In refreshing alcoholic beverage news, Emmerson — the grain-friendly Boulder restaurant opening later this summer — just scored a major player from the Los Angeles cocktail scene. Nancy Kwon, who won “LA Weekly’s” Best Bartender award in 2015 and was short-listed as one of the top five bartenders in the country by “Craft Cocktails America” last year, will be mixing up drinks in Boulder beginning next month as Emmerson’s bar manager and cocktail curator.
“I hadn’t been looking to leave L.A.,” Kwon told me. “It had to be something that was the right fit, the right place. It took something very special to make me leave.”
The team behind Emmerson and their shared passion for perfection was that something special.
Just how good is Kwon and her drinks? Really freaking good. And freaking good takes time — Kwon spent 12 weeks working on each cocktail that will appear on Emmerson’s menu.
That meant taste-testing 18 different crushed red chilies to find the perfect note of spice for a drink, sampling 20 bourbons to get a base that was—just right, and experimenting with several recipes before landing on the ideal Demerara syrup formula.
But of course I didn’t just take her word for it (or “LA Weekly’s” or “Craft Cocktails America’s”).
I had her make me a drink.
She shook up the Leonardo Smoke, a highly complex, highly drinkable blend of 114-proof bourbon, a rhubarb-based Amaro, an Italian vermouth, aromatic bitters, a touch of Benedictine and that aforementioned house-made Demerara syrup.
“It’s one of my favorite drinks on the menu,” Kwon said. “I mean, they’re all my babies, but this is one of my favorite babies.”
It’s now one of my favorite babies, too. Check out the Leonardo Smoke and the rest of Kwon’s boozy creations when Emmerson opens mid-August.
Emmerson: 1600 Pearl St, Boulder, 303-953-9852; emmersonrestaurant.com
