Members
Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) is a contributing editor to Imbibe magazine; the spirits and cocktails columnist for the online food journal Serious Eats; and has contributed articles on spirits and cocktails to the New York Times’ Proof blog, the San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle magazine and other publications. Since May 2005, Paul has documented his exploration of fine spirits and mixology on The Cocktail Chronicles, one of the first exclusively cocktail-related blogs on the Internet. Paul is also the founder and moderator of Mixology Monday, a monthly online cocktail party that has attracted scores of participants from around the globe. While he’s still not sure it’s a good thing that his drinking habits have attracted media attention, Paul has been profiled on Salon.com, and his blog has been declared an “Online Find” by the Boston Globe and a spotlighted “Pick” by Yahoo!. Paul has been quoted in articles on spirits and cocktails in publications ranging from the New York Times to Seattle Metropolitan to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to the Baltimore Sun to Tiki Magazine.
Michael Dietsch (A Dash of Bitters) is a freelance editor en route from Brooklyn, New York, to Providence, Rhode Island. Dietsch is a poser who dabbles in dipsology solely as an excuse to bash his liver every day. He’s married to Jennifer Hess, and they have three cats.
Gabriel Szaszko (Cocktailnerd) lives, drinks, and writes in Tulsa, OK, and found himself trapped in the inescapable allure of cocktails after littering his lawn, and checkbook register, with one too many champagne purchases. He endeavors to one day stop tinkering around with Aviation proportions and various obscure gins and work his way to the left of his bar where the darkly-colored spirits live. He is a founding member of the Cocktail & Spirits Online Writers Guild Group, blogs at Cocktailnerd and writes for Oklahoma Magazine. He also has the finest family this side of your front door.
Jay Hepburn (Oh Gosh!) is a twenty-something cocktail enthusiast from London, England. He discovered the joy of mixed drinks in cheap bars at university, and from these dubious beginnings a love of classic cocktails and obscure ingredients has blossomed. You can read about his adventures in the world of cocktails at Oh Gosh!, where he compares recipes, tries out new spirits and charts his self-education in mixology.
Blair Reynolds (Trader Tiki) is a tropical cocktail consultant, blogger, and obsessive mixologist living in Portland, OR. When not slinging drinks in the Galley, his home bar, or blathering on about the drinks of Don the Beachcomber or Trader Vic, he’s updating his site with the latest findings from the notebooks of old Vic’s bartenders and notes from the books of Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. He can be caught at Teardrop Lounge the third Tuesday of each month, where he puts together the menu and hosts Tiki Third Tuesday.
Rick Stutz is the author of (Kaiser Penguin), a cocktail blog featuring original recipes, homemade ingredients, classic cocktails, and tiki drinks. Host of the Mixoloseum’s Thursday Drink Night, he brings together bartenders, spirit writers, and cocktail enthusiasts from around the globe each week to create original cocktails and build on the knowledge and relationships in the cocktailian community.
His passion for photography and garnish fuel his work, which has been featured in Imbibe! Magazine and at notable tippling establishments including Forbidden Island, in San Francisco, and Vessel, in Seattle. He currently lives in Pennsylvania where he trains in the art of fire-breathing.
Craig Mrusek (Dr. Bamboo): Who is Dr. Bamboo? Some say he is a renegade scientist who renounced his original field of study to dedicate himself to the advancement of cocktail culture. Others claim he is a powerful shaman who practices the forbidden arts of a long-forgotten civilization. Still others maintain he is actually a traveler from a faraway world, sent to our planet as an ambassador of intergalactic fine living. Whatever the truth may be, one thing is certain: He makes a mean Martini. When he’s not foraging for obscure drink ingredients and vintage barware, Dr. Bamboo works as a freelance illustrator, is the drinks columnist for Bachelor Pad Magazine, and a contributor to BarNoneDrinks.com’s monthly newsletter.
Chuck Taggart (The Gumbo Pages) is a dedicated cocktailian whose work and explorations have been featured in The Joy of Mixology, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, The San Francisco Chronicle and various other publications. He’s pleased as a bowl of Columbian Punch to see some of his original cocktails being served in bars from Seattle to New Orleans to Boston. Since 1994 he’s been the author and editor of the New Orleans food-, drink- and culture-related website The Gumbo Pages, which regularly features his musings on cocktails and spirits in the weblog <a href="http://looka.me/">Looka!</a> He also worked as a public radio DJ and music programmer in Los Angeles for 20 years, and in 2004 was the compiler, producer and accompanying book co-author of Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol’ Box of New Orleans, a 4-CD collection of New Orleans and Louisiana music on Shout! Factory Records
Stevi Deter (Two at the Most) is a cocktail ingenue living in Redmond, WA. Her passion for a great drink was sent into overdrive upon picking up a copy of David Wondrich’s Imbibe!, ostensibly as a gift, and then greedily keeping it for herself. She is a member of the Cocktail and Spirits Online Writers Group (CSWOG), and an associate member of the Washington State Bartenders Guild (WSBG). She can frequently be found haunting the bar at the Mixoloseum. On her blog she reviews liquors, books about liquor, and her process for inventing new drinks. She measures her growth as a home bartender by the quality of her Pisco Sour.
Erik Ellestad (Underhill Lounge) is a blog author and contributor to such sites as eGullet.org and DrinkBoy. His most famous misadventure is likely his ongoing effort to make all the cocktails, in order, from The Savoy Cocktail Book. The eGullet.org topic he started documenting this quixotic project, “Stomping Through the Savoy,” has proven strangely popular with cocktail enthusiasts and others in the food and beverage industry. He hopes, if all goes well, to be approximately half done by the time of Tales of the Cocktail 2008.
Camper English (Alcademics) is a freelance cocktails and spirits writer for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, Wine & Spirits, and Best Life, as well as the cocktail blog Alcademics.com. He has covered everything from urban moonshiners to drinks with maple syrup. His work has taken him to places like Warsaw (vodka), Barbados (rum), and Mexico (tequila), though he most enjoys the cities where they can mix a mean drink at happy hour. He is oddly obsessed with distillery waste product recycling and cocktails with black pepper.
Marshall Fawley is the co-author of (Scofflaw’s Den), an “online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulum.” The “Scofflaw’s Den” name not only reflects the term given to those who imbibed during the dark days of Prohibition, it is also in honor of Marshall’s ancestral roots of moonshine runners. A good ole Southern boy based out of Arlington, VA, Marshall co-authors Scofflaw’s Den with his good friend and college buddy, SeanMike Whipkey. Marshall covers original and classic cocktails, product reviews, home mixology, cigars and the Washington DC area’s growing cocktail scene. An attorney by day, Marshall spends his evenings soaking up cocktailian history from his collection of old bar guides, making homemade ingredients and photographing the results. A contributor to The Mixoloseum website and covered by the Washingtonian magazine, Marshall is proud to be a Virginia/Washington, DC voice in the world of cocktails. As a side hobby, Marshall has made it his mission to single-handedly resurrect the Cocktail de la Louisiane and popularize it throughout the Washington , DC area — next step the world!
Craig Hermann (Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments) is a nefarious ne’er-do-well who haunts the locales of Portland, Oregon. He is a mixologist, a cook, a braggart and a stalwart good friend. He is also a founding member of North West Tiki, LLC an organization to support and spread Polynesian Pop enthusiasm throughout the Pacific Northwest. NWTiki produces and organizes TIKI KON, a yearly convention in celebration of all things Tiki. His blog, Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments, serves as a clearinghouse for current and future project plans, drink recipes and discussions, food opinions and diversions, chest thumping and proclamations.
Tiare Olsen (A Mountain of Crushed Ice) hails from Stockholm, Sweden and is a passionate cocktails and spirits geek with a special love for tropical and tiki drinks.You’ll usually find her either mixing up a range of drinks, crushing ice, making garnishes, syrups, infusions and bitters, or photographing all her experiments, which find their way onto her blog ”A Mountain of Crushed Ice.” She is especially interested in cocktail garnishing and ice, and is a collector of demerara rums. After working many years in restaurants she is now a mobile phones marketer and consultant, while still occasionally bartending, writing her blog and hanging out in the Mixoloseum bar chat room.Her favorite cocktail is a proper Mai Tai.
Darcy O’Neil (The Art of Drink) is a bartender with a formal education in chemistry. His motive for becoming a bartender was part by chance and partially to fulfill his culinary desires. Darcy feels that in life, food and drink are too important to take short cuts, so he quickly became an advocate for making great cocktails. Darcy currently works as a bartender and spends his time writing about his mixology and bartending experiences on his website, The Art of Drink.
Marleigh Riggins (SLOSHED!): Blogging in various forms since 2001 at hyperkinetic.org, Marleigh became serious about the medium when she accepted a pro gig as co-editor and writer for LAist. SLOSHED! began shortly thereafter in May of 2005 when she discovered the therapeutic qualities of cocktails: mixing, shaking, experimenting with flavors and textures, the strange and quirky nature of the discipline and its history. Oh, and drinking them. Born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Marleigh has called the city home for nearly a decade despite longing for lower rent and more reliable public transit. A print production artist by day, she shares an apartment with her partner and their gray felines, Beckett and O’Malley. Besides cocktails, she enjoys cooking, reading, music, playing board games, vanilla-bourbon vegan ice cream and a cold pint of Belgian ale.
Matt Robold (RumDood) lives in Orange County, California, where he spends his time riding his bicycle, tinkering with various software projects, annoying bartenders in Orange and LA counties, exchanging notes and recipes with other cocktail and spirit bloggers, and - of course - drinking and writing about rum. In addition to RumDood.com, Matt contributes to the Mixoloseum blog.
Rum captured Matt's interest in 2005 when a trip to St. Lucia saw him return with a bottle of Admiral Rodney rum. After finishing a bottle of the best rum he had ever had, Matt began the long search for a replacement bottle, which lead him to Ed Hamilton's Ministry of Rum. Unable to obtain a new bottle of Admiral Rodney right away, Matt started trying other rums and soon had a collection of 5 or 6 rums occupying his liquor cabinet. By 2009, that number had grown to more than 110 different rums as things moved from "hobby" to "obsession".
Matthew B. Rowley (Rowley’s Whiskey Forge) is an advertising executive, former museum curator, and past board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. He has traveled extensively in search of moonshiners, poitín-makers, and amateur & craft distillers to uncover local liquor and, when possible, promote the people who make it. He is a past presenter at Tales of the Cocktail and has talked on drinking and cocktail culture for universities, radio, and television. His recipes and essays have gotten ink from the University of North Carolina Press, Simon & Schuster, the Taunton Press, Lark Books, and others. Although he’s far too shy to mention it, his 2007 distilling history/practicum— Moonshine! Recipes * Tall Tales * Drinking Songs * Historical Stuff * Knee-Slappers *How to Make It * How to Drink It * Pleasin’ the Law * Recoverin’ the Next Day — has been called a modern classic among hobbyist distillers. Rowley lives in San Diego, California, where he maintains a 2,000-volume culinary library open to chefs, bartenders, historians, journalists, and students and is proprietor of Rowley’s Whiskey Forge, blog a devoted to the history and practice of distilling, mixology, and good eats.
Sylvan Thompson (Tasty Libations) is an amateur cocktail enthusiast and blogger in Portland, OR. His love of good food naturally led to the love of the cocktail and all its culinary facets. As with most of his hobbies (like home brewing, canning and mushroom growing), he became obsessed with doing it right. Not content to make drinks with only what is available locally, he loves to create tinctures, syrups and aperitifs and enjoys tracking down rare or unusual cocktail ingredients from around the world. Sylvan is a veritable walking encyclopedia of liquor brand names, bottle availability and the history of the cocktail in general. With an eye towards vintage drink recipes, he occasionally posts at Tasty Libations.
Chris Stanley
Jon Flowers
John Hearn (Bastard’s Booze Blog) is an arrogant jerk whose presence no one would even tolerate were it not for the fact that he mixes some goddamned delicious cocktails—a fact that he will incessantly point out to you in an offensive and condescending manner. When the bastard isn’t coding, drinking, trolling the Mixoloseum chat-room, or doing some combination thereof, he will on occasion blog about his creations and their constituent parts. He resides in Eugene, Oregon, which we point out to you only so you know to stay the hell away from there.
SeanMike Whipkey (Scofflaw's Den) has been writing for as long as he remembers but for a long time was stranded in the land of cheap beer and bad drinks. One day a light shine down upon him - or maybe it reflected off Marshall's head - and he started to discover the world of quality cocktails. In turn, he started writing about his adventures, thus preserving some of his dumber thoughts for all eternity, but in the process got himself wrapped up in the cocktail community both online and in DC - and once you're in, there's no getting out.
But he still enjoys cheap beer, when the occasion calls for it.
Doug Winship is the author of (The Pegu Blog), a site about Pegus and other assorted ramblings on the cocktail life. Doug is the owner of Killing Time, murder consultants, a custom murder mystery entertainment company. He started the Pegu Blog as a way to evangelize the return to prominence of the greatest cocktail ever, the Pegu, as exercise for his writing muscles, and as an excuse to his wife for constantly trying new cocktails and spirits. Doug's exploration of cocktails and cocktail culture in general is a nefarious effort to draw in the public at large so he can periodically promote his favorite antique cocktail when they least expect it.
