Spirited Discussions: A Podcast by Montgomery County Alcohol Beverage Services

Literature's Most Famous Drinks

• Jocelyn Rawat • Season 1 • Episode 10

Share episode

Your book club will love these novels served with their famous cocktails.

ABS Liquor Store Assistant Manager Mike Gantt and MCPL Librarian Nathan Chadwick join host Jocelyn Rawat to curate a list of a dozen books and their signature drinks that will keep readers entertained while they relax by the pool or plan a cocktail-themed book club. Guests share literary insights paired with bartending tips – like why James Bond’s preference for “shaken not stirred” results in a weaker drink or how some bars incorrectly make the tequila sunrise. 

The episode coincides with Montgomery County Public Libraries' second annual Color Our World Adult Summer Reading program.

Announcer:

Welcome to Spirited Discussions. A podcast by Alcohol Beverage Services exploring alcohol products trends and policies in Montgomery County.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, Jocelyn Rawat, and today we have a treat for book lovers, as the Montgomery County Public Libraries celebrates its second year of the Adult Summer Reading Program. Librarian Nathan Chadwick has curated a list of some of literature's booziest books for us to enjoy by the pool. Nathan is the head of adult services at the Gaithersburg Library and has been with MCPL since 2012. Hi, Nathan.

Nathan Chadwick:

Hi Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Rawat:

And to help us make these cocktails that were popularized in classic literature, we have Mike Gantt, who is the assistant manager at ABS's Clarksburg Retail Store. Mike comes to us with -- listen to this -- three decades of bartending experience.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Hi, Mike.

Mike Gantt:

Hi, how are you doing? Making me sound old.

Jocelyn Rawat:

No, just experienced. Okay. So, Nathan, let me start with you. Tell us about the Montgomery County Public Libraries and the Adult Summer Reading Program.

Nathan Chadwick:

So every summer when when school is winding down, Montgomery County Public Libraries kind of winds up. We've been doing stuff with children's summer reading for ever, it feels like, and a few years ago some adult librarians and I got around and we said we would love to have our own summer reading program. The number of adults that would come in, jealous of their own children because they were getting to have doodads and prizes to for for themselves and nothing for adults was mounting. And so we looked at and said, well, let's build our own program. So last year we started out and we thought, ok, we're going to give this a trial run, we'll see how it goes. Who knows who's going to show up? We always are hoping for the best but assuming the worst, unfortunately, when you do programming for, especially when it's brand new. But right out of the gate we had full program attendance. We had more adult summer readers than we had children below the age of seven.

Nathan Chadwick:

Last year was huge for our very first year. We were very excited. So we're coming back this year and we're trying to expand the program even more with more programs, better prizes. We you know the nice thing is when something goes really well, the budget increases, and so it went really well. More money came in so we could have more prizes this year. Let me tell you about how it actually works.

Nathan Chadwick:

So right now you can sign up for adult summer reading. It's through on our website at mcpllink, like a "link in a chain, so if you go to mcpllink that'll take you to the library website. On the main page you're going to see a section right now with the adult summer reading theme as well as the theme in general, which is Color Our World. If you click that you'll be able to log in and sign into the program. But starting June 14th is when the program actually kicks off, where you can actually come in and get a prize. So for adults signing up this year once they sign up we did not have a giveaway prize at the beginning last year we have a free book for all of our children. So the kids get to come in and they get a free book, and adults would come in and sign up and go, and what do I get? And we'd go our gratitude and we did not have anything to give them. So this year we're going to start out, you know, a little giveaway a bookmark and a sticker that's themed around the actual summer reading theme. As the summer goes along, you're going to read six books, attend six programs any combination of the two. You're going to log those online, come back in and be entered into not just raffles that the system is giving away as a whole, but also branch size raffles. And just for finishing, you also get another magnetic bookmark.

Nathan Chadwick:

Our mascot this year is a blue crab that we designed. His name is Artie, because the theme is "color our world and we want to make sure that we're participating in art. So we picked Artie to be our mascot. So you get a bookmark with Artie on the front of it and then you get entered into prizes and you should hear our prizes we have this year. They're really exciting.

Nathan Chadwick:

We've got a Cricut Joy Machine that includes insert cards, mats. It's a die- cut machine that people use to make crafts. We also are giving away a really cool Lego Great Wave set. It's one of those like $200 ones with the artwork that you'd over buy yourself because it's too expensive. But you always look at it at the store and think I'd love to do that someday. So you can win one with the library. This year we also have an HP Sprocket portable instant photo printer, so that's one that you can put in your pocket. It's like a like Polaroids we all grew up with Polaroid cameras, right. So this is that, but it's an HP. One you can put in your pocket, take it with you anywhere you go, plug it into your phone and actually print a picture out and hand it out. It's pocket sized.

Jocelyn Rawat:

So you can take a picture of yourself sitting at the pool reading a book and sipping your cocktail.

Nathan Chadwick:

Right and take that with you. Lastly, we also have programs happening all summer long. These programs are free and open to the public. They do require some registration for most of them. You can again go to our website, MCPLlink, to register for these programs.

Nathan Chadwick:

But we're kicking off June 14th at Gaithersburg Library and this is our fun drink themed program minus the drinks, unfortunately. We are having a mocktail program where we're going to talk about our favorite books to suggest this summer as adult summer reading as well, as we're going to be making fake mocktails and giving away these great snacks that come from all over the world. We did it last year. It was a huge success. We're looking forward to kicking off summer reading by talking about what we love to talk about most for summer reading books. We also are going to be doing bookbinding. We have a bookbinding program at Connie Morella Library in Bethesda. We're going to do pottery painting at Hammer and Stain in Rockville and we're going to be doing like camp crafts at Two Story Chimney Ciderworks in Gaithersburg. So we're going to be leaving the library. We don't want to just stay put this year. We want to get out into the community and do stuff. So we're looking forward to it.

Jocelyn Rawat:

That all sounds fantastic, and I'm glad you brought up mocktails, because most of the drinks that we're going to be talking about today can also be made as a mocktail version, and that's become much more popular, and the ABS stores carry many alcohol-free products, including liquor products. So mocktails, cocktails, whatever you want. That brings me to you. Mike, you've been in ABS retail for 18 years, is that right?

Mike Gantt:

About that yeah.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Wow, that's a long time, so I imagine you've had a lot of questions from customers over the years. So what are some of the things that people want to know?

Mike Gantt:

Well, we have a lot of questions come in and out all the time, not always about drinks. A lot of it's about wine, things like that pairing, which is I love to do because I worked in higher end restaurants all the time, or most of the time anyway. But I know people like to make their own drinks. Like I've said, there's no real wrong recipe. You can take a recipe ad lib with it. You find it. You talk to somebody and you find out hey, I'm doing this drink. Hey, why don't you add this? or like we were talking earlier, you know, put it in ice cream for the summer and it makes a great drink.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Just talking with you before we started recording, you gave me a whole bunch of great ideas, so I encourage everybody to ask the folks at the retail stores.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Nathan, you've narrowed it down for us a little bit. So that's mostly really to the classics, so those drinks that have become inseparable from the books that initially popularized them. So these are mostly going to be from the early and mid 20th century, and I think that the classic that comes to mind for most of us when we think about alcohol and literature is the Great Gatsby. So can we start there?

Nathan Chadwick:

Sure thing. So one of the great things when we were talking about this and putting this list together by the way, this is a list of, in my opinion, like book club ideas, right, so you have a book club, you bring wine to the book club. Usually you might have some stuff to nosh on this whole idea is to have a little bit more fun with your book club. To me, this was when I was looking through this list. I was thinking what this is about. Pairings right, I have a great book, I have a great read, and I want to pair it, instead of with wine, with a great cocktail, and so these all both are found within the books themselves. Sometimes are there just an idea that can spawn from the book's theme. So, The Great Gatsby, we always think of The Great Gatsby, what champagne, that famous gift we all see of Leonardo DiCaprio holding up the champagne goblet. But when you read the book, one of the things that stands out is the number of gin drinks that are in this book and mint juleps are mentioned. You have gin and tonics mentioned. In fact, it's mentioned more than champagne. So we looked at this, thinking mint julep would be a great add to this.

Nathan Chadwick:

The book takes place in the summertime, it's hot, it's a great cool down drink. But gin was very important because this book is set in 1920s prohibition. Gatsby himself -- they say in the book -- that he is part of the "pharmacy trade, which was slang for prohibition times, for you had a legal right to sell liquor. He took full advantage of that and made his fortune. And gin was the popular drink of the time. Because where can you make gin at the time? But in your own bathtub for some folks. So everybody was drinking gin and making gin drinks. So in the Great Gatsby you have all these great scenes of them sitting around their tables and them bringing in these gin and tonics and mint juleps. And I thought, while champagne's a great end with those party themes, the gin and tonics just everywhere. Every big plot point seems to have a gin drink around.

Jocelyn Rawat:

All right. So how do we make it, Mike?

Mike Gantt:

Well, if you use gin it'd be the same thing. I think most mint juleps that I've ever done had bourbon in them.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Okay.

Mike Gantt:

So I've got to go to that part of it. One of the big mistakes that I can say that they make with mint juleps is a lot of people crush the mint beyond its point and make it bitter. So the way we always did it was you make your julep, you have a glass of crushed ice. Crushed ice is the traditional way of pouring it over.

Mike Gantt:

Make it into a container, put your bourbon in it, mush up a little bit of mint, julep or the mint, but not a lot. You just don't want to go overboard, because it does make it very bitter, p retty much. And then it's just a little simple syrup and shake it up, pour it over crushed ice and add a little mint on it and you're good.

Jocelyn Rawat:

We're off to a good start. What else do you have for us, Nathan?

Nathan Chadwick:

So next up we got... s So I'm going to go to one of the classics, which was the "shaken, not stirred, the Ian Fleming James Bond books. So James Bond notoriously loves to drink his martinis. Ian Fleming loved drinking martinis the creator of James Bond and he actually is credited with inventing this martini for the books Whether he did or not I'm not sure, but that martini ends up being called the Vesper martini If you've watched the movie Casino Royale with Daniel Craig.

Nathan Chadwick:

The love interest in that, as a nod to this, is called Vesper Martini, one of those great James Bond names. And so in the book he actually gives the recipe. In Casino Royale, the very first James Bond book, he makes sure to say the following: wait, three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Lillet, and this is a great thing. We all know shake it over ice and add a thin slice of lemon. So did James Bond always want it "shaken, not stirred? Yes, but my favorite fact about this while while looking up these, uh, these drink things, was it was pointed out that, you know, shaking it over ice, um, is is great and all, but it actually dilutes the liquor more than stirring it. So james bond, as strong as he maybe liked his liquor a little bit Not so strong. So it's a. It's a great book to represent this whole topic because it's one of the only that gives you the full recipe inside the book itself.

Jocelyn Rawat:

So, Mike, how did Ian Fleming do? Did he get the recipe right?

Mike Gantt:

Pretty much. I always consider it the longest running gag in movie history, or in book history too.

Mike Gantt:

The one thing is the way we always did anything like that... i It was equal parts of vodka and gin and, in our store we sell the Lillet, which is used instead of vermouth, and it's the blanco. You can use the regular instead. But the funny part was you really, like you said, it waters it down, plus with gin. It's called bruising and you bruise the gin, so you take a little bit away from it. That's what the gag was, I think, and it was always meant that way.

Nathan Chadwick:

That's

Jocelyn Rawat:

OK, well, now the secret's been revealed. We had no idea. Ok, what else do you have for us?

Nathan Chadwick:

OK, so now we're going to go to champagne and we're going to go back to our champagne. I guess from the Great Gatsby, we're looking at Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany's -- in this book you have the great character Holly Golightly, and she is the ultimate party girl of the 1960s. Her whole life is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. So we're looking at the book with a quote that says, " that Monday of 1943, a beautiful day with a buoyancy of a bird . To start, we had Manhattans at Joe Bell's and we drank champagne cocktails in the morning.

Nathan Chadwick:

Truman Capote actually has a quote that actually says "I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before, with breakfast on several occasions, but never before. This came from his own life. So he loved to have a champagne cocktail in his own drinking habit and he made sure to include it into the book itself. Drinking habit, and you made sure to include it into the book itself. It's a real. It's a real interesting read of a book, by the way. But that whole idea of pairing it with something fun and party-like is going to fit the book's theme massively.

Jocelyn Rawat:

What do you think, Mike?

Mike Gantt:

Well, I think there's two ways to make it. There's the old fashioned way. I don't mean to say it's an old fashioned, but the original way was with just bitters and champagne and a little bit of sugar, which a lot of bartenders use simple syrup. Nowadays they add a little bit of cognac into it. It's a very simple drink and that's really all it is.

Jocelyn Rawat:

And it's interesting that champagne really has become the go-to breakfast drink these days. Okay, what else?

Nathan Chadwick:

So I'm going to planter's punch Heart of Darkness. This is a very dark book, obviously, but it is a standard read, something we may have read in our high school, but it also is a great book club book. It is a great discussion book. Planter's punch comes around in the 1870s; it actually comes before the 1870s, but it premieres in an English magazine in 1878. And by 1899, when Heart of Darkness comes out, we have this very popular drink, kind of taking a wave, where they were taking something like rum which had, you know, been drank by itself forever and they began making cocktails out of it And planter's punch is one of those cocktails. So, while Heart of Darkness has this dark theme of colonialism and other things like that, we do have a wonderful drink that actually comes out of this whole thing to me, and planter's punch is delicious, I find.

Mike Gantt:

I think it's a great summer drink. I use the older recipe, and in fact a fun fact, years ago ( I don't think they do it anymore) planter's punch was originally a Myers rum, and on the back of Myers bottle the recipe was always on it. Nobody else had that, I know just them, and that was the original. And it's really just about a half ounce, two ounce of dark rum, a little bit of sour mix, lemon juice, whichever you prefer, about a half ounce of grenadine, a little bit of bitters, shake and pour, and add an orange and cherry. It's a great drink for summer. But again, it was funny that Meyers always put that on the back of their label.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yeah, all right. What's up next for the book club?

Nathan Chadwick:

So we've also got we've got a book called The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Donnie Walton. This is a newer book. This book actually is about the rock- and- roll lifestyle. This is about a rock band and the trials and tribulations that they go through, and in the book there's this idea of the black opal cocktail that comes out of this. It is a high rebellious drink. It's steeped in rock and roll energy with a countercultural spirit. It's a perfect match for a cocktail as multi-faceted as the black opal. It has a very dramatic appearance, I understand, um, and it's a potent blend that kind of mirrors the idea of identity exploration that the novel goes through.

Mike Gantt:

Yeah, it's similar to Long Island iced tea in a lot of ways, just because a lot of liquo r is used in it. I wouldn't recommend putting a lot of each one in a drink. About a half ounce of each would work. Again, it's vodka, gin, rum, tequila. You can use Chambord or even some people use blue Curacao. It just gives it the color in it and a lot of people you put sour mix in it and a lot of people will use a little black food dye in it and it gives it that swirl, that little shimmer to it, like a pearl.

Jocelyn Rawat:

I've heard you mention that several times. With these recipes, that color matters a lot.

Mike Gantt:

It does, it does, and we have a lot of things at the store that can do that Curacao, blue Curacao to be precise. That is mainly it's an orange flavored on the lines of like a triple sec, but it's blue, and 90% of that is sold to change colors. When you put that in there, it changes everything. If anybody wanted to experiment with it, you just use sour mix in that and then change. Put something else in there and you'll see the colors change.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Our book club is getting more educated, and we're getting more colorful.

Nathan Chadwick:

I think it's hopping. So the next one I was thinking of was zombies. So zombies are a fun drink, and I kind of was thinking that of the tiki culture. So On the Road takes place in the 1950's. This drink actually starts in 1934 by a guy with the best name for creating kind of an island drink. His name is Donn Beach... Donn, with two N's too, by the way. It is a tiki cocktail. And so through the 1940s into the 1950s, one of the great things that starts to come along is this tiki bar culture. Disneyland, Disney World, if you've been there, they still have the remnants of that in their famous tiki bar and the tiki bar itself has kind of died away. But in the 1950s you could begin to find them in every major city. They were splurging out into the suburbs and a drink of choice that you would find in these is the zombie.

Mike Gantt:

Yeah, it was pretty good. In fact it was actually introduced in one of the World's Fairs, I forget the year it was, but that's actually what boosted it right off the charts and everybody had to have it then. And it's basically very simple it's a half-ounce dark rum, light rum, a half-ounce triple sec. It usually calls for creme de noyaux, but you could use the amaretto, put a little grenadine in. It's going to do the same thing, because you want to turn it a little red, and some lime juice and OJ, and it's a shake and pour drink. It's easy to make for everybody at home.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Nice. Okay.

Nathan Chadwick:

So next I was thinking of the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Now this book is just all over the map with different types of things you can imbibe, inject, put into your body. Unfortunately, there's all sorts of crazy trips, but one of the things that comes up is the idea of tequila shows up. It is the drink of choice for Hunter S. Thompson and his compatriots in this book, and no better idea to me to talk about the vibrant colors and kicks that you can get out of a tequila than mixing it into a tequila sunrise.

Mike Gantt:

What's funny with tequila sunrise? A lot of people mistake what a tequila sunrise is. I would say most bars, don't make it the way it originally is, because there were two. It was a tequila sunrise and a tequila sunset.

Mike Gantt:

And they actually make it the opposite way and call it a tequila sunrise, if you think about it, because one has the grenadine in the bottom and the other one has it around the rim where the streamers come down, so you can see the sunset or the sunrise in the between. They're both made the same way with tequila and orange juice. That's pretty much it.

Mike Gantt:

It's a simple drink to make. You shake it up, put it in and, of course, if you put the grenadine in you want it on the bottom, you got to keep it on the bottom. If you want the streamers, you got to rim it around the top oh sure. Most people are used to the one on top, and they just call that a tequila sunrise, which, if you think about it, that's not the rise, that's a set.

Jocelyn Rawat:

For sure, presentation matters. There's a big difference between a sunrise and a sunset, makes sense. I had no idea.

Nathan Chadwick:

I love that there's art to these by the way. So the next one I'm thinking of is one of my favorite authors, Graham Green. Graham Green never wrote the same book twice. There's a lot of spy thrillers in there. There's a lot of mystery. There's a lot of political intrigue in these books. One of the books that he writes that I absolutely love is Our man in Havana. It's a Cold War book, there's a lot of tensions going on and it's set in Cuba. The favorite quote of mine about drinking for Graham Greene is he always says, "champagne, if you're seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It's great for espionage to leak out the truth out of your targets. So the one I was thinking of for this one is the cocktail, which name, of course, means "free Cuba. Is the Cuba Libre or the rum and Coke?

Mike Gantt:

Well, actually they're the same thing. It's a tough drink to make. It's rum and Coke. You pretty much put in what you want of rum, I usually put one and a half to two ounces. The only difference is, if you say "rum and Coke, that's what you're getting. If you say Cuba Libre, you got a lime on it.

Nathan Chadwick:

The next one I was thinking of... I'm thinking of another gin drink, pink gin. The reason I kind of thought about this was with the book Brideshead Revisited. It's a very sophisticated sounding drink. It's a book featuring a lot of heavy drinking. and Brideshead Revisited is a book about class and culture from around the 1940s. It is a very there's a bittersweet quality to the book that sometimes you get with some gin drinks, and so I was thinking of that when I was looking through this, thinking of drinks that go along with this. I was thinking of pink gin.

Mike Gantt:

Well, that's good. You mentioned bitterness, because that's what goes in. It is bitters. I didn't really know the drink until I was asked, but it's basically just gin and a little bitters in it. I have never made it, so I assume it turns it a little pink and I know there was a market for something called pink gin, but I never saw it as pink. So one of those tough drinks, you know.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Okay, we've given you a few easy ones. You got a hard one for him?

Nathan Chadwick:

Well, let's see if I got something here. So let's go with the gimlet. Raymond Chandler famously has his many characters. In fact his thin man characters are Nick and Nora are known for their drinking lifestyle. But the gimlet is actually featured pretty regularly in another one of his books, the Long Goodbye. But the gimlet is actually featured pretty regularly in another one of his books, the Long Goodbye. It is a again another bittersweet kind of nostalgia that goes through this book that the gimlets have in them. A quote I really like from him is "there is no bad whiskey, there is only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others. He also, from the book, talks about gimlets, and a real gimlet is half gin and Rose's lime juice and nothing else.

Mike Gantt:

It's pretty much most people now... i It's like, years ago when they made martinis, it would be half and half. Most bartenders have got away from that, so it's basically more gin and a little bit of of, say, Rose's, we don't care, but they carry lime juice or sweet and sour mix which works, and you just garnish it with a lime, and I would shake it. Never shake it. I made a mistake. Never shake it. You don't want to shake gin, just stir it.

Nathan Chadwick:

More gin. Does that make it more expensive as it goes along? Yeah, more gin, stir it. More gin is like making more expensive as it goes along. More gin yeah, they drink less of them now.

Mike Gantt:

Bartenders have a cutoff anyway, If you get it from us you can put as much as you want in it. So I think I have one more for you here and this one again.

Nathan Chadwick:

So I think I have one more for you, and this is an odd pairing, I know, but I kind of like, I couldn't stop when I was talking about the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams. And when I was thinking of ideas, I couldn't stop saying, "cat on a hot tin toddy, and so, uh, it was stuck on my tongue. So I said you know what? Let's just talk about hot toddies. Tennessee Williams writes very... I can't think of a play that Tennessee Williams doesn't write, that's not set somewhere where the sun is boiling hot, and this is probably the hottest of all of his plays.

Nathan Chadwick:

And when I'm thinking of heat, you could think of a cool down drink, but to go along with the idea and play off the the theme of heat, I was thinking of making a hot toddy. A line from the play actually that I've always been interested in is... B burl Ives actually plays this character in the movie and in the play itself, so this is a Burl Ives quote for Big Daddy... he says "mendacity is a system that we live in Liquor is one way out and death's the other. So... hmmm... which way would you rather go? If you're going to break up mendacity, always go liquor before death,

Mike Gantt:

they go past probably your book. Hot toddy originally was just whiskey and hot water with a little lemon and A hot medicinal for people when they weren't feeling well. And the idea is now we put, we use a lemon. Most places use like a lemon wheel, put clothes in it and seep it into the drink. A lot of places use tea. That's the lemon... m ost one. Some places put it in apple cloves, but tea is steep more common now and the idea is for the honey to soothe your throat and the lemon to cut anything that's, you know, clogging your throat, and the now, give a beautiful smell and it's supposed to clear you out. So it was very much intended years ago as medicinal. c

Jocelyn Rawat:

All right, so lots of options. So, Nathan, thank you. You've given us a good list of, I guess, mostly novels and a play, but I can't resist a good literary pun, so I think you brought us something for that too.

Nathan Chadwick:

So there are two books, that kind of play on this thing that we were talking about today, which is pairing both drinks with literature, and they, the two books have great titles. The first one is called "equila mockingbird, where literally goes does the same thing. If you want more drink ideas, you go through this book. It's going to pair a drink, usually with a great punny name, uh, along with a work of art. The other one that he wrote was "are you there, vodka? It's me, margarita.

Nathan Chadwick:

So I love these titles, I love the idea behind these, and this is a plug also for library services. So with your library card, you can always come in and get books, but you can also go on our website, MCPLlink, and you can find our ebook collection. So these are two books we actually carry, but we don't carry them in physical form, but they're always available through our Hoopla program, hoopla Digital, free to get any time you want them. You could go on right now, get a library card on our website and check them out yourself and start making drinks this evening.

Jocelyn Rawat:

So I've seen books, Tequila Mockingbird and Are You There, Vodka,I it's Me, Margarita at high end, boutique furniture stores. I had no idea that you could get books like that through the public library.

Nathan Chadwick:

Oh yeah, we have all sorts of fun stuff. In fact, one of the great things about e-books is that we have this wide variety of cookbooks, recipe books, and if you go on there and you type in drink recipes into our catalog, you're going to be amazed at all the different things that come up, both in person and online.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yeah, yeah, and I use my library card all the time and I still didn't know that. So if I'm going to get through this reading list this summer, I'm going to need a lot of sunscreen, and I'm probably also going to need some supplements to my home bar. So, Mike, do these products ever go on sale?

Mike Gantt:

Oh, all the time, we have monthly sales. They last from the first to the end of the month. Actually, they're very good sales and you can make almost all these drinks right now with the sales. We have various items on sale from the cordials, your vodkas, gins, tequilas, you name it and just come in and you know, pick what you need or ask somebody, Bring a list with you.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yeah, and remember that most of these liquors or spirits we do have local producers too, and those are very popular in the stores.

Nathan Chadwick:

Can I plug also? A great way to find out about those sales is you guys have a newsletter, and I get it once a week, and that's how I always find out where I'm going to be heading next for a drink.

Mike Gantt:

It's always good to get those ahead of time. You can make a list of them. You just don't have to get the one or two things. You get three or four.

Nathan Chadwick:

And I love the newsletter because it not only just has the drinks but it'll also link to recipes all the time, so you can come in ready to go, I think.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yes, that's right.

Mike Gantt:

We have plenty of helpful. They'll walk you around if they need to.

Jocelyn Rawat:

So if you'd like to get the newsletter, you can sign up for it at montgomerycountymdgov/abs/join or visit us on Facebook at ABSMontgomeryCounty, All right, thank you, Mike Gant and Nathan Chadwick, for participating in today's Spirited Discussion.

Mike Gantt:

Thanks for having me.

Nathan Chadwick:

Thank

Jocelyn Rawat:

a topic you'd like us to cover on the podcast, email email at absspiriteddiscussions at abs. spiriteddiscussions@montgomerycountymd. gov thanks for listening.

Announcer:

Alcohol Beverage Services is the alcohol wholesaler of beer, wine and spirits for Montgomery County and it operates neighborhood retail stores. Abs also manages alcohol licensing, enforcement and education for more than 1,000 businesses. Its profits are used to pay for resident services that otherwise would be funded by county tax dollars. This podcast is brought to you by County Cable Montgomery, your source for news and information from the Montgomery County Government. Connect with us via cable, facebook, instagram or YouTube by searching for County Cable MoCo.