and Williams will open phase one of The Establishment, their ambitious trident of a cocktail-centered operation in Knox-Henderson. For some, the pair’s painstaking, indefinite efforts to ready the place for presentation resemble not so much a bar opening as the how-much-longer-are-you-going-to-be-in-the-bathroom machinations of a teen princess primping for the prom.

It’s hard, though, to fault their perfectionism. February 2011 was not so long ago, and yet, back then, The Cedars Social's opening was a splash of watercolor on gray canvas. Despite a succession of quality chefs in the kitchen, it’s still as it ever was: A breath of fresh air not just for a less-traveled neighborhood seeking life but for a city poised to move to a new level. With its classy wood-and-brick library feel, simple stylishness and a savvy locale drawing a refreshingly diverse regular clientele, The Cedars Social wasn’t just another bar: It’s in every sense a cocktail lounge – smart and innovatively drink-centered, committed to fresh ingredients, focused on casual community and the cocktail as experience.

‘There’s something about the way they’ve set it up – from the cocktails to the food to the music they play – that totally disarms people and makes them feel like they belong there,” says Dallas Morning News reporter Gromer Jeffers, a Cedars Social regular.

Meanwhile, look what we’ve gotten since: In Uptown, Private/Social, Tate’s and Standard Pour; in Plano, Whiskey Cake; The People’s Last Stand at Mockingbird Station; The Usual in Fort Worth; Bowl and Barrel near Northpark; Sunset Lounge downtown. Meanwhile, longtime craft masters like Charlie Papaceno of Windmill Lounge, Libertine’s Mate Hartai, Black Swan’s Gabe Sanchez, Bolsa's Kyle Hilla, Oak's Abe Bedell and Grant Parker at Hibiscus continue to work cocktail magic in less obvious settings.

“As soon as they opened, that blew it open for everyone,” says bartender Chris Dempsey of The People’s Last Stand.  “People really look to them in homage.”

Here's what I want when I walk into a cocktail joint. I want a seat at the bar. I want to know my bartender. I want a quality cocktail with ingredients as fresh as possible. I want a constantly refilled glass of water. I want decent food. I want a bartender adept with the gab, well versed in the classics and able to riff. I want someone willing to make what I want but equally skillful at getting me to try something new. I want a drink menu of variety and daring, low on gimmickry, easy to read. I want a crowd there to socialize, not to party. I want a place where I'm just as comfortable meeting friends or making new ones as I am doing a crossword. And I want the bartender to remember me the next time I walk in.

The Cedars Social has been doing this for me from Day One. Granted, being just south of downtown it's close to my usual place of business, but I consider that cool karma for a boy who had to be dragged kicking and screaming from cocktail-culture-rich Seattle.

Williams, a former Green Bay Packer, had been looking to open his own bar for a while. Places like Death & Co. in New York City, the Violet Room in Chicago and Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge in Milwaukee helped shape his vision.

Then he met Martensen, a palate-blessed upstart from Casper, Wyo., who’d been a spirits ambassador for Diageo and barman at The Mansion at Turtle Creek. Both shared a similar passion for the craft and the idea of a place that would be a quality cocktail bar first with great food rather than an upscale restaurant with great drinks.

“It’s definitely a cocktail place first,” Williams says, taking a minute to ask a new bartender to double-strain an herb-heavy drink before presenting it to a patron. “For me it was always about quality, the art of the craft.”

Take away the food, and you’ve still got The Cedars Social. But take away the craft cocktails, and The Cedars Social is gone. Social is the key word. I can't tell you how many ongoing acquaintances and friendships have been sparked at the bar.

One mark of its greatness is that it doesn’t matter who’s wielding the shaker: You’re going to get a great drink from someone who respects balance, flavor, history and service, who can just as soon whip up something original as throw down any of a long list of classic cocktails in the bar menu along with a seasonal array of originals, a smattering of Prohibition-Era gems and a handful of “tributes” – notable cocktails from other bartenders around the country whose inclusion here reflects the bar’s anti-cookie-cutter ethos of artistry and originality. (My favorite of these has been the Number Four, a mix of gin, honey syrup, cardamom and cracked pepper designed by Tanqueray global rep Angus Winchester.)

The bottles huddled behind the bar are wide-ranging and forward-thinking. Whiskey in particular is well represented. You can still order a vodka and soda. But why would you?

“We may be running on the beach right now, but we’re still moving forward,” Martensen told me during The Cedars Social’s first year of operation. “Every day I get somebody who doesn’t drink gin to drink gin.”

The prevalence of craft cocktails around town shows how adventurous the city’s palates have become in the meantime. The Cedars Social’s latest menu re-do features a pair of drinks built around vermouth, another sign of the bar’s vanguard thinking. Not in the mood? Order one of the city’s best Sazeracs instead. And while you’re at it, congratulate The Cedars Social on two years of cocktail pioneering. Dallas is much the better for it.

-- Marc Ramirez, 2/14/13