We are in the process of training some extra night time krewe members for The Green Goddess, with the idea of opening six nights a week soon after Halloween. One of the nights we add to the roster will be Wednesday nights, which we have reserved thus far for plotting & planning our new additions to the bar and to the menu, a night of prepping, tasting visiting wines & spirits from our wholesale merchants. It's been a very beneficial weekly event for my krewe: we try new things, conversate amongst ourselves as we enjoy these drinking pleasures, and get some decisions together about the shape of the menu while we are passionate about our new discoveries.

I really want to keep some of the informal "learning about drinking" vibe of our Wednesday nights, and somehow avoid turning Wed into just another regular dinner service. This Wed in particular will be a unique Sippin' Soiree because my buddy Jim Yonkus will be in the house as we open our new bottles of rare elixirs from Santa Maria Novello, the Alkermes and Elisir de Edimboro. Jim kindly procured us these two bottles while he was in NYC, where Santa Maria Novello has an outpost from their legendary farmacia in Florence (Firenze) near the famous church of the same name.

The elixirs are early Renaissance artifacts of the overlay that artisanal alcohol and exotic medicinal studies created, with the Alkermes standing as a near mythic potion, using cochineal, crushed pearls, ambergris in its host of exotic distilled ingredients to make a nearly wine-dark red spirit. I owe my enthusiasm for this product to the skilled writing of Dierdre Heekins and her book, Libations. Heekins, a co-owner of a small Italian restaurant in Vermont who has fallen under the spell of Italian eau-de-vie and the way Italians bring drinking to their marriage of culture and food, has written a MUST READ for anybody who loves to listen to the stories behind great booze. She is really living a restaurant life for her and her husband's passions, and reading Heekins's process of learning to make her own wine in frosty Vermont, their shared memories drinking Campari, and her visits to obscure Italian wine & spirits producers gives Libations an immediacy, for the reader it's like conspiring with a new friend to taste unusual & beautiful Italian treasures.

In a poignant telling of her almost ghostly connections to New Orleans, where she was conceived but the family moved away before she was born, Heekins uncovers a fact that the original Sazerac bar was in Exchange Alley, and thus I think we will feel an obligation to recreate a traditional yet "to-the-moment" version of the Sazerac here at The Green Goddess very soon. Libations is a very entertaining read for boozehounds of every ilk, and it should zoom to the top of your reading list.

Once you do read the book. I bet you will want to hustle down to The Green Goddess for a sip of elixir, as we concoct new cocktails and revive old classics. This Wed night at around 6:30-8 pm we will be messing around with a few new cocktails and trying out some new wines. We will have a somewhat limited menu of cheese boards, ploughman's lunches, and a few dishes from the menu. Mainly we will be prepping, and while doing so educating our palates about these exotic elixirs, including our new cocktail featuring the Clear Creek Distillery's famous Douglas Fir Eau-De-Vie with Chartreuse and G'vine gin, called The Gentle Giant.

So this Sippin' Soiree is kinda like a preview party, but more informal... than any sort of grand opening deal. The idea is to show guests how we process beautiful new information about our bar, with guest sommeliers from our wholesale merchants. This Wednesday night really has an exceptional roster: our first ever tasting of Santa Maria Novello elixirs, working up a classic Sazerac from a muddled cube of sugar laced with bitters, to the majestic scent of the Douglas Fir captured in a cocktail, and quite probably a few more surprises.

I can see in the near future a tasting of rare village mezcals, tastes of Hudson Valley whisky and Death's Door Gin, old madeiras & armagnacs & ports, to exciting candidates for our wines by the bottle program available on Wed nights for the tasting. It may take a few weeks for us figure out how to program this educational experience as a measure of dining service, but I think we can find a way to present this to the public so we can share our sense of discovery for such a special occasion. It depends on how many drinks we showcase, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 to $40 should cover the range of booze and a decent bite to eat, depending on how many drinks you want to sip, too.

This will be a unique experience as we take our first sips of the elixirs from Santa Maria Novello, so if you have the time and inclination to find out about these legendary spirits, please join us at The Green Goddess this Wed from 6:30-9 pm.