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words by Vivian Whitney illustration by Jordan Schechter & Jenny Katz
dds are you have at least one of the Big Five — vodka, tequila, whiskey, rum, or gin — sitting pretty somewhere in your kitchen. But there’s a whole ‘nother world out there beyond the classic spirits we’ve all vomited back into a BBB toilet, and it’s sitting right at Skytop Liquors in the back left corner, where few of us have ever ventured. You may have come across some of these alcohols at one point in your life, whether you stole a water bottle of Peach Schnapps from your parent’s liquor cabinet or ordered a $12 Campari Spritz at 2 a.m. in Milan while waiting for your earlymorning flight to Amsterdam. Either way, they deserve a revisit and a spot on your bar cart. If you still look forward to ordering your vodka cran at even the nicest of bars, this section might not be for you. But if you’re tired of a vodka and whateverjuice-I-can-find-in-the-fridge-oh-thank-god-wehave-lemonade cocktail and are willing to trade “gets me fucked up the fastest” for flavor and intrigue, read on. It’s okay to want to enjoy what you’re drinking! Whitman kids recently hired at Deloitte who love to blackout but need to shape up for your future work dinners in the city, take notes. “Some of these craft cocktails, these bitters, these more esoteric things have led people to an appreciation of how their drinks actually taste,” Torrey Grant said. “Now they’ve got a taste for something good, but as they mature or their lifestyle changes — I've joked about in class: drinking is just bottling fun from tomorrow. Well, maybe they don't want tomorrow to be as bad.”
LIQUEURS
Liquor, but Make it Classy Put the solo cups away; we’re bringing out the glassware tonight.
Hopefully you love yourself enough to have purchased a liqueur just once. You know, your Blue Curacao, your triple sec, that bottle of creme de cacao for hot chocolate on a snow day. Liqueurs have always been an important part of drinks, but they’ve started to earn more shelf space at Liquor City the past few years. “Prohibition-era cocktails kind of kicked this off 10 or 12 years ago,” Grant said. “Five years ago, we’d sell a bottle of Pernod once a month. Now we’re selling a case a month.” While there are far too many liqueurs to have a bottle of each, your liqueur collection comes down to what kind of drinks you tend to enjoy. “Figure out what your favorite type of drinks are,” Grant suggests, “and