Cheers to Gourmet Cocktails

The second annual San Francisco Cocktail Week, seven days of fancy drinks beyond your wildest dreams, is coming up May 13–19, and this year it features some East Bay events. The week is designed to showcase culinary cocktails—drinks made from quality spirits and seasonal produce by bartenders with as much reverence for ingredients and technique as the best chefs. This year, Flora restaurant in Oakland will host a dinner in its art deco dining room in which each course is paired with a different cocktail, as it might be with wine. And, Hangar One Vodka and St. George Spirits will provide tours of their Alameda distillery.

“Those guys are serious about their booze,” says St. George “spirit guide” and tasting-room manager Lou Bustamante about Cocktail Week organizers Jeff Hollinger of Absinthe Brasserie & Bar, Duggan McDonnell of Cantina, and H. Joseph Ehrmann of Elixir. “And, we make serious booze.”

So, while the week promises to be fun, it’s no frat party: Participants include the Museum of the American Cocktail, the United States Bartenders’ Guild, and the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture. And, Diablo contributor Scott Hocker will moderate a panel on Literature, Booze, and History, in which audience members can query cocktail expert David Wondrich. While drinking pisco punch, mind you.

If you’ll drink to that, visit www.sfcocktailweek.com for more information.