I’m not completely sure yet where this journey is going to go. It’s exciting. The list of saloons, greasy spoons and every-class watering holes grows by leaps and bounds each day here in the 513. When basically living at one, a sudden night off thanks in no small part to an amazing staff member or all the work actually being completed, leads to some varying degree of “well, what to do now?” Too late to cook albeit from exhaustion or laziness, who is to say, The List shall save us this day.
So we spin the wheel and close thine eyes, least we go somewhere new and SURPRISE! Sugar Whiskey Sis.
Hrmph.
A moonshine bar. With ties to a taco joint. Not my first choice nor is it the last, with a simple nod from my companion we vaulted to the car and headed across river. “To the land of caramel and honey!” I reveared, in my own head, and off to Northern Kentucky we went.
Sugar Whiskey Sis, like it much more popular neighbor Agave & Rye, sits across the street from a hospitality crown jewel in Hotel Covington. What gifts the Hotel is graced with from the hospitality gene pool, their neighbors across the street, well, slept in that day, meaning, these concepts couldn’t be more far apart. And for a neighborhood, that’s a good thing. Upscale fine on one corner, a Pier 1 closeout taco shack next to a rustic barnyard dive bar on the other. Diversify. Diversify. Diversify.
Sugar Whiskey Sis keep their lights on “SPF 30 needed”, and their music on something forgettable. The space, much like the concept in general, seems to be an afterthought. A spare room your newly divorced dad keeps spruced up with board games and a futon just in case you drop by. To be honest I didn’t really want to get into reviewing or critiquing “an entire space”, but for the first go around I couldn’t help but have my judgement immediately steered. Using all the senses right?
A brief menu overview on the car ride over got me interested. I was promised chicken sandwiches and hot browns and all of the glorious southern comfort food one might expect with a moonshine bar. So imagine my disappointment when we sat at our awkwardly tall bar and were handed… an Agave & Rye menu. Faceplant. Emoji.
“Fine. Let’s just do this.” I deftly looked at the drinks menu, our bartender who looked absolutely confused as to why we were there (he was great, my Judgement alarm was on Defcon 2), walked over and I just blurted out “Jesus Juice”. To be fair I saw 7 oz of alcohol, and little else. My carefully mapped out plan on how I was going to posit Cincinnati’s Craft Cocktail scene is the tits! was basically falling apart right in front of me. It’s fine. We’re fine. Anchors away and cut the ballast, this ship is sailing.
The drink. Named after the lord our saviors captured sweat, has arrived. It contains: Ole Smokey White Lightning Moonshine, Tanqueray, Bacardi, Midori, Titos, and Huckleberry Juice. To repeat, I literally just saw the warning below it, and ordered it. 7 ounces of alcohol. It comes in a friggin 750ml moonshine bottle. For my non-math nerds out there that’s 25.4 ounces. Ice takes up maybe 15 of that. To say that my brain was hoping against hope that there was at least 3 ounces of huckleberry juice in there would be like hoping that a moderately mediocre Cincinnati restaurant decided AGAINST becoming a chain and popping up in every city along the rust belt. In theory it’s plausible just not very likely.
Taste with your eyes first. Perceivably now, I’m over my head. A moonshine Long Island with a straw simply placed into the bottle. Then with the nose. Yeah there’s nothing here. I get the faint whiff of ethanol and hairspray. Then to the lips and enjoy. Okay, I need to consult my notes here because I don’t want to put the lords name in vain…
“Somewhere between Robitussin and the void in my life.”
“The Tanquerary really reenforces the Bacardi to provide a stable foundation in which to support the moonshine. But the Titos is lost.”
“Incredibly balanced. If your interpretation of balance is the name of your bar. Sugar and Whiskey. Unclear how much sister was used”
Yes. These are actual notes. There are a few more scribbles before everything becomes flat out unreadable. something about a “sugar bomb equivalent to Hiroshima” which is incredibly harsh, and poor judgement seeing as I’m pretty sure this drink won’t take the lives of over 150,000 people, but ethically should this drink be dropped at all? That’s a debate and perhaps the route I was taking. By this point some food has arrived (thank god) to soak up what little dignity I have remaining. The barman, who was incredible and looking like he just had the service shit kicked out of him, made for pleasant conversation while trying to mow down the weeds that had befuddled him on a typically lazy Sunday night.
Moonshine is a difficult ingredient. It makes for fun lubrication while visiting Gaitlinburg and water cooler fodder for “can you believe this show exists” but there is a reason moonshine is what it is and is taken in small doses. Sugar Whiskey Sis has a ton of elements most people would enjoy. Quirky elements. Cozy place to get lost in elements. Affordable elements. It’s the details that lack judgement. There wasn’t a single drink on the menu that knows how to deal with moonshine, or make it a hero and less like a villain. And make no mistake, moonshine and it’s now 101 flavors can take a villainous turn rivaling that of vodka. The trick is too a. respect it in it’s natural form. b. trick it into another. Concepts that respect their core values are the ones that see longterm success. Jamming moonshine into a margarita, just makes for a really shitty margarita. This goes the same for kangaroo and tacos (side rant). Cincinnatians are very much still learning how to drink. A moonshine bar, especially the only one in the region, can either lead by example or be swallowed up by everyone’s more famous cousin, bourbon.
Sugar Whiskey Sis’ Jungle Juice is best summed up by the chessboard table up front. All the right pieces, just something slightly off. Professional Chess players see it immediately, casual ones will play and be frustrated but don’t understand why.
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