On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” hosts Adam Teeter and Zach Geballe discuss the details of Adam’s recent travels to Italy, and he and Zach discuss a phenomenon he noticed on his trip: Many of the most critically acclaimed cocktail bars seemed geared toward, and frequented, by Americans. Tune in to learn more.
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Adam Teeter: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, I’m Adam Teeter.
Zach Geballe: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.
A: And this is the “VinePair Podcast.” So I’m back and Joanna’s gone.
Z: I know we just… We’re going to get it right one of these days.
A: I know. She’s not gone, gone, everybody.
Z: No, no, no.
A: She is just driving to Canada. On the day we’re recording this.
Z: Right. Questionable decisions, but that’s okay.
A: Yeah. There was an engagement party that they needed to be a part of because I think it’s Evan’s best friend, so it’s understandable.
Z: There you go.
A: But I’m back. Was I missed?
Z: Oh, you were missed. It came up multiple times and sincerely.
A: Wow.
Z: The dynamic without you is just… We’re a three-ingredient cocktail. You need all three ingredients for it to really be, to really show.
A: Very true. It’s very true.
Z: Speaking of, so you got to tell me about your trip. I’ll tell you the boring sh*t I drank, but you get to the exciting stuff first.
A: Okay, I can do that. So the trip was great. I went to Italy with Naomi and we basically did three main areas of the country. So the first was Tuscan Coast/the island of Elba. We were really only on the Tuscan coast in order to go to Elba, and Elba was awesome. I think the thing about the Tuscan coast, if you’ve never been before, that’s really cool, and you’re one of these types of people, which I assume if you listen to the podcast you are, is that you will not hear English. We were there in the height of August and I guess, toward the end of August, past when the Italians have their big week of summer vacations in August, but still when everyone’s in Italy, and it’s not an area very well known by English speakers. You hear a little bit of German, you hear a little bit of Dutch, but it’s mostly Italian. And so first, just the beach along that part of the coast with the Mediterranean is really beautiful. And there’s a lot of really cool towns. It’s the Maremma, right? So it’s like if you’re a wine drinker, you’re like, “Oh, Super Tuscans.”
Z: Yes.
A: So that was cool because I never really… You hear everyone talking about, “Oh, the Maremma, the Maremma.” Now I know what it is and it’s a beautiful coastline. And then Elba is about an hour ferry-ride into the Mediterranean right off the coast. And it’s this just amazing island famous for where Napoleon was exiled until he was like, “I’m coming back, b*tches.”
Z: Yeah. The first time.
A: Yeah. Not great wine on Elba. Not great wine. They basically do a lot of the varieties that are already being made in Maremma
Z: Okay.
A: There’s a lot of Vermentino. A lot of Vermentino and just not so stellar Vermentino. And then I think there’s producers trying to do Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah and Merlot and things like that, but just, again, not incredible, but the food is good. Lots of really fresh seafood. And in that area, I would say the best thing I drank early on was a really good bottle of Vermentino actually from a Super Tuscan producer whose name now escapes me because I drank a lot of wine. So hold on, let me get my list up so that I’m not being a jerk here. So I guess in Elba, mostly cocktails, beer, that kind of stuff.
Z: Sure.
A: I was pretty surprised that a lot of the beach resorts were trying to sell cocktails for $18 a cocktail.
Z: Wow.
A: Which a lot of my Italian friends tell me is insane, like “How dare you,” almost, but they do what they do, I guess. I guess if you can do it, do it, right.
Z: Yeah.
A: I’m not going to get mad at you. So Rocca di Montemassi, I had a really amazing Super Tuscan from them. And I also had a really nice Vermentino from them when I was on the Tuscan coast. And then in Elba, actually, I had a wine from Sicily. I had the oldest Frappato I’ve ever had. I had it from Cos, so it was like a 2014. So I don’t mean oldest like it’s the oldest vintage. It’s the oldest I’d had in terms of how long it had aged, if that makes sense.
Z: Yeah.
A: Right? Because Frappatos aren’t really meant to sit for that long.
Z: Yeah, you would think.
A: It was really good. It was still very fresh. I was very surprised. I will say though, because it was Cos, there was a massive, massive amount of sediment in the wine.
Z: Oh. Yeah.
A: When I got halfway through the bottle, it was just a lot of sediment. It was a lot. And I wonder if it just throws off more. Naomi was asking, she’s like, “Why is there this much in the bottle?” Literally, by the time we got halfway, it was just basically all sediment, but so Elba, really great. Really recommend it, especially if you’re into beautiful beaches and nature. It’s one of those islands where, to get to the best beaches, you either have to have someone who has a boat, rent a boat to get to them on the island, or you have to be adventurous, meaning that you’re willing to be that kind of person that gets up early in the morning and drives one of the crazy winding roads and is willing to park on the side of the road where there’s not an official parking spot and maybe your car’s going to get hit by another car coming around the curb, but you’re going to take that risk anyway because it’s Italy and that’s what everyone’s doing, and then you’re going to scale a rock cliff down to the beach.
Z: Okay.
A: But it’s cool.
Z: Okay.
A: And then you’re on these just gorgeous beaches where it’s like you and no one else. The beaches that are easy to get to are packed, right, because it’s the height of tourist season. The other thing I always find so interesting about Europe and we forget about here is that every beach, basically, you don’t sit on unless you’ve rented a chair.
Z: Oh.
A: It’s all beach clubs, right. All the beaches have a very small section for the public where it’s a hundred blankets, all sort of crammed full of people who don’t want to pay 10 euros a day to have a chair, but everyone else is paying for these chairs that these beach clubs put out on the beach because they get there super early in the morning and put them out. And then they’re also bringing around beers and wine and stuff like that for you. It’s interesting. We just don’t have that same culture. Maybe in Miami, but nowhere else, I feel like, especially here, you don’t find that as often. So then I went to Chianti.
Z: Okay.
A: The Classico area. Never been before. Really awesome. Drove around, went to Radda, had a bunch of really amazing wine. Castello di Albola, Montepultine, just really incredible wines. That was much more, again, not American, but very British. Lots of Brits.
Z: Okay.
A: Learned that it’s a very popular area for lots of Brits and Germans to have their quote-unquote “summer homes.” So lots of the old homes in the hills are now owned by Brits and Germans who vacation and cycle and eat and whatever. That’s probably where we had one of our better meals, too. And then it was off to Rome, and I hadn’t been to Rome in a long time. Rome is a really interesting city to me because it’s a city that almost feels, obviously, it’s ancient, but also a historic artifact in a way. I don’t know for those listening when was the last time you’ve been to Rome compared to Milan or places like that, but Milan definitely feels like the place where there’s a lot of activity and new businesses and younger people. Rome really feels like Rome exists because of what it is not because there’s a lot of new, exciting things happening there.
Z: Well, the thing about Rome that I always felt was you just feel the history bleeding through into everything.
A: Yes, it’s everything.
Z: It’s very striking in a way that I agree that even other parts of Italy or Europe in some sense with similar lanes of habitation because of just the preeminence of Rome for so long, you just can’t help but turn a corner and be like, “Oh, sh*t. There’s a historic artifact or a building.” Doesn’t say nothing of the very, very famous landmarks. And like I said, it’s coming through the skin of the modern city at all times in a way that’s very distinct from other cities, I think.
A: Yeah. And what someone said to me, one of my Italian friends said that I thought was really interesting was, he views Rome as a combination of our Boston and D.C. with maybe a little Philly. He’s like, “It’s not New York,” right. It’s a huge city, but no one’s moving there in the same way they move to New York. In that regard, they move to Milan, whereas you could argue, right, that another very historical city, not as ancient obviously, but Paris both has all of that history plus all of the modern pushes that are happening there every single day, because that’s where everyone in France still goes. And I thought that was really interesting because I can’t think of another ancient European capital city where it isn’t also one of the more vibrant cities of that country.
Z: Yeah. That’s interesting. I can’t speak to the sociopolitical nature of Italy, although, I think, for the last couple of hundred years, it’s certainly true that the northern part of Italy has generally been the more industrialized dynamic economic engine of the country more so than the middle and south, which historically were. But I do think it’s always interesting to me to juxtapose maybe Paris. An interesting juxtaposition. I think Athens is also really interesting in this regard because Athens has a similar and even longer history, frankly. But in Athens, I always felt like… Rome felt like there was tension between the present and the past. And Athens always felt to me like Athens is a city that has already accepted that this is maybe, our Greek listeners, please don’t get angry at me, but Athens feels more at ease with the fact that it’s no longer the center of the world and Rome still, maybe it’s because of the Vatican, maybe it’s because of just whatever, but there was always that sense of, “Yes, we have this history, but also, we are…” maybe in contrast to what you’re saying, Adam, or at least in the eyes of the Romans I met, “We want to be this vital, massive, important world city, not just a historic curiosity.” And Athens feels much more like that.
A: Well, I think basically what you’re saying, which is interesting, is that’s part of the tension in Rome but they want to be a vital city because of the history, whereas I think Athens recognizes now that it will become a vital city again because of what’s happening today. And so that’s why in Athens now, a lot of Europeans are saying they feel like they see shades of 10 to 15 years ago Berlin, where lots of young artists are moving there because it’s very affordable. It’s really beautiful. Some of the most exciting cocktail bars in Europe are opening there. Some of the most exciting restaurants in Europe are opening there because, again, it’s cheap, right? We’ve had this, this is the same narrative we’ve had in every single podcast, right? You go somewhere that’s more affordable to open something if you can’t afford to open something in one of the major cities, and I think Rome still struggles with that, right? I think people are pushing more boundaries in Athens. The best restaurants in Rome are still restaurants that make really, really amazing cacio e pepe and carbonara.
Z: Which you definitely ate some of.
A: Yes. Lots of.
Z: I’m sure.
A:Yes. But in Athens now, there’s much more fusion and there’s pushing against what you would consider traditional Greek food because I think that realization has happened like, “We can’t just say we’re vital because of thousands of years ago. We have that history, but now there has to be something else.” So it’s interesting, but in Rome, I didn’t drink a lot of, actually, Roman wine.
Z: Well, there’s not a lot of Lazio that’s-
A: Not a lot of great Lazio wine, right?
Z: It’s pretty acceptable, but no one goes there for the best wine in it.
A: No, but I had a really nice Barolo from Giovanni Rosso.
Z: So on brand.
A: Yeah. And I had a really amazing wine from Graci, Annette Noroso from Graci, and yeah. It was a great trip. I really enjoy Italy. It was nice to get away. It was a nice break. It was my second time in Europe since Covid, but also the first time I’ve been to Italy in a really long time where it had nothing to do with work, which was really nice in a lot of ways.
Z: Yeah. I can confirm that Adam was not on Slack.
A: Yeah. I was not. So what about you? What’d you drink while I was gone?
Z: A little bit of this, little of that. I think the most exciting drinking experience recently was, we had some friends over for dinner this past week, this past weekend, I should say. And we had a couple of bottles of Chardonnay, one Domaine Rougeot, Saint-Romain. So white Burgundy from an old vineyard in Saint-Romain. Saint-Romain is one of these appellations in Burgundy that’s getting popular because it doesn’t have premier and grand cru vineyards, so it’s generally not been considered as high quality and not as expensive, but with the combination of the ever-escalating price of Burgundy and climate change, some of these places that were a little cooler, a little harder to get ripeness, are now making excellent wine, and that was super tasty, a 2017. And then a 2018 from Tranche, which is a winery here in Washington from their estate vineyard, which is Celilo Vineyard and the Columbia Gorge, generally speaking, my bet or pick for the best vineyard for Chardonnay in the state. That was really beautiful.
A: That’s bold. Yeah, okay.
Z: Well, I drink a lot of Washington.
A: I know you do. You do. I’m saying that’s high praise. That’s high praise.
Z: And I would say, I am not alone in that stance. I think there’s a lot of producers here and wine drinkers and whatnot who would echo that sentiment or at least certainly put Celilo at the top of the list if they wouldn’t set it apart entirely. So that was fun. Drank a lot of beer over the weekend as well.
A: Okay.
Z: It’s been great beer weather for me. Here in Seattle, it’s been sunny and warm during the day, but cooling off in the afternoon, evenings. I’ll drink beer year-round, of course, and what I want to drink changes, but this is actually, for me, one of the peak IPA seasons. It’s great weather for it, in my opinion. I don’t want it when it’s super hot, as we’ve talked about before, but heading into fall, the very end of summer, really great. And of course, as I mentioned to Joanna on the podcast not that long ago, we’re about to hit fresh hop season.
A: When do we hit fresh hop season?
Z: I think, from what I have been seeing on social media, I think some of the first beers probably about the time this podcast comes out this coming week will be starting to hit shelves or taps here in the area. And so next week I will probably have a few to talk about, I’m hoping.
A: Wow. Well, that all sounds super delicious. So one of the things that I encountered on vacation that I thought would be fun to talk about is this idea of the cocktail bar outside of the United States. And I’m not talking about just the regular cocktail bar. I went to an amazing cocktail bar called Freni e Frizioni in Rome that is very much a… Freni e Frizioni. Freni, Freeni? Who knows? It’s a high-capacity cocktail bar where they’re doing lots and lots of different kinds of drinks and you could tell that there were lots of Italians there. But prior to going to that bar, I went to what is probably regarded by most people as the best bar in Italy, and one of the harder bars to get into in Italy. Definitely the hardest bar to get into in Rome, because it’s a speakeasy, and it’s Jerry Thomas. And Jerry Thomas is a cool bar, right. It reminds you a lot of Milk & Honey 15 years ago.
Z: Sure.
A: Things like that, right. You go to the door, you become a member of the club, do you have a password, blah, blah, blah. And when you show up, there’s tons and tons and tons of people waiting there. I was really lucky that a bartender friend of mine, Luca, who was the finalist for the Patrón Perfectionists, the Italian finalist, was in Rome at the time because he’s from Rome, and took Naomi and I there. Or else there’s no way I would’ve gotten in.
Z: Sure.
A: I would’ve been like “VinePair.” And they would’ve been like, “What?” So yeah. So we go in and it’s very smoky, very small, and immediately, all I hear is English and everyone knows Luca. “Oh, Luca. How’re you doing? So great to meet you. It’s so great to see you, man,” blah, blah, blah. He’s introducing us. We have a cocktail and he can see that we felt like we were in a New York bar.
Z: Sure.
A: It was cool, all of a sudden, I wasn’t in Rome anymore. I wasn’t in Italy. I was in a bar in Lower Manhattan, 10 to 15 years ago.
Z: Okay.
A: And so he said, “Do you guys want to go check out the bar I used to work at?” And that’s Freni e Frizioni. And so we were like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We want to go there.” So we had to get in his car and drive towards the Trastevere neighborhood. I’m not saying that right, either.
Z: Trastevere.
A: Trastevere neighborhood. Yes. Yep. Thanks.
Z: That’s okay.
A: And we’re leaving and Naomi asks him, she’s like, “Hey, is it just because it’s August that we heard so much English?” And he was like, “Naomi, no. This is all the time. This bar was created for Americans.” And it had me thinking, “How many of these types of bars that get so many accolades, especially in Europe, have simply been created to get accolades from Americans and to be for Americans?” Because he was like, “You will never see Italians drink here. Italians don’t drink here.” The kinds of cocktails they’re making are cocktails that are beyond the palate of Italians or don’t appeal to the palate of Italians, and he’s right. They were classic. They were of-the-moment cocktails we are drinking right now in the U.S., right? That’s what they were. There was no influence of the Italian palate, culture, etc. in those drinks, and I thought it was really interesting when he said that. And I get that there are probably cocktail bars out there in the world that do exist, also, for the people of where they’re from. I think, actually, going back to Athens, The Clumsies is an example of that. A lot of their drinks are very Greek-influenced.
Z: Sure.
A: One of their cocktails is called the Greek Salad. It tastes like a liquid Greek Salad. Very interesting. Or the Aegean Sea is another one. But for the most part, a lot of these cocktail bars that I’ve gone to abroad seem like they really do exist for Americans and tourists. Little Red Door is another example, I think, in Paris. It’s a great bar, but I’ve never felt like I’ve been there with other Parisians. I’ve always felt like I’ve been there with expats and Americans. So I was curious what you think about that. Do you think that that is the case and is that just, naturally, what’s going to happen? That is what the cocktail bar is to most other places and most people don’t really care about cocktail bars for tourists. Do they exist just so we have somewhere to drink on vacation?
Z: Okay. So this is going to be maybe my scorching-est take ever. And you know me, folks. I am not usually the hot-take person, but there is a direct corollary to me between what you are describing, what I would say is a certain kind of classical Michelin-starred restaurant, and these have popularity for the same reason that you can find a McDonald’s anywhere, and it’s because there is a certain kind of person who travels and obviously, a different kind of person who we probably see going to one of these cocktail bars and to Michelin-starred restaurants rather than to McDonald’s in a foreign country, but yet doesn’t really… They want a certain amount of safety and comfort and that’s not a bad thing. That’s just a thing and I bet that a lot of these bars, as you were describing, are very, very, very aware of exactly who they are catering to and it’s the kind of person who wants an experience that they’re familiar with. And again, this is maybe some of you are going to hit hard. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a jerk about it. And all of us are susceptible to this in some way or another. I think there are times and places, especially if you travel for work or you travel regularly, you’re on a longer trip, some kind of comforts of home, such as they are, are appealing. And those of us who are from America have, I guess, the benefit of being catered to wherever we go in that way, or almost anywhere we go. There’s just a lot of businesses that are set up to make Americans comfortable abroad. I wonder, though, you were talking about, Adam, how you don’t think that the drinks in these kinds of establishments are really either centered around the palates of the people in the country or in the city, and maybe don’t even make use of the local flavor sets, etc. But I wonder, too, is there something about the way those bars are even organized, the idea behind them that is not appealing to a lot of people in those countries? I think the idea of the classic cocktail bar, the high-end cocktail bar as we envision it here in the United States, may not resonate. We’ve talked about before the speakeasy not resonating because there isn’t a history of prohibition in other places, but I’ve always felt Europeans, in particular, don’t have cocktail culture in the same way that the United States does, at least not historically. They drink spirits and liqueurs differently and in different times and settings, and almost for different reasons, and bridging that gap and bringing European sensibilities to what is a very American format just might not work.
A: Yeah, I wonder. I think it’s interesting to have this conversation specifically through the lens of Europe because I do believe that in places like Japan, they have a very vibrant cocktail culture. Arguably a culture that existed in that between-time with prohibition that kept the cocktail culture alive in general, right, and the cocktail bars that are there, we know, also, are catering to Japanese.
Z: Yes.
A: And that’s been said, too, of Singapore and places like that. It always is so interesting to me when you talk to people from these countries who will say, “Oh, no. We don’t drink cocktails.” And then you think, “Okay. Well, then who is it for?” And the only thing you can think is, it’s basically for us and the Brits.
Z: Yeah.
A: Because the Brits drink a lot of cocktails, too, and some of the best cocktail bars in the world are in London and those are filled with Brits, right? They love cocktails, too. So it’s for us, the Brits, the Canadians, right? The Aussies? It’s for us. I think that this idea of comfort that you’re talking about is really interesting because I think that is true. It’s like you want to collect, you go to the cocktail bars in these places, but you still want them to feel familiar, right? You want to say you went to the hottest cocktail bar in Rome, but the menu of that cocktail bar in Rome looked a lot like the cocktail bar in L.A.
Z: Yeah.
A: Right? And that, I think, is just very interesting and I think very much exemplifies how much culture has traveled, but, also, how small the bar community truly is because the main people still influencing the world of cocktails is the U.S., right?
Z: Yeah.
A: It’s all coming from the U.S. and spreading. You’re not seeing a lot. Really, the only two things that have been really big that haven’t come from the U.S. or Britain, both, I think you could argue, came from Italy over the last decade and that’s the Negroni, which again, also though, was being rediscovered by American bartenders, and the spritz.
Z: Yeah.
A: If we’re going to be willing to consider the spritz a legit, serious cocktail, right? If we consider it a serious cocktail, then-
Z: Well, it’s definitely one of those two you would see abundantly in Europe.
A: Right. They all drink it. And then the third one, which we drank here, but it’s been always considered to be much more serious, especially in Spain, is the Gin and Tonic, but it’s never really become a serious cocktail here. So it’s really the spritz, right? And that’s what, basically, everyone’s drinking and then they switch to wine, and then as you said, maybe they have a spirit at the end of the night.
Z: Or a digestif or something.
A: Exactly. It was so funny to sit there and talk to some of my friends and I’m rolling off the cocktails and they’re like, “Oh, yeah. We never drink those.” Espresso Martinis, straight-up regular Martinis, Daiquiris, Jungle Birds, Bee’s Knees. They don’t drink any of those cocktails that we drink super regularly.
Z: Or you could envision maybe a certain kind of Italian or someone from France or whatever, finding a certain appeal and very once in a rare while going to one of those cocktail bars to have the same kind of transporting experience that we enjoy when we go to a bar that specializes in tropical drinks or go to a restaurant that has a very specific cuisine. There is a way that, maybe, for a certain kind of globally minded European, that the cocktail bar that evokes the United States either very intentionally or just unwittingly, is a place that they might go on a rare occasion for that kind of experience. But it’s not a weekly, you know, it’s not a part of the culture.
A: Right.
Z: And I think it’s very interesting to think about. It’s almost like, to me, the European version of why — another conversation we’ve had on the podcast in the last few months — wine bars still struggle to land in the U.S. because we just don’t have the same culture. The wine bar as a concept is really a European concept and built around the way that Europeans already have been consuming wine for many, many centuries. And it just hasn’t fully caught on here for whatever set of reasons. People don’t grow up around that kind of wine-drinking environment, most of us. And similarly, I think it’s easy for us to forget — because we are Americans and we are based here — that cocktail culture is so American in its origins that it just hasn’t caught on globally, or at least in places with very established drinking cultures already, and that is fine. And so if you see it in these places, it is going to be, knowingly or not, very referential to America because that’s where these cocktails, some of these ingredients, and certainly the idea of combining them, comes from. Again, we think about all these liqueurs and things that get used in classic and modern cocktails, but those things were not invented to be cocktail ingredients. They were invented to be consumed by themselves almost exclusively, and still largely are in the place where they’re from. And if you think about something like Chartreuse, right, not an Italian ingredient, but a French ingredient. And you think about how Chartreuse, its use in cocktails is an interesting sideline, but it was never the history of Chartreuse and you see people now trying to be like, “No. Chartreuse should be,” especially, the more rarefied expressions, “Should never be a cocktail ingredient. You should drink it on its own.”
A: Right.
Z: And Chartreuse has a tremendous amount of complexity to it. It doesn’t necessarily need to be added to a cocktail to be fully enjoyed, but that is what bartending in America has become, and has been for a long time, of combining these ingredients in novel ways to create something new. And that’s awesome, but that isn’t historically the case in Europe for the most part. These things were not, people were not, I don’t think, mixing together random assortments of things, hoping they would taste good, that is a very American approach to drinking, frankly.
A: Well, I think that if you talk about the American approach to drinking. The answer, I think, to all of this is that we are just a culture that, for as much as we want to say, “Oh, we’re embracing lower ABV. Mindful drinking,” etc., we are a culture, along with our Australian and British friends, and some Canadians, the Commonwealth, people might say, even though we kicked out the Queen. R.I.P.
Z: The King.
A: Yeah. I just wanted to say R.I.P. She’s dead.
Z: Okay.
A: Basically, we drink higher proof.
Z: Yeah.
A: A lot. If you think about it, the cocktail that came, right, the spritz is a low-ABV cocktail and they drink lower ABV even with wine, right. And so it’s not that they drink less. You look at the consumption data of the amounts of liters etc., there’s lots of consumption, but it’s all wine, low-alcohol beer, and they drink sessionally over the course of an evening, over the course of a day, on Sundays, with family, that kind of stuff. You can’t do that with cocktails, but we as Americans damn well try to.
Z: Yeah. We’re all about efficiency.
A: We’re like, “We’re going to try.” And I think that’s also part of why it just hasn’t caught on. It’s because it’s a different kind of drinking.
Z: Well, and drinking in Europe is so closely tied to eating.
A: 100 percent.
Z: That’s the other piece too, right. And a cocktail bar, there are, of course, cocktail bars that have good food and all that, but by and large, we don’t really think of a cocktail bar as a place you go to have a meal. You might have some bar snacks.
A: Yeah.
Z: You might have something to eat so that you don’t get completely wasted having three cocktails, but Europeans, again, in aggregate, view drinking as a thing that is done along with food. Maybe you have something before you eat, you have your aperitivo. Maybe you have something like your nightcap after you eat, but it is connected to food because eating in Europe is a big f*cking deal and it takes a long time and you don’t have a lot of the rest of your afternoon and evening to do much else with, so of course, you’re going to be eating while you’re drinking. And in the U.S the idea for us of, yes, there are things that we still might think about consuming with food, but even wine, as we’ve talked about on the pod a bunch of times, for a lot of people who drink wine, they don’t drink wine with their meals. They drink wine before or after dinner or some other time, and they have water or milk or soda or whatever with food. And there’s just a fundamental difference and I think is the other reason why the cocktail bars as we see them that are intended as parallels to, homages to, or direct copies of American bars are going to cater to Americans and maybe Brits, Aussies, etc., who have a very different culture around drinks that is much more drinking as its own activity.
A: I agree. If you have been to a bar outside of the U.S. in one of these European countries that you thought was amazing, hit us up and let us know, [email protected]. Again, I enjoyed my time at Jerry Thomas very much. It just felt like being at a New York bar in Rome, which I guess is fine.
Z: It was a little taste of home for you.
A: Exactly. Exactly.
Z: In case you were homesick.
A: Got to come home a few days early. And, yeah. We will be right back in your feeds on Friday for our Friday episode, rejoined by Joanna. See you Friday, Zach.
Z: Sounds great.
Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.
Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and Seattle, Wash., by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all of this possible, and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team, who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.
Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.
